The Copycat ConventionAre the Democrats stealing from the Republicans?
Posted Monday, July 26, 2004, at 4:54 AM ET
BOSTON—John Kerry's victory jog through the Democratic primaries wasn't electrifying political drama, but it was fascinating to watch because Kerry's leisurely lapping of the field couldn't be explained by the conventional axioms of presidential politics. In the general election, Kerry has continued his rule-breaking ways. He's the same John Kerry—boring, craggy, and cringe-inducing—such as when, during his Sunday night, live-from-Fenway-Park interview on ESPN, he ducked the question of whether to induct Pete Rose into the Baseball Hall of Fame ("That's up to the writers. I think, probably, that's pretty difficult.") and tried to have it both ways on whether Roger Clemens should be inducted as a member of the Boston Red Sox ("Well, obviously, we think [Red Sox] but there are evenly divided opinions here."). But despite his limitations as a candidate, he's still engaged in a campaign that's suspending the normal laws of politics.
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StumbleUponEven a casual viewer of Hardball knows that the first rule of an election that involves a sitting president is that it's a referendum on the incumbent. This election, however, has turned out to be the opposite. It's a referendum on the challenger. Kerry probably isn't responsible for this turn of events, but he's benefiting from it: The referendum on the incumbent is over. President Bush already lost it. This presidential campaign isn't about whether the current president deserves a second term. It's about whether the challenger is a worthy replacement.
So, even though there are supposed to be only five persuadable voters left in America, I'm inclined to think that the next four nights will be worth watching. Can the Democrats re-enact the successful 2000 Republican convention, a parade of moderation and diversity that convinced the nation that George W. Bush was a decent fellow who could be trusted with the levers of power? Four years ago, partisan Republicans were so consumed by Clinton hatred that they would shriek ecstatically every time Bush said he would "uphold the honor and dignity of the office." They channeled their rage into pragmatism: After eight years of Clinton, GOP primary voters wanted to beat Al Gore so badly that they rallied around Bush months before the primaries began, based on nothing more than the fact that he seemed electable. They made a calculated bet that Bush was a guy who would sell well, and they were right.
Now it's the Democrats' turn to see if their similar gamble will have a similar payoff. But I wonder if this convention will be as restrained as the one Republicans held four years ago. There's a big-name loose cannon on the bill on each of the first three nights: On Monday it's Al Gore; on Tuesday it's Howard Dean; and on Wednesday it's Wesley Clark. Each one is smart, beloved by a portion of the party, and capable of rhetorical sobriety. They're also all capable of going off the deep end.
Four years ago in Philadelphia, it took nearly two full days for a Republican speaker to even use the phrase "Clinton-Gore administration." On the eve of this convention, the Democrats were still sating their appetite for vitriol. A labor delegate caucus I attended Sunday was either an indication that the party isn't quite ready to tone down its rhetoric, or it was a Bush-bashing bachelor party, a final sowing of oats before the inevitable settling down. "This is where the first American revolution started, and the humiliating defeat of a king named George began," AFL-CIO president John Sweeney said. "And, brothers and sisters, it's where we're starting a new American revolution." Rep. John Lewis called George Bush the worst president of his lifetime. Dick Cheney was booed as a "calloused backroom operator."
Then John Edwards was introduced to speak via satellite. He gave his standard speech, about leading the world rather than bullying it, about not going to war needlessly, and about John Kerry's heroism and service in Vietnam. He also delivered a line that is consistently his biggest applause-getter at the Kerry-Edwards events I've attended. It's Edwards' answer to "honor and dignity," Bush's subliminal catchphrase from the 2000 campaign.
Every day, Edwards likes to say, every day John Kerry sits in that Oval Office, "he will always tell the American people the truth." The crowd erupted, as they always do. And during the entire speech, Edwards never said the president's name.
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Remarks from the Fray:
I have posted here for two years now that this election is all about President Bush and is his to lose. I still believe that to be the case. But to the degree John Kerry has any hand to play in making that a reality whatsoever, it will be most evident over the next four nights. And that will happen only if Kerry and the Democratic Party realize that their convention is the one thing in this whole process that is not about Bush. Rather it is about Kerry and it will be a success only to the extent that he can articulate his message clearly and the extent to which Democrats rally behind it…
Successful candidates who have challenged incumbents have done so by coming out of conventions whose sole purpose was to explain how the candidate's life to date expressed their message for the future as well as presenting a Party almost fanatically united behind that life and message. Ronald Reagan and the GOP did it in 1980 against Jimmy Carter. Bill Clinton and the Democrats did it in 1992 against George H.W. Bush. One could even argue that George W. Bush and the Republicans did it again in 2000 – running successfully against Clinton's record when conventional wisdom dictated Gore and the Democrats ought to have been the ones coasting to victory on it…
Whether or not Kerry can deliver the capstone … with his Thursday night speech remains to be seen but the greatest speech of his career will mean nothing without the necessary setup by the Party faithful. That means a group of people who have been united up to now in their desire to defeat President Bush need to re-channel that energy into enthusiasm for Kerry. And the candidate himself seems to understand this very well. He has made it known that speakers must accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. Testimonials to Kerry's life, accomplishments, principles, and proposals are to be the topic of conversation – with rants questioning the President's military record, veracity, or overly-cozy relationship with big corporations as verboten…
All of this suggests that Kerry and the Democrats are going to try what the poster Demosthenes and many others here on The Fray have been preaching for them to do the past couple of weeks by engaging in Level One Thinking – Make the AFFIRMATIVE Case! That is important because of the issue of momentum, regardless of the relative scale of any post-convention bounce. Swing voters swing because – among other reasons – they sense trends which they do not like to buck. If Democrats try to paint this election as primarily about bucking the trend of Bush's incumbency, they place the issue firmly under Republican control…
Kerry and the Democrats will have America listening to them with single-minded attention and purpose over the next four nights. The make or break factor for them may be less their eloquence in oratory and more the extent to which they can convince America that they are, in fact, listening back. Here at last is Kerry's big opportunity. It is his to lose.
--The_Bell
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…The party conventions have long since become lame, stage-managed affairs... little more than overhyped pep rallies that exist primarily to suck up free media and present focus-group-tested sound bytes and well-choreographed infomercials to the rapidly declining segment of the population that gives a damn.
One would think that perhaps a bold, forward-looking political party might dispense with the entire drag-show devotion to tradition and fundamentally alter the convention format to reflect the modern function of the party convention. Can the tedious polling of state delegations, dump the nomination formalities, and admit that the whole convention has become a party unity function with a set of prime-time televised keynote addresses for public consumption.
Try some new ideas-- follow Move On's lead and have ordinary party supporters make commercials, then screen the commercials at the convention and let the delegates vote on them. Sponsor a high school speechwriting contest and allow the winner to deliver the speech at the convention. Spend the afternoons during the convention bringing up a member of each state delegation to give a 10 minute talk on their own local priorities... so as to encourage more detailed coverage of diverse regional perspectives.
Do SOMETHING new and interesting. ANYTHING.
Unfortunately, we don't have any bold, forward-looking political parties in America. So we'll be treated to the same old snooze-fest infomercials pretending to be real political conventions.
--ShriekingViolet
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(7/26)