As the Democrats started their week of fervent (and sometimes desolate) hope, unfurling themselves for the fight of their lives, CBS anchorman Dan Rather called the Democratic Convention basically an infomercial while noting his employers decision to limit the broadcasts from Boston to a single hour per night. No compliment was intended.
Rather was right, of course righter than he might want to admit (on camera, at any rate), because he and his flimsy news enterprise are part of the reason why the parties produce must produce infomercials. But as right as he is, hes also unreflective. Pray tell, how else is a political party going to relay a story of what it thinks and feels, and what it is, or means to be, to a country that still despite all the encroachments from paramedia that I wrote about last week takes the bulk of its stories from a commercial entertainment box?
Its an awful colossal fact of our time that the stories that count most, the ones that might sweep up millions of listeners in their wake and move them to remake their world or disgrace it, are the ones that succeed in seeping through a commercial entertainment box that was not built, sold, or bought for quite so exalted a purpose.
Its another awful colossal fact that the right wing has been masterful at cranking out stories: turning its talking points into conventional wisdom that works its way around the Republican noise machine and bends the more respectable news agenda. This time, the line on Kerry has been in circulation for months: Kerry as flip-flopper. It has already become canonical, the way Al Gore as liar became the brand stamped into Gores forehead in 2000.
Never mind. The network executives who have taken (or better, been given) possession of the national airwaves decided that America didnt need much of the Democrats effort to produce their own story. In this floodlit, information-soaked, emotion-swept, sometimes connected and frequently dissociated society, the Democrats show was not of terribly great interest to the principal keepers and carriers of the national stories. For them there were more remunerative stories: Thursday, 29 July, the closing night of the convention, for example, CBS offered an hour of Big Brother 5 and ABC, an hour of Extreme Makeover.
The parties may need the networks, but the networks dont need the party conventions, because without devoting precious hours to them, the networks already swallow the lions share of the $1.3 billion that the parties will spend to rent space on the peoples airwaves. Since the networks have already run off with the bucks, they have no compunction about confining their coverage of the convention to one (1) hour per night. After all, the convention produces, in network terms, no news.
So the networks congratulated themselves for making their decision to skimp on the Democratic Convention, thus helping ensure that viewing would be down from 2000, although not so much as some headlines suggested.
No surprise, the Democrats Bostonfest like virtually every political event staged within recent memory was scripted for comfort, speed, and impression management: Keep the rage down, the energy up, the families warm, the base pumped, the unwelcome surprises scarce and not least, nowhere close to least, impress the not-yet-impressed.
Within their tight guidelines, the Democrats succeeded in producing a show close to their dreams not exactly muffling their discords but orchestrating something nearly harmonious out of them. The surprises were mainly happy: repeated, sometimes crashing, reminders that Democrats are patriots. To a decisive bloc of voters, this may come as news.
Bill Clinton gave one of the best speeches of his life, including a punch line much repeated in the subsequent reportage: Strength and wisdom are not opposing values. Chicagos biracial star Barack Obama, likely to become the Democrats first African-American Senator, catapulted himself into the partys top ranks with an appeal to American commonality.
But all of that and some other vivid amid many pallid moments turned out to be prelude. Here is a sentence I never thought I would write: John Kerrys acceptance speech was the most cogent, most stirring in memory.
Kerry was adult. There was, at times, joy in his eyes. His limbs were unusually limber. His smile seemed less forced than in recent appearances. He didnt just declare that he was a fighter, he sounded like one. Even his evident sweat under the hot lights testified that he was no longer the captive of his much-remarked aloofness.
For the Vietnam veterans who form his entourage a sort of spiritual bodyguard and those once antiwar and prowar alike who are moved by them, he offered a photogenic entry line complete with salute: Im John Kerry and Im reporting for duty. And later: We may be a little older, we may be a little grayer, but we still know how to fight for our country.
For 60s types, he had this: We believed we could change the world and were not finished. For complexity freaks, he said the world was not simple a heresy in George W. Bushs world. For those who want America to get on with the difficult task of leaving Iraq without leaving it to disaster, he offered a pledge to tell the truth. For the religious, he offered Ron Reagans thought that politicians should not make the fatal mistake of wearing their faith on their sleeves to gain political advantage, and if that was not enough, added Lincolns: My concern is not whether God is on our side; my great concern is to be on Gods side.
Kerry got his base up off its base. Last winter, he clinched the Democrats reason: their decision that he was their best chance of ousting Bush. Now, I think, he has clinched something else their affectionate loyalty.
