I missed much of the Democratic National Convention goings on because I was giving Vincent a ride and at a church meeting. Late night CSPAN viewing helped me catch up to watch most of the roll-call vote (including Senator Clinton’s dramatic call - on the convention floor as part of the New York delegation) for the convention to make Senator Obama’s nomination unanimous – “by acclamation” – timed to be during the 6:30 p.m. network newscasts). When I watched the roll-call vote, I was interested not only to see who represented their states (Governor Beshear helped represent KY) and what they said about their states but also to see what the margin was. Some Clinton delegates obviously chose to vote for Obama, as she had asked them to do. For example, a majority of delegates from KY – where Clinton won big – voted for Obama.
I had trouble accessing the videotape of President Clinton’s very well received 9 a.m. speech last night on YouTube (I got home at 9:30 p.m. – after he finished – and only caught the last 2/3 of the speech later in the evening on CSPAN). President Clinton and Michelle Obama have clearly been the two best speakers so far, from what I’ve seen. Clinton talked some about economic policy, but the night was supposed to be about foreign policy, and (except for preventing 9/11 and stopping the killing in Rwanda and perhaps Haiti), Clinton has a pretty solid foreign policy record, which he could tout. He also could explain that many of the things Republicans are saying about Obama they also said about him: young, experienced (next to the older and much more experienced President Bush (“Poppy”)).
Also giving a tough speech was Senator John Kerry, the man whose 2004 convention didn’t give him enough of a bounce for him and running mate John Edwards to win Ohio and the presidency, but who helped introduce then state Senator Barack Obama to the world by making him the 2004 convention keynote speaker. Kerry blasted Bush and his friend John McCain (who he supposedly asked to be his running mate in 2004) in a way that – the talking heads said – was much more direct than most of his 2004 speeches – and, had he made speeches like this, he might have won Ohio.
The next half an hour or so was devoted to the war and foreign policy issues. On the schedule was another one of my favorites for Obama’s running mate, New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, who endorsed Obama soon after dropping out of the race for the presidency. But he apparently did not appear. Instead, a Steve Spielberg-produced and Tom Hanks-narrated – a la “Saving Private Ryan” and “Band of Brothers” – documentary on Iraq veterans that took the middle ground between “Ryan” and some of the hard-hitting anti-Iraq war documentaries I’ve blogged about earlier. Then a series of retired military people and Iraq war vets – including double amputee Tammy Duckworth who Republicans had the audacity to attack as soft on national security issues when she ran for Congress.
What came next was one of the high points of the evening. A beaming young man approached the podium who turned out to be one of Senator Biden’s two sons: Joseph Jr. (“Beau”). With even more emotion than Senator Obama told the story on Saturday afternoon in Springfield, Beau Biden told the story of his father and their family, going back to the senior Biden’s speech disability growing up working-class in Scranton, PA, to the now oft-told story of Beau’s mother and sister dying in a car accident soon after Biden senior, at age 29, won election to the U.S. Senate (and Biden nearly turning down the seat and compromising and being sworn at his injured sons’ bedside and coming home every night to Wilmington instead of Washington).
(Biden Jr. didn’t go into the interesting story of Biden Sr.’s courtship of his second wife Jill, a schoolteacher who friends set up with the then first-term senator, friends who didn’t realize that Jill had already caught Biden’s eye (not knowing who she was) when she appeared in a local television ad. Jill Biden has a doctorate in education – “which is a problem,” Joe Biden said Saturday – apparently joking) and now teaches community college (and was apparently critical in persuading him to run again for president in 2008).)
Biden Jr. didn’t really say much about his own story, but alluded in passing that he wouldn’t be around for all of the fall election campaign. In fact, Biden, a young Delaware attorney general, and a lawyer and officer in the Army National Guard, is slated to be deployed with his unit to Iraq, starting the day after the vice presidential debate between his father and Governor Pawlenty or Romney or Senator Ridge.
Beau Biden’s heartfelt delivery – which seemed to draw tears from many – and his youthful look quickly made him a star of the night.
Biden, Sr’s speech was solid. He delivered a strong pitch for Senator Obama and indictment of his friend Senator McCain. He has a strong voice but his delivery is sort of bumpy. Instead of plowing through applause lines, he sometimes mis-times then, and his speech seemed to end suddenly. It’s possible that – like Senator Clinton – he was conscious of the time. I couldn’t figure out why they were ending with 10 minutes to go in prime time. But they had to make time for a brief “surprise” appearance by Senator Biden before 11 p.m. Eastern time – a la the Clintons in 1992, when they waded through the crowd and appeared on stage with Al Gore – in what was more surprising – and a break with tradition – at that point. (Obama came from back stage – after Jill Biden told Biden they had a surprise for him.)
Biden was much better last night than he was on Saturday – when he was reading a typed speech. But I suspect he will get much better as he begins to deliver versions of this speech over and over again. Afterwards, the talking heads debated the speech. Was it a bad speech or was it a solid speech – with talking points for Democratic Party officials throughout the country – which nicely ended a great night on the whole for the Democrats? Mediocre speech; great night.
One anxiety hanging over the Obama-Biden campaign now is how the Republicans – in their anti-Obama the “celebrity” might spin his stadium appearance before 75,000 – which they apparently might NOT have scheduled had they known how the GOP was going to blast his appearance before a similar sized crowd in Berlin. Colorado is a battleground state and getting that many people in a stadium in Colorado can’t be all bad. But Obama essentially has to give a less inspiring than usual speech in order to buck the Republicans’ “cult of personality” attack.
-- Perry
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