A Tale of Two Cities

Just realized that the main problem with the RNC this year, besides the fact that it has the curse of being Republican in an anti-Republican year, is that the DNC last week had so much pre-packaged drama. How would Michelle Obama come across? Would the party be "unified"? Would Hillary pull a convention shocker and attempt to take over? Would Bill stick to the program during his speech? Would Obama be able to actually pull off justifying an acceptance speech before a stadium of 75,000?

And some kind of miracle happened that really went beyond something that could be choreographed. First Teddy Kennedy provided a stirring reminder of the Kennedy blessing on the house of Obama, then Michelle Obama gave a wonderful and heartfelt biographical piece, ending with the "Wizard of Oz" appearance of Barack Obama on the huge screen talking to his family spontaneously on the DNC stage. Then the next night, following a fantastic crowd-warmer from Brian Schweitzer, Hillary blew everyone away with what some considered her best speech ever, and a quote-unquote "full-throated" endorsement of Obama that started about the fifth sentence in. Then the next day the actual nomination - which I remembered liking watching when I was a kid but hadn't seen since - had this really genuinely joyous sense of the best kind of political theater, the best because everyone feels genuinely in the moment and inspired, and it was capped in a delirious crescendo by Hillary's short but sweet request to stop the count and declare Obama the nominee by acclimation. Then the next night, when everyone was just thinking about Bill's speech, there was the surprise star turn by Kerry who enjoyed fully his moment to stick it to the Republicans. And then Bill reminded everyone what they always forget to remember - that he can deliver a speech that goes right to your spine and you don't even know it's happening. And throughout the week, the complaints that there weren't enough hits on McCain slowly dissipated.

But still there was the final big show.... trepidation ran high... were the columns too much? Would they give the McCainiacs fodder for more celebrity ads? Would the sheer size and spectacle feed into the celebrity meme? Would he get lost in one of his lofty speeches, the kind of speeches his followers swooned over but that the people he needed to appeal to were starting to complain were too airy and not filled enough with specifics? Would Obama really be able to deliver? Would he be able to put the "high" in "Mile High"?

And then, after a day filled with people trying to make their way through the long lines, so's not to miss Stevie Wonder singing "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" and a few preliminary speeches, followed by the obligatory (and pretty good) biopic, narrated by David Straithairn (impeccable taste in the Obama camp as usual), Obama walked out to the strains of a U2 song that I love, "City of Blinding Lights". And then, he delivered, to an audience not of 75,000 but nearly 90,000, and really, to a record televised/internetted audience of at least 38,000,000 and quite probably closer to 50,000,000. And he delivered a speech filled with specifics, a "grounded" speech as they called it - which disappointed some, but was exactly what he needed to do, along with bringing the fight directly to McCain, as in, in McCain's face.

.... and the point is, how could anyone - esp. a party on the popular outs, but really anyone - compete with an event like that? St. Paul is just guaranteed to disappoint.

Instead, the main drama is 1) will Sarah Palin deliver a decent enough speech to not completely tank on a political level in the non-koolaid drinking public's eyes? and 2) will McCain make it through his acceptance speech without laughing that creepy little nervous laugh of his or uttering a patently insincere "my friends"... And really all of this is subsumed by Hurricane Sarah in any case, the ever-burgeoning pile of Palin data, from the frivolous to the silly to the scandalous to the slightly weird to the genuinely incriminating. Maybe McCain took a gamble that there would just be so MUCH stuff that people would just end up paying attention to none of it. Not kidding.

All the rest, all of the wholly predictable dittohead posturing at the convention, isn't going to register on anyone's radar, and why should it?