Analysis of words spoken at both conventions
Accompanying article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09...s/campaign/02memo.html
The RNC is blatantly politicizing the 9/11 tragedy. The sooner this administration is out of office and Karl Rove and Racicot are booted from their positions of power in the GOP, the sooner the GOP can return to its roots and become the party of Lincoln. Until then, the GOP resembles the party of Lincoln in the same way George Carlin resembles a fundamentalist Christian.
Accompanying article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09...s/campaign/02memo.html
In politics, as in baseball, it's better to be up last, and the Republicans have spent their convention in New York this week in a batter-by-batter rebuttal of almost everything the Democrats said and did in Boston last month - a strategic twist on that old Broadway boast: "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better."
So the Democrats had Max Cleland and a bevy of decorated Vietnam veterans, former admirals and generals? The Republicans have John McCain, that gritty Vietnam P.O.W., and Gen. Tommy Franks, who led the American march to Baghdad.
The donkeys had a political rock star in Bill Clinton? "Hasta la vista, baby!" - the elephants have a political movie star in Arnold Schwarzenegger.
The Democrats had a young black hope in Barack Obama, their Illinois Senate nominee? The Republicans' answer is Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, the first African-American elected to statewide office in Maryland.
John Kerry got grounded for riding his bicycle into the Soviet sector of postwar Berlin? Mr. Schwarzenegger got scared that his father or uncle might be plucked from their car in a Soviet zone in Austria.
Above all, if the Democrats had a man who wants to be president, the Republicans have the man who already is, and when George W. Bush takes the stage in Madison Square Garden tonight he is all but certain to provide his own ringing riposte to Mr. Kerry's challenge.
"Our team has been working on the convention program for a long time before the Democratic convention," said Nicolle Devenish, the Bush campaign communications director, who could not suppress a chuckle or two when a reporter called to ask about the right-back-at-you riffs. "But certainly there's always a benefit to going second, and of course we watched them intently. You always learn some lessons."
John P. Feehery, the spokesman for Representative J. Dennis Hastert, the speaker of the House, acknowledged as much. "It soaks in, what the Democrats did," he said. "And instinctively, you have a chance to respond to that now."
Some of the similarities in language were subtle, and sounded subtly barbed.
The outspoken Teresa Heinz Kerry began her remarks about her husband by declaring, "By now I hope it will come as no surprise that I have something to say." The usually reticent Laura Bush started her rationale for her husband's re-election by explaining, "As you might imagine, I have a lot to say about that."
Others tried to convey common dreams.
Mr. Obama spoke of himself as a "skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too," while Mr. Schwarzenegger said, "To think that a once-scrawny boy from Austria could grow up to become governor of California and stand in Madison Square Garden to speak on behalf of the president of the United States, that is an immigrant dream."
Still other attempts produced sharp contrasts.
Vanessa and Alexandra Kerry praised their father's rescue of a drowning pet hamster with the sisterly poise of a PBS special. The Bush twins, Jenna and Barbara, younger and just out of college, razzed their old man with a splash of "Saturday Night Live," as Barbara deadpanned: "We had a hamster, too. Let's just say, ours didn't make it."
At least two of the parallel speakers had the same name, but made totally different points. Ron Reagan urged the Democrats to "cast a vote for embryonic stem cell research" that might hold hope for people with Alzheimer's and other diseases. By contrast, his brother, Michael, introduced a videotaped tribute to their father last night, declaring that his parents, including the birth mother who gave him up for adoption, "were pro-life," and added, "I've come here tonight to honor my father, not to politicize his name."
And some speakers simply reflected the real and big differences between the two tickets.
John Edwards's pledge to "lift people up," found some echo in Vice President Dick Cheney's declaration last night that, "It is the story of this country that people have been able to dream big dreams with confidence they would come true." But Mr. Cheney's grizzled, grandfatherly air of worldly experience also contrasted sharply with Mr. Edwards's fresh-faced, less-seasoned debut in the big-time.
In such a closely divided political environment, both parties steal pages from each other's past playbooks and borrow cans from each other's oratorical cupboards. Republicans love to invoke Franklin D. Roosevelt's sheltering strengths and bond with ordinary people, as Mr. Cheney did last night.
Democrats are not embarrassed about praising what they see as the best qualities of Ronald Reagan, as Mr. Kerry did last month when he seconded Ron Reagan's description of his father's faith, asserting: "I don't wear my religion on my sleeve, but faith has given me values and hope to live by, from Vietnam to this day, from Sunday to Sunday. I don't want to claim that God is on our side. As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God's side."
But the specificity, and directness, of the Republicans' rejoinders this week have been both striking - and no accident.
Ms. Devenish said the Bush team had also sought to avoid what it saw as some obvious flaws in the Democrats' Boston operation, working to dole out daily surprises in the lineup and stage other events throughout the day that would keep the cable television networks supplied with fresh grist until the evening sessions started, and to make a more concerted effort to build toward the finale on Thursday with a series of more closely coordinated thematic days, like Tuesday's focus on compassion.
"The goals were different," she said. "They were seeking to convey 'strong leader' feelings about their nominee. We have a wider objective. We set out to renew the country's unity around the compassionate conservative agenda, and to pay tribute to the courage of the nation during 9/11. Each day is building a platform which the president will speak to on Thursday, laying out his vision for a second term."
One speaker offered a walking one-man contrast: Senator Zell Miller, the Georgia Democrat who delivered the keynote address at the convention that nominated Bill Clinton in Madison Square Garden 12 years ago, is now so disaffected with his party's stands on defense and other issues that he performed the same job for Mr. Bush, with flinty, folksy relish.
"They don't believe there is any real danger in the world except that which America brings upon itself through our clumsy and misguided foreign policy," he said of his fellow Democrats in remarks that seemed a kind of rejoinder to Mr. Kerry's assertion in his acceptance speech that "there is a right way and a wrong way to be strong."
There is at least one element of the Boston convention that the Republicans clearly hope not to repeat: The botched balloon drop at the finale, in which red, white and blue decorations drifted down in halting clumps instead of the cascade for which the Republicans are famous.
But Mr. Kerry's spokeswoman, Stephanie Cutter, making it clear that she was speaking in the spirit of reciprocal one-upmanship, tongue firmly in cheek, held out some hope all the same.
"If they are going to continue mimicking us, then I guess this means that George Bush is going to get up there Thursday and say, "I'm George Bush, and I'm finally reporting for duty" and then the balloons won't drop."
The RNC is blatantly politicizing the 9/11 tragedy. The sooner this administration is out of office and Karl Rove and Racicot are booted from their positions of power in the GOP, the sooner the GOP can return to its roots and become the party of Lincoln. Until then, the GOP resembles the party of Lincoln in the same way George Carlin resembles a fundamentalist Christian.
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