Watching as much of the Democratic Convention as I could stand, I found myself longing for the days when conventions involved at least a smidgen of suspense. You still had all those boring speeches where the speakers said — over and over in increasingly less colorful manner — what everyone in the hall wanted to hear. But at least you had cutaways to a bigger story about who'd get the nomination(s) or what kind of floor fights were looming. Alas, in '68 and even more in '72, America looked at the Democratic gathering, got the idea that those guys couldn't run their own convention (let alone, the country) and moved towards the G.O.P. That led to the notion that conventions had to be rigidly stage-managed and all the battles settled before they began. In 1972, you also had the embarrassment of a vice-presidential pick who had not been properly vetted. After Tom Eagleton, presidential candidates knew that they had to select their running mates well in advance and after exhaustive research…so that part of the conventions was prearranged, as well. Which left us with just the boring speeches.
Most were pretty tedious tonight, hitting all the talking points but not accomplishing much beyond that. Jimmy Carter said some pretty scathing things about George W. Bush but did so in such a bland monotone that he failed to excite a convention hall full of people obsessed with seeing Bush defeated. Al Gore was better…but the trouble with Al Gore is that he's Al Gore. No matter what he talks about, you can never get far from the fact that this guy got more votes and was only denied the White House on questionable grounds.
I kept waiting for Bill Clinton to come out and show everyone how it's done. While he easily had the best speech of the night, he failed to do more than articulate the shortcomings of the Republican party. The case for John Kerry, which I keep waiting to hear, never got much deeper than that he's a helluva guy, a war hero…and he isn't George W. Bush. That's enough for much of America, maybe even most of America…but I'm not sure it's enough for an electoral majority.
Don't think I'm going to watch tomorrow night, except maybe for Ron Reagan's speech. Then on Wednesday, I'll watch John Edwards who, I'm guessing, will tell us that John Kerry is a helluva guy, a war hero and that he's not George W. Bush. Thursday, I'll watch Kerry and maybe Max Cleland. (Here's the schedule.) If you're interested in any of these and miss them on TV, C-Span has online clips available for a while. So far, only Bill Clinton is worth the effort.