Collision 2012: Obama vs. Romney and the Future of Elections in America

by Balz, Dan

  • • •

  Chris Christie had been working on his keynote address for weeks. He had looked at past keynotes to gauge how much they focused on the party’s nominee, how stridently they attacked the opponent, how much they were general tone setters for the campaign. He had gone through sixteen drafts by his count, and worked to keep the speech within the time limits imposed by the campaign. He had sent it to Russ Schriefer, who was Christie’s media adviser in the 2009 campaign. Schriefer liked what he read, Christie said. His one piece of advice was to slow down the delivery. “He said, ‘Not everybody in the convention hall speaks Jersey,’” Christie said.

  Christie watched most of Ann Romney’s speech from the green room backstage but was moved into a hallway closer to the stage as she was finishing. The program was running long at that point, and the director was worried that the keynote might run past 11 p.m., which was when the networks were scheduled to end their prime-time coverage. As Christie waited, a member of the production team told him that because of time constraints the director was going to cut a three-minute Christie video that had been prepared as an introduction. You’re not cutting the video, Christie told her. He was insistent. He thought the video set up the speech. She relayed Christie’s concerns to the director, who said there was no way it could run. Christie told her to ask the director if he had ever heard anyone say “fuck” on live television, because that’s what he was about to do if the video didn’t run. About this time, Romney, on his way to greet his wife, stopped to say hello. Are you going to kill tonight? he asked. Christie assured him that he intended to. As Christie listened to the ovation for Romney, he was told to start walking up the stairs to the side stage for his speech. Christie again said that if the video wasn’t shown, he wasn’t going to deliver the speech. There were more sharp words between Christie and the director. Someone called Schriefer. “I said, ‘Play the video, run it,’” Schriefer said. The director finally relented and allowed the video to be shown. Christie, irritated, assured him that he would finish by 11 p.m. no matter what.

  With that he bounded onto the stage and gave fist pumps to the audience. If the delegates expected a withering attack on President Obama, they didn’t get it. If the audience expected him to spend most of his time extolling Mitt Romney’s attributes, they were probably surprised that he didn’t. Christie’s speech was neither a paean to the nominee nor a shredding of the president. He was critical of the president, but not as harsh as he had been in other speeches. Of Romney, he said the Republican nominee would deliver hard truths to the American people to end the torrent of debt and to do what was necessary to fix the economy. He talked much more about New Jersey and the record he had compiled, his battles with teachers’ unions, his work with the Democratic legislature. His money line about the president and Romney was this: “We ended an era of absentee leadership without purpose or principle in New Jersey. It’s time to end this era of absentee leadership in the Oval Office and send real leaders to the White House.” Christie, keeping note of the time and speaking through applause lines, finished at 10:59 p.m. He walked off the stage and offered one last retort to the director. “Ten fifty-nine,” he said, as he spit out one last expletive.

  The immediate response to the speech inside the Romney campaign was positive. Overnight reviews were far less so. Christie drew criticism for talking more about himself and less about Romney, though Barack Obama had done the same in his celebrated keynote speech at John Kerry’s convention in 2004. Christie couldn’t understand it. “I was really surprised by it and bothered by it initially because it shakes your confidence,” said the man who never seems to lack that attribute.

  • • •

  On Wednesday night, Paul Ryan delivered his acceptance speech. It was notable for two things: some sharply written lines about the president—“College graduates should not have to live out their twenties in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get on with life”—and controversy that erupted afterward about how he had stretched the truth in describing the shutdown of a GM plant in his hometown and Obama’s role in it. Inside the hall especially, his speech was enthusiastically received. But the first two nights still left much to be done with Thursday’s program.

  Schriefer had packed the final night’s schedule—testimonials about Romney from people in his church and from Olympic athletes, a candidate video, an introduction by Marco Rubio, the candidate’s acceptance speech, and an unannounced surprise speaker that kept the hall buzzing in the early hours of the evening. Long before the networks were scheduled to start their coverage, an elderly couple appeared onstage. Ted and Pat Oparowski seemed nervous at first, not surprising given the magnitude of the moment, but their appearance quickly became the emotional high point of the week. They told the story of their son, David, who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 1979. At the time, they lived in Medford, Massachusetts, and knew Romney through the church. Romney befriended David. He visited him regularly. He learned that David liked fireworks, so he bought some and took the boy to a beach in Maine and set them off. David had a few possessions and he asked Romney to help write his will. Romney returned one day with a yellow legal pad and helped draft it. When David died, Romney delivered the eulogy at the funeral. “You cannot measure a man’s character based on words he utters before adoring crowds during happy times,” Ted Oparowski said. “The true measure of a man is revealed in his actions during times of trouble. The quiet hospital room of a dying boy, with no cameras and no reporters—this is the time to make an assessment.”

  Pam Finlayson followed the Oparowskis. Her daughter had been born prematurely and had a brain hemorrhage in the first days of her life. Romney came to the hospital to pray with Finlayson. “I will never forget that when he looked down tenderly at my daughter, his eyes filled with tears, and he reached out gently and stroked her tiny back,” she told the delegates. “I could tell immediately that he didn’t just see a tangle of plastic and tubes; he saw our beautiful little girl, and he was clearly overcome with compassion for her.” Finlayson’s daughter went on to live until she was twenty-six. When she died, Romney reached out once again to comfort the family, she said. “When the world looks at Mitt Romney, they see him as the founder of a successful business, the leader of the Olympics, or a governor,” she said. “When I see Mitt, I know him to be a loving father, man of faith, and caring and compassionate friend.” The two testimonials brought tears to the eyes of many in the arena that night—and raised two questions: Why hadn’t the campaign done more with these stories earlier, and why was neither scheduled for prime time that evening?

  The biographical video of Romney was beautifully produced and, in its own way, another powerful validator of the candidate that ran counter to the public image. But it too was another lost opportunity because it was not shown in prime time. Romney advisers said later that network officials had told them they would not run the video even if it were shown in prime time. Obama advisers said they were told the same thing before their convention and ignored the warnings. The networks carried Obama’s. Romney’s was seen only in the hall and among some people watching on cable.

  The prime-time hour opened with the unannounced surprise speaker: Clint Eastwood. The appearance of the award-winning actor and director was a major coup for the campaign. During the Super Bowl earlier in the year, Eastwood had appeared in a commercial for Chrysler called “Halftime,” which touted the American spirit and said the country was poised for a comeback. Some Republicans saw it as a thinly disguised ad for Obama’s reelection. Eastwood now had the chance to set the record straight in front of millions of people. Just before going onstage, Eastwood asked one of the stagehands to put a chair next to him at the lectern. Schriefer noticed the chair. That’s weird, he thought. The actor got a huge ovation when he appeared, and the first minutes went about as expected. He talked about the excitement in the country the night of Obama’s el
ection, and the problems of the day—twenty-three million unemployed, underemployed, or not looking for work. Wasn’t it time, he asked, for someone else to take over? Then he began to wander off. He earlier had pointed to the chair—“So I’ve got Mr. Obama here”—and suddenly began talking to the chair as if Obama were sitting there. He looked quizzically at the chair. “What do you mean, shut up?” he asked. Minutes later he paused again. “What? What do you want me to tell Romney?” he said. “I can’t tell him to do that. He can’t do that to himself. You’re absolutely crazy. You’re getting as bad as Biden.”

  The audience was cheering and laughing as the performance continued, but in the Romney box there was considerable discomfort. Eric Fehrnstrom was seated with campaign manager Matt Rhoades and traveling spokesman Kevin Madden. What the hell? Is this on the teleprompter? he wondered. Stuart Stevens, watching in another room in the hall, was literally sickened. He walked out of the room and threw up. Schriefer was just as dismayed as everyone else. He had helped to recruit Eastwood and was confident he knew what the actor was going to say. Eastwood had appeared at two fund-raising events for Romney during the summer and was funny and self-deprecating. Someone suggested that the campaign try to get him to speak at the convention, and when he expressed willingness, Schriefer slotted him for Wednesday night. But when the schedule was redone because of the hurricane, Schriefer moved him to Thursday. That afternoon, Schriefer, Stevens, and Spencer Zwick visited Eastwood in his hotel suite. All seemed well. He tried out some lines: “My friend George Clooney says he likes hanging out with the president. I like hanging out with the next president.” When the trio of Romney advisers left they were confident that he would be a big hit. Schriefer visited him again backstage before he was due to go on. He said he just wanted to make sure everyone was clear about what would happen. Eastwood would have five to seven minutes. They were looking for a repeat of what he had done at the fund-raiser. “Yep,” Eastwood replied. Eastwood rambled on for almost twelve minutes—an eternity in convention time. His performance was embarrassing enough to draw a comment from Ann Romney the next morning on CBS This Morning. “He’s a unique guy and he did a unique thing last night,” she said, trying to be as positive as possible. Charlie Rose noted that when the cameras caught her expression while Eastwood was talking, she looked surprised. Ann Romney smiled and chuckled nervously. “I didn’t know it was coming,” she said. Eastwood’s performance was as bizarre a moment at a convention as anyone could remember. No wonder they are so tightly scripted.

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  Romney’s acceptance speech was the product of a chaotic process and one that revealed much about the candidate. Romney was an English major in college and prided himself on his ability to write his own material. For a speechwriter, Stevens had said more than once, Romney was a tough date. Romney rejected one draft written by Pete Wehner, who had been a Bush administration official and was a gifted writer himself, and set aside another draft written by two former Bush White House speechwriters, Matthew Scully and John McConnell. With some input from Stevens, Romney largely wrote the speech himself, which was his way. He spoke of the hopes that had accompanied Obama into office and the disappointment that now surrounded the president. “But today, four years from the excitement of the last election, for the first time, the majority of Americans now doubt that our children will have a better future,” he said. “It is not what we were promised.” At times he mocked the president. “President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet,” he said. “My promise is to help you and your family.” He talked about himself and his religion, something he rarely did. He talked about America and community. And then he turned back to the present and the state of the country and the president. “You know there’s something wrong with the kind of job he’s done as president when the best feeling you had was the day you voted for him. The president hasn’t disappointed you because he wanted to. The president has disappointed America because he hasn’t led America in the right direction.”

  To the chagrin of Romney’s advisers, the morning-after commentary focused more on Clint Eastwood than on the nominee’s speech. But Republicans left Tampa more energized than when they had arrived. Schriefer assessed the week this way: “I think we got the three things that we had hoped to get out of it. We were able to work on defining Romney. I think we were able to talk about what it is that we wanted to do. And I think that we were able to have some sort of an indictment against Barack Obama. Those were our three goals. And I think we did those.”

  • • •

  Charlotte started to welcome the Democrats the day after Republicans finished in Tampa. The choice of North Carolina spoke volumes about the Obama team. Obama had carried North Carolina by just fourteen thousand votes in 2008. Nobody believed he could do it again. But Obama’s team had special affection for the state and what it represented. They saw it as prototypical of the coalition that he had attracted in his first campaign and that, if they did their organizing properly, could be reassembled in 2012. Obama’s advisers had big plans for Charlotte, including a final-night rally at Bank of America Stadium, where the Carolina Panthers played football. It was to be a repeat of their outdoor extravaganza in Denver four years earlier and a major opportunity for organizing. But they were also looking for ways to revamp the traditional approach to conventions. Much earlier they had decided to convert what was to have been a four-night program into three, turning Labor Day into a day of service and picnicking while shifting opening night to Tuesday. The concept for Charlotte would be different from past conventions. Rather than devote each night to a single theme or topic—foreign policy one night, domestic policy another—the Obama team wanted to pound the same multiple messages over and over at each night’s session. Every night would include talk about the economy, about Romney, about women’s issues, about Hispanics, about gay rights. Obama still needed more enthusiasm among his base, and Charlotte provided the opportunity to accomplish that, if speaker after speaker hit those themes each night.

  The team that led the convention planning consisted of Jim Margolis, Erik Smith, and Joel Benenson. They drew up the program with a strict eye on what television would or would not cover and also on how best to keep the energy level in the arena as high as possible at all times. They studied what the TV networks had covered at the Denver convention. They produced a huge color-coded spreadsheet that went day by day, speaker by speaker, network by network. They calculated how much time the networks devoted to speeches from the podium and how much of their coverage consisted of commentary and analysis. They looked for new ways to inject the stories of ordinary people into the convention and the coverage. They interspersed short videos into the program to help quicken the pace. But they knew, as did everyone else, that their convention would rise or fall on three speeches: Obama’s acceptance, which would cap the convention week; Michelle Obama’s testimonial, which would open the week; and Bill Clinton’s exegesis on Obama and the economy, which would come on the middle night of the convention.

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  There was no way to replicate Denver. That convention was historic, marking the formal nomination of the first African American for the presidency of the United States. Obama’s team knew that Charlotte could not produce that kind of excitement or anticipation. What the Democrats could not afford were signs of disappointment or letdown. Obama’s team knew that any slackening of enthusiasm would be magnified many times over by the media horde assembled in the convention city. But if that was a worry, it was quickly eclipsed by opening night. The convention floor in the Time Warner Cable Arena was gridlocked, packed with people and pulsing with energy. The early evening program included a video tribute to the late senator Edward M. Kennedy that suddenly morphed into an anti-Romney ad, featuring footage from the Kennedy-Romney debate in 1994 in which Kennedy demolished his challenger. Former Ohio governor Ted Strickland, swept out of office by the Republican tsunami two years into Obama’s pre
sidency, gave a full-throated attack on Romney for hiding his tax returns and putting his money in overseas accounts. “Mitt Romney has so little economic patriotism that even his money needs a passport,” he said. Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick went after Romney’s record as governor. Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s first White House chief of staff and now mayor of Chicago, defended Obama’s record.

  All that was table setting for the two main speakers of the night: San Antonio mayor Julian Castro and Michelle Obama. Castro and his identical twin brother, Joaquin, were born and raised in San Antonio. Their mother was a political activist in the Hispanic community and helped found La Raza Unida. He and his brother were both achievers: Stanford for undergrad (where they were elected to the student senate, tying with the highest number of votes), Harvard Law School, and then politics. Julian was elected to the city council a year after he finished law school. After losing a race for mayor in 2005, he was elected in 2009. Two years later he won reelection with 83 percent of the vote. Castro was little known nationally when he was chosen to deliver the keynote address; he exceeded all expectations. “Mitt Romney, quite simply, doesn’t get it,” he said. “A few months ago he visited a university in Ohio and gave the students there a little entrepreneurial advice. ‘Start a business,’ he said. But how? ‘Borrow money if you have to from your parents,’ he told them.” Castro paused for effect. “Gee,” he said with just the right tone of amazement, “why didn’t I think of that?” The convention arena erupted in cheers and laughter.