A few minutes into John McCain's speech last night, the assembled Republicans began chanting "USA! USA!" in a wave of enthusiasm. McCain wait perhaps a moment longer than was comfortable to calm them down, and went along with his speech. Within a couple sentences, the crowd was at it again. Keeping his cool, McCain stretched out his hands and quieted the audience. Seconds later, a troublemaker in the crowd started chanting "USA! USA!" Security promptly threw the man out, but not before the 15,000 delegates, alternates, and guests were, once again, chanting over McCain's speech. This time, McCain put his hands on his waist, looked down, and glowered.
McCain is not a born orator, as he himself notes. His speech last night did nothing to burnish his reputation. For the most part, McCain's talk was flat, simply a list of reasons why you should vote for him. He summoned little spirit, even when he threw red meat to the conservative crowd. Apparently, McCain had been aiming for a "town-hall" feel in this speech. He was not speaking to a town hall, though, but rather a television audience of tens of millions. He simply could not hold my attention.
The contrast with Sarah Palin's speech the night before was immense. Palin, a talented orator, kept me throughout--even though she spent most of her time bashing the man I plan to vote for. The difference between the two speeches is all the worse for McCain for the expectations the media built up for him--"Will he be able to top his VP's speech?" The answer was no.
That said, the speech did contain one very stirring part, about his time in Vietnam. McCain presented the story as a transformative experience--he went in as a selfish, independent young man, and emerged as "my country's man." McCain fleshed out several parts of his Vietnam story that, prior to now, have not been a major part of his narrative, such as his refusal of an offer of early release. I encourage you to check out the story if you did not hear the speech (this is a link to an NPR transcript; the Vietnam story occurs in the second half).
Well, this should be my last blog post. Thank all of you for reading, and thanks to Eileen Faust and the Pottstown Mercury for giving me the chance to share my experiences. Now I have to go--forget John McCain and Sarah Palin, because class starts in an hour!
What have you heard so far about Sarah Palin's speech last night? That she thrashed Barack Obama? That she reclaimed her story from the media? I don't know yet--I haven't read about it. I want to write about the speech before I hear what everyone else is saying. But I'm going to guess those are the two main themes. And I'm going to disagree with one.
I watched the convention's proceedings from inside the hall. (And that experience is worthy of a post of its own--sitting among Republican delegates, rising to give standing ovations to ideas I don't believe in, being handed a McCain-Palin sign and doing my best to avoid waving it around...) Palin was certainly the main event, and the organizers made no bones about it; Rudy Giuliani spent much of his speech praising her, and Hawaii governor Linda Lingle devoted her entire talk to lauding Palin's life executive experience. The hour before she appeared was devoted mostly to her, and particularly to her story. Given this build-up, and given the scandals and rumors surrounding her, I was confident that Palin would use her speech to craft a new narrative for herself. That's not at all what she did.
Palin's speech did three things, in no particular order: attack Barack Obama, laud John McCain, and define Sarah Palin. Defining Sarah Palin got short shrift. There were a few sentences about being a "hockey mom," about being a mayor of Wasilla, about fighting corruption in Alaska. She's a pit bull with lipstick. To my mind, that's about it in terms of narrative. Nothing she said about herself hadn't been said before by surrogates. She even trotted out the canard that she opposed the "Bridge to Nowhere." Palin, of course, supported the bridge until it was apparent that the bridge was doomed. When Palin finished this part of her speech, I was sure she was going to bust.
Not so fast. After some words about McCain, Palin went on the attack, or perhaps the warpath, against Obama. She belittled his community-organizing history, diminished his experience, mocked his message of "hope," claimed his mantle of "change," and accused him of serial deceit. Sitting among the delegates and other Republicans in the crowd, I had a pretty good sense of what they liked to hear, and they loved this. I barely sat down before I had to rise again to give another standing ovation to a one-liner about Obama. The man to my right started a chant of "Zero! Zero!" in response to a line about Obama's lack of experience. The delegate to my left, laughing uproariously, bellowed, "That's throwing the crowd some red meat!" To say the crowd was enthusiastic about the attacks would be an understatement. It was like manna from heaven for them.
I was astonished. Rudy Giuliani had already torn into Obama; I assumed he was doing it so Palin could focus on herself. Clearly, the Republicans had a different strategy. And in retrospect, it may have been the way to go.
I thought Palin would try to reframe her narrative. But what's wrong with the narrative she has? The problem is not the narrative itself; the problem is the image it conveys. The media narrative paints Palin as a inexperienced, naive young woman who rose through the ranks on the strength of her north-country charm and her good looks. Palin put that image to rest yesterday evening. She was a pit bull. Palin was assertive and in command--a chief executive. She would not be bullied--ready to take on the likes of Vladimir Putin. She tells it like it is--an agent of reform. Palin may not have taken back her story, but she certainly took back her image in this speech. And as a liberal, I'm worried.
Work's been a little slow, so I decided to walk around and find some news. (Well, I actually decided to walk around and find a hamburger, but I never did.) The convention's pretty silent, so I chose to go the other way--toward the protests. The protestors weren't quite so loud as yesterday, though, so it took some hunting.
The Bomb I struck out east, heading through the gate to the media camp, past the National Guardsmen at the end of the street, around a cordon of reclining (and yet intimidating) police drinking bottled water and eating pretzels, and out into the real world. Immediately, a man bearing a camera tripod in one hand and a cell phone in the other tore past, shouting that the bomb squad had arrived and that he "had to get this shot." I tagged along, of course.
The National Guard begged to differ. As police vehicles roared down the street, I and my fellow disaster-chasers had to poke around across the road. I never did see what the fuss was about. But they did let find whatever they were looking for, and finally let us through--to find Chris Matthews holding forth on a podium in the middle of a park.
I was crestfallen, of course, but I vowed to continue my search.
The Protest After the bomb debacle, I walked around the perimeter of the convention zone--until I heard what sounded like drums in the distance. Where there are drums, there are protestors. I made a beeline for the sound and found myself at the state capitol, in the middle of an enormous rally. Thousands of people stood, lay, danced, chanted, or simply milled around on the lawn outside the capitol building. As I walked, I gradually became aware that my suit and my credentials set me apart from the crowd--particularly when two rather large young men asked me if I was a Republican. So I tucked my credentials inside my jacket, made my press affiliation clear by taking out my camera, and walked into the thick of the crowd.
As I walked in, a young man talked to the rallygoers in a deep baritone about the elections.
He asked them how, if they knew that John McCain and Hillary Clinton were "shapeshifting reptilian overlords", they could be sure that Obama was not, also, a shapeshifting reptilian overlord. (Because he would have shapeshifted into a white man, in case you are wondering.) He went on about Sarah Palin in a fairly offensive way; I wandered on.
At the stage in the center of the rally, a group from Iraq Veterans Against the War finished a talk. Afterward, two men came on stage and started playing music in the peace-and-unity vein: "Hello, Hello/Salaam, Salaam..." I looked around at the protestors around me. A young mother danced on the grass with her small child; a man dressed like Jesus bowed in some personal ritual; college students holding ribbons and flags pirouetted around the lawn.
(If you can't hear, the man in the background is saying, "Is the kitchen in the house?/Is the bathroom in the house?/Is the closet in the house?")
Walking Back I'm a moderate Democrat and no protestor, but it was hard not to get caught up in the spirit of the moment. I had to return to al-Hurra, though, and so I walked south from the capitol. On the way back, two young men (not so large as the ones before) asked me who I was. I explained that I was with the press. They had seen several people at the rally in suits, and they wondered what was going on. The men seemed perfectly benign, but the next time I try to report on a rally, I'll bring a change of clothes.
A group dressed in white walked by me across a bridge. One of them started talking to a police officer, and I feared it was a protestor trying to get smart. Then they walked up to another officer, and I found out what they were saying: "Would you like some water?" They were from a Christian group called Living Water, and they were carrying sacks of bottled water. Their shirts bore the verses from John 4:13-14. They offered me water as well, but I declined.
As I entered downtown, I came across a long line standing outside a building. Protestors again? There were probably a few in the crowd, but these were ticketholders. I had stumbled upon the building where the Daily Show is being filmed. I don't know when they will start filming, but I'm sure that the folks in that line will be waiting for at least three or four hours yet. And I'd be among them, but...I had to get back to al-Hurra.
Another day begins with al-Hurra. I finally did some work--I tried to find a schedule for Tuesday's events. Then my supervisor got an e-mail from RNC headquarters containing the entire list of speakers, and all my work was for naught. On the upside, I got to hook into the Internet--and my blog.
What happened yesterday? The Republicans pursued two goals--reframing the convention as a fundraiser and call to service for Gustav, and dumping all the bad news on Sarah Palin when no one would be listening.
They had mixed success on both fronts. Except for the speech Laura Bush and Cindy McCain gave, the convention floor was basically dead. The Republicans didn't party during the hurricane, but then again, they didn't do much of anything. It was, for the most part, an ignorable day.
The attempt to "flush the toilet" (as one Republican put it), to dump news about Palin's pregnant daughter and her husband's DUI record while Gustav dominated television screens, also fell short of its goal. While Gustav was the major news story all day long, Palin frequently edged in, and stories about her have resurged today.
The Republicans were stuck between a rock and a hard place--a strong Gustav would have forced them to cancel more of their convention, while a weak Gustav ensured that Palin would have a prominent place in the news. They got both yesterday. Dire predictions led McCain to shorten the RNC schedule in advance, while the relatively minor damage left space for Palin on the airwaves.
The Republican rank-and-file, though, remain resolutely on-message. In my time here at the RNC, I have yet to hear a negative word about the Palin news, and few regrets about Gustav. Most folks here see Palin's struggles as evidence of her strength, and among social conservatives, her complicated family life is just more evidence of her commitment to the pro-life position. The media doesn't seem to feel the issue is so cut-and-dried. CNN just held a gossip-fest about Palin and her pregnant daughter, Bristol. I'll come back to the Palin drama in this blog later.
My first day on the job! Which, due to Hurricane Gustav, consisted of sitting around all day waiting for anything to happen. All the big events were canceled for the day on John McCain's orders. The upshot is that I had plenty of free time to poke around and take photos.
I spent my morning sitting in the al-Hurra media trailer, watching coverage of Gustav and waiting for someone to give me something to do. Gradually, I realized this wasn't going to happen, and so I decided to look around. The first thing I found? Protestors. (I apologize for the size of the video--I don't have any editing software.)
Police estimate that almost 10,000 protestors showed up today. The protest march you see here went on for a long time--I watched this scene for about ten minutes, and never saw the end. Apparently, a separate protest group attempted to overrun riot police. An officer nearly maced a fellow student of mine reporting on the scene.
The floor of the convention wasn't quite so exciting. I managed to get in just as the convention began, and sat through a number of votes on procedural matters. That didn't bother me, though--the arena is spectacular, as you can see from the photo at the top of this post. At one point, a very nice gentleman sat next to me and struck up a conversation. He turned out to be an alternate delegate from Virginia, and asked me about myself. An awkward situation--I was loathe to reveal that I was not in fact a loyal Republican. Fortunately, he never asked me anything that forced me to disclose my affiliation, and we had a very friendly chat.
The schedule for the rest of the week is still up in the air, but I'm inclined to believe that the RNC will be back on track tomorrow. Gustav seems to have done less damage than expected, and the Republicans are certainly eager to make use of the enormous monetary investment in the convention. (To say nothing of the Twin Cities business community, which has been watching Gustav as though the hurricane were coming straight for them.) I'll let you know what's going on tomorrow.
(An outlying encampment of the media fortress across from the Xcel Center.)
Yesterday, I received a call from my employer at the RNC next week, al-Hurra. Who? That's what I asked when I learned two months ago that I would be working for them. al-Hurra is a (United States) government-run organization that broadcasts news and other programming on television and radio in the Middle East, much like Voice of America. (Not exactly what I had expected when I signed up.) The man who called me invited me to come down to the Xcel Center and tour their operation before the convention began.
So I went down, and (of course) he was out to lunch. But once he got back, he showed me around. al-Hurra, he explained, is meant to be a pro-American counter to Al-Jazeera, the Arabic news station. Al-Jazeera has a relatively large news staff at the conventions this year, and is trusted much more than al-Hurra (seen as a Western tool in the Middle East), but the folks over there still believe they can compete. What exactly I will be doing for them, I don't know--I don't speak Arabic. I suspect I'm going to be an errand boy. But I will be an errand boy on the floor of the convention!
While I'm on the topic of media, let me discuss the media zone, or perhaps small country, outside the Xcel Center. It occupies half a city block, a fenced-in bubble filled with busy-looking men striding around with their Blackberries to their ears. Most news outlets--from CNN down to al-Hurra--have a tent or a trailer in there. It's as though an occupying force has arrived. When you step through the gates, you are no longer in St. Paul. You are in the Media Cocoon. I'll be spending plenty of time there in the coming days.
