9:42 Mike Eruzione, captain of America’s Miracle on Ice hockey team, delivers a brief speech in which it becomes apparent that he (a) supports Mitt Romney for president, and (b) thinks athletes is pronounced with three syllables.
9:55 Welcome to the Obligatory Montage of Romney Home Videos, the part of the evening when millions of Americans realize that neither they nor their children have a hope of becoming president because they lack the required hours of endearing home-movie snippets that are Revealing of Character.
For instance, one of the things we’ve been told repeatedly this week is that Mitt Romney is frugal. It’s an appealing trait for a politician in a time of high deficits. But it turns out that what everybody’s actually been trying to say is: Mitt Romney is cheap as hell. Dude doesn’t even replace his stovetop light bulb with one of the correct size or wattage—he just jams in some random oversized bulb he’s already purchased.
A former work colleague of Romney declares: “If he can save 50 cents on paperclips, he’d drive a mile to do it.” I ask you: Is this what America really wants in a president? Listen, soldier, I know you need a pair of cutters to snip that wire and defuse this bomb that is about to obliterate this vibrant downtown area—but I tell you what, here, let’s save the American people the eight bucks and I’ll just gnaw at it with my teeth.
10:02 Suddenly, Clint Eastwood is at the microphone. There is wild applause. Eastwood squints and smiles: “Save a little for Mitt.” Delegates laugh. OH HOW THEY LAUGH. They begin to mentally praise the genius political operative who secured Eastwood’s participation because this is exactly the kind of star power the Romney campaign needs in order to break through and—um, hang on, what’s Clint doing? Is he talking to a chair? He’s not talking to a chair? Oh, that’s a relief. For a moment there I thought he was—ah, so he’s talking to Invisible Barack Obama, who is apparently sitting in the chair? I don’t think that’s better.
[Three minutes of increasingly awkward “laughter” later … ]
Well, sure, it’s a little unusual, I suppose. It’s a little unusual that it’s ten o’clock on the final night of the Republican National Convention and the party’s presidential nominee is poised to deliver the biggest speech of his life, and meanwhile a world-famous Hollywood celebrity is having a conversation with an invisible president. And sure, maybe it wouldn’t have hurt if Clint had worked from a script, or a few bullet points, or an idea that had progressed even a tiny bit beyond: Chair.
But it’s not like Eastwood is taking it too far or—um, hang on, did he just suggest that Invisibama had told him to go f— himself. He did? Oh, my. And did he actually just say: “Do you just … you know … I know … people were wondering … you don’t … handle that okay.” He did?
Oh, well, it’ll still be great to have Clint formally endorse Mitt and—um, what’s that? He’s not endorsing Mitt at all? In fact, to the contrary, he’s saying that all politicians are the same and “they’re just going to come around every few years and beg for votes?” Interesting. That’s interesting. [Gouges out own eyes to make the horror stop.]
(America can be so adorable sometimes. They regard their celebrities with such reverence that the Romney campaign—which was so obsessive about approving every word uttered by every speaker, and choreographing every image and moment—just went ahead and let an eighty-two-year-old man walk out onto the stage in prime time with an empty chair, no script and some grade-A bed-head. But speaking for myself, I realize I’ve got bigger problems to worry about: If invisible Obama is in Tampa, who’s watching my kids?)
10:17 Marco Rubio, the senator from Florida, arrives to introduce Mitt Romney. And you have to hand it to Rubio because he does it in a really interesting way. You know how usually the person who’s introducing the other person will talk about the person they’re introducing? Marco Rubio puts a bit of a fresh spin on that by instead speaking about the person who’s doing the introducing, that is, Marco Rubio. FYI, according to Marco Rubio, this Marco Rubio character is one hell of a guy. Also, by the way, Mitt Romney, everyone!
10:36 Mitt Romney enters and walks through the hall, shaking hands. By the time he reaches the stage, Clint Eastwood has wandered out into the parking lot and is exchanging life stories with a Hyundai.
Romney’s speech may be remembered for a number of different elements. It may be remembered for the candidate’s touching remembrance of his father’s love for his mother. It may be remembered for its largely negative tone, a jarring contrast after two hours of hearing about Mitt the Eternal Optimist. It may be remembered for dubious feel-good lines like “I have a plan to create twelve million jobs!” (Hint: it involves starting up three million boy bands.)
Many will remember it for a single line. It was a line that was crafted to help position Romney as the practical problem solver to Barack Obama’s hopey-changey dreamer. But it became something very different because of how delegates reacted to it.
Here’s how the line appeared in the text: “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.”
Here’s how it actually sounded: “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans [huge gales of laughter from Republican delegates, because massive, life-sustaining bodies of water are for pussies] and heal the planet [BWAHAHAHA. Suck it, science!].”
The Democratic National Convention
Charlotte, NC
September 2012
Day One
5:03 PM We’re thirty seconds in and there hasn’t been a single joke yet about an empty chair or an invisible president. DO YOU GUYS WANT TO WIN THIS ELECTION OR WHAT?
5:11 Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chair of the Democratic National Committee, promises that the next three days will be “the most open political convention in history.” So when Joe Biden takes the stage on Thursday night in a bathrobe, holding a vodka cooler and a bowl of keys, you can look back on this remark and think to yourself, “Well, in all fairness, they did warn me.”
5:35 It’s been bugging me and I couldn’t quite put my finger on it but I just realized what’s different about the Democratic convention: Black people—they have some.
5:50 Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, talks about the choice facing Americans: “We must choose forward!” You lose again, sideways.
5:54 My eleven-year-old boy sits down next to me. He watches for a couple of minutes. “Last week, Romney was great and Obama sucked. This week, Obama is great and Romney sucks.” He gives me a look that says “Sorry if I just blew your mind,” gets up and walks away.
7:01 Tim Kaine, former governor of Virginia, makes the evening’s first reference to President Obama “taking out bin Laden.” I’m not sure why, but Americans almost always put it that way: he “took out bin Laden.” And I know this says more about me and the way my brain works than it says about anything else, but whenever someone talks about the president “taking out bin Laden,” I find myself picturing, even for just a split second, the two of them going out on a date. Sometimes it’s dinner and a movie. Other times? A nice picnic in an alpine meadow. I guess what I’m saying is, I’d be grateful if in future everyone could just go with “We shot the dude in the face.”
7:03 Kaine also becomes the first speaker to reference “LGBT Americans.” This, of course, stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender Americans—or, as the acronym is known among Republicans, “that yogurt place.”
7:17 Nancy Pelosi comes out accompanied by a large group of “the Democratic women of the House.” She repeatedly refers to them this way: “the Democratic women of the House.” It sounds like a reality TV series or an upscale bordello—or better still in the minds of Bravo TV executives, both. By the way, it’s an interesting reflection of America’s disdain for Congress that the two senior Democratic legislators were given speaking slots that put them not in prime time but in the far-less-watched-except-by-my-G
randma domain of Wheel of Fortune. Then again, hiding your liabilities and making the best of a bad situation has a long tradition in American politics. For instance, organizers of the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta told nominee Michael Dukakis that the convention was in Tulsa.
7:21 The convention lets out a big cheer at the very mention of “birth control”—and another, even bigger one at talk of “choice.” Listen, I’m a fan and everything, but still: in a time of continuing economic not-goodness, it’s kind of weird how frequently tonight’s speeches have come back to the question of choice and the right of women to control their own baby-based decisions. And the tone is a little odd too. There’s so much clapping and hooting at every mention of the sanctity of women’s reproductive rights. These people make abortions sound awesome.
7:44 We are introduced to Joseph Kennedy III, yet another Kennedy who is pursuing public life by running for Congress. Say what you will about the decline of the American economy, the United States remains utterly without peer in the highly efficient production of political scions.
7:50 In a savvy and effective move, the Democrats show a video of the late Ted Kennedy mopping the floor with a young Mitt Romney in a debate during their 1994 battle to represent Massachusetts in the Senate. “I am pro-choice,” Kennedy says, then adds a dig that’s even more relevant today. “My opponent is multiple-choice.” Haha, Mitt—you just got schooled by a video ghost.
8:49 Governor Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island: “Should only the children of the wealthy have access to early education … and a college degree?” Wait, don’t tell me the answer: I KNOW THIS ONE.
8:58 Ted Strickland, former governor of Ohio, arrives with a clear message: “I. HAVE. COME. HERE. TONIGHT. TO. YELL. WORDS. AT. YOU.” Over the course of the next fifteen minutes, Gov. CAPS LOCK delivers the most aggressive attack on Mitt Romney that we’ll hear tonight. “The auto industry is standing today!! The middle class is standing today!! Ohio is standing today!! America is standing strong today!! Someone please turn me down!! I have become stuck at this absurd volume and unsustainable emotional pitch!! I can’t stop speaking this way!! I’m going to sound ridiculous when later tonight I order my dinner using this voice!! I’ll have the Porterhouse!! See what I mean?!!”
9:03 Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, who served as President Obama’s first chief of staff, swiftly assuages any worries that he may have lost or misplaced his ego en route: “There was no blueprint or how-to manual for preventing a global financial meltdown, an auto crisis, two wars and a great recession all at the same time. Believe me, if it existed, I would have found it.” Got that? He would have found it. And then he would have made Obama look good without taking any of the credit except for later when he took all of the credit.
9:33 Lilly Ledbetter, the woman for whom President Obama’s fair-pay legislation was named, gives a speech recounting her time as the manager at a tire plant in Alabama—and the realization that she was getting paid less than her male colleagues. Sassy and sharp-tongued, she gets off the line of the night at Mitt Romney: “Twenty-three cents an hour might not seem like much to a guy with a Swiss bank account …” There’s been a lot of talk about Mitt’s Swiss bank accounts this evening. This is because Swiss bank accounts sound inherently sinister and for only the fancy-panted, just like Cayman Islands tax shelters and Belgian waffles.
9:46 Deval Patrick, governor of Massachusetts, declares this “the election of a lifetime”—making it the eleventh election of a lifetime of my lifetime. He goes on to deliver a big ol’ super-sweaty speech. Delegates are so into it that it takes them a moment to realize that he’s actually started to scold them.
Patrick: It’s time for Democrats to grow a backbone and stand up for what we believe!
Delegates: Wooooo-hooooo! Woooo— Wait, what?”
10:12 San Antonio mayor Julian Castro begins his address by talking about the great adversity he’s faced, such as (a) growing up poor, and (b) being forced to walk onstage to a Black Eyed Peas song just now.
10:39 Greeted with rapturous applause, Michelle Obama delivers what pretty much everyone acknowledges to be a masterful speech—though one that presents a unique challenge to fact-checkers. “Today, I love my husband even more than I did four years ago,” she says. Hmm, sounds like typical Washington hyperbole—let’s see you prove it by making out in front of us a little.
So the First Lady was terrific and everything, though perhaps we could have done with an abbreviated version of the We Were Poor section of her remarks, which seemed to last about ten minutes and existed entirely to remind people that Mitt Romney wasn’t. Among the revelations: Barack Obama’s “prized possession” as a university student was “a coffee table he found in a dumpster!” He wore his shoes a half size too small because he couldn’t afford new ones! The mean old man said no when l’il Barack came forward with his bowl and asked for a second helping of gruel!
But then, that’s American political oratory, isn’t it? You don’t get a prime-time slot on the big stage if you’re not willing to Give Something of Yourself; if you’re not willing to use your humble past to advance your ambitious future. And you do have to have a humble past—or the gall to appropriate one. You need those dark moments, that whiff of despair and those working-class roots—with at least one relative who worked three jobs or three relatives who worked one very hard job (preferably a miner; a mill worker will suffice in a pinch).
Day Three
Before Barack Obama came out to accept the I Killed Osama bin Laden Lifetime Achievement Award (and also, apparently, his party’s nomination for the US presidency), they let Joe Biden speak for some reason.
Using direct quotations from Biden’s speech, I have prepared—for the sake of generations to come—a detailed brief compiling Joe Biden’s eleven critical lessons for those who are called on to serve as vice-president of the United States.
Quote: “I see [the president] every day.”
Lesson: When the president enters your field of perception, he will be visible to you.
Quote: “I walk thirty paces down the hall into the Oval Office and I see him.”
Lesson: You work in the same building as the president.
Quote: “I watch him in action.”
Lesson: When the president does things, you sometimes get to see him do those things.
Quote: “I watched him stand up to intense pressure and stare down enormous challenges.”
Lesson: Again—he’s there, you’re there. You’re bound to see some things happen when they happen. So prepare yourself for that.
Quote: “I got to see first-hand what drove this man.”
Lesson: You’ll not only see him. You’ll see things about him.
Quote: “Folks, I’ve watched him.”
Lesson: You’ll watch him. The president, that is.
Quote: “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m here to tell you … I watch it up close.”
Lesson: Hey, at this point, I’m thinking that instead of just sitting there and watching and looking and seeing, maybe you could go grab the guy a Coke or something? Make yourself useful.
Quote: “So we sat hour after hour in the Oval Office.”
Lesson: Or maybe a sandwich. I bet he’s hungry.
Quote: “We sat, hour after hour.”
Lesson: Listen, someone needs to tell you this, Joe, and apparently Barack is too polite. It’s time to go back to your office. Or go home. You don’t always have to be hanging around the president, okay? And for the love of God, get your feet off the coffee table.
Quote: “Day after day, night after night, I sat beside him as he made one gutsy decision after the other.”
Lesson: Joe Biden is a stalker.
The Debates
Barack Obama’s performance in the first US presidential debate was bad—and it only got worse in the days that followed. Pu
ndits kept one-upping each other in describing just how detached he had been. The president was lethargic! He was invisible! He wasn’t just aloof—he was theloof!
They weren’t exaggerating: Obama’s interventions in the first debate featured more ums than the periodic table. In the days leading up to this week’s second debate, the president’s surrogates promised a more vigorous, more aggressive Obama. A few made it sound as though Mitt Romney would basically be facing off against a giant green rage monster and his terse campaign slogan: Hope Smash!
So it was a bit of a letdown when the president declined to begin Tuesday’s debate by striding across the stage and ripping off Romney’s arms. Instead, it was the standard fake-friendly handshake and we were ready to go.
This was a town-hall debate, and those are the worst because they oblige politicians to feign not only interest in but also empathy for the struggles of average people. This fools no one: one handshake in 1992 and twenty years later George H.W. Bush is still trying to get the smell of mill worker off him. Worse yet, the candidates have to try to remember everyone’s name. Was it Lorraine? Lori? Gloria? Oh, it was Dave. Sorry, Dave.
The format was especially tough on Romney, who struggled to find common ground with the average folk. One can only imagine debate prep in the Romney camp:
Aide: Governor, what’s the price of a gallon of milk?
Romney: $8,000?
Aide: Well, we’re getting closer.
Obama was so plainly determined to come across as spirited that the normally staid town-hall format led within twenty minutes to the two candidates standing toe to toe and on the verge of a fist fight over, of all things, whether the amount of oil being extracted on public lands has decreased by 14 percent. If you missed it, here’s essentially how it went down:
The Future and Why We Should Avoid It Page 21
