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Obama's Acceptance Speech Hit Some High Notes, but His Themes Won't Hold Up
Tweet Share on Facebook August 29, 2008 Comment (110)Like Joseph P. Kennedy, who did not stay in Los Angeles to see his son deliver his acceptance speech in the Los Angeles Coliseum—the last time a Democratic nominee did so in a stadium (for a good account of that, see this excellent story in USA Today)—I decided to watch the speech on television rather than in the stadium.
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Palin Will Be Welcomed by Social and Economic Conservatives
Tweet Share on Facebook August 29, 2008 Comment (227)John McCain has chosen Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential candidate. This obviously undercuts his theme of experience, just as Barack Obama's choice of Joe Biden undercut, at least marginally, his theme of change. Palin is just in her second year as governor; she was formerly mayor of Wasilla, a fast-growing town in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley.
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Lewis is a Connection to King's 'I Have a Dream' Speech
Tweet Share on Facebook August 28, 2008 Comment (4)Updated on 8/28/08 at 9:40
DENVER— After a musical interlude, the crowd fell silent just before 5pm MDT when Congressman John Lewis started speaking. Lewis began by saying that he was present 45 years ago to the day when Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech at the Lincoln Memorial at the end of the 1963 March on Washington. His presence connects us all to that history, and even those of us in the press corps have been listening pretty intently. The thought occurred to me that very few others of the 20,000 or so people here—Invesco Field is just starting to fill up—were at that place. Very few elected officials or politicians participated in the March on Washington. President Kennedy was conspicuously away from Washington that weekend. Only a handful of members of Congress attended. George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO, did not attend; Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers did. Forty-five years have passed, and probably half of the people who participated in the March are no longer alive. Today it is unthinkable not to celebrate a March that almost no one prominent in public life wished to be associated with back then.
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Bill Clinton a Little Slippery on Whether Obama Is Ready to Be Commander-in-Chief
Tweet Share on Facebook August 28, 2008 Comment (14)The 42nd president of the United States spoke to the 46th Democratic National Convention for 20 minutes last night, 10 minutes more than his allotted time. But did anyone expect Bill Clinton to conclude on time? And did anyone in the crowd, even those few in the press corps firmly opposed to the Democrats, want it to end more than a minute or two earlier (as they wanted his 1988 nominating speech for Michael Dukakis to end 20 minutes earlier)? Bill Clinton was obviously having glorious fun in the spotlight for his sixth Democratic National Convention. And, more than Hillary Clinton in her speech the night before, he did the job that the Obamaites wanted the Clintons to do. Even so, when you examine his exuberant speech and try to scoop up the substance, you end up (mostly) with quicksilver.
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Biden's Speech Was Pretty Standard and Uninspiring
Tweet Share on Facebook August 28, 2008 Comment (13)At 8:18 p.m. MDT, by my watch, the Democratic National Convention nominated Joseph R. Biden Jr. as its vice presidential candidate. Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that Biden had accepted the nomination, had been asked to give an acceptance speech, and had agreed to do so: an observation of the formal rules of the convention, which are based on the rules of the House of Representatives, which I am told are the most complex parliamentary rules in the world.
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T. Boone Pickens Plugs His Energy Plan at the Democratic Convention
Tweet Share on Facebook August 27, 2008 Comment (26)One of the pleasures of covering a national convention is that you run into all sorts of interesting people, some of them not politicians, and you can ask them anything you want. I remember at the 1988 Democratic National Convention running into a man who was on the Forbes 400. I asked him what he was doing there; he wasn't even a Democrat. "Oh," he said, "I just take a suite at the Ritz Carlton and meet with people from around the country. It's amazing how many important people are here."
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Convention Observations: McGovern, Danny Diaz, Carville, and the Food Stand Guy
Tweet Share on Facebook August 27, 2008 Comment (7)Corrected on 8/27/08 at 5:56 p.m.: An earlier version of this article incorrectly identified Roger Friedman. He was helping George McGovern get through security at the convention.
Updated on 8/27/08 at 3:45 p.m.
DENVER–Joseph Cari, one of Tony Rezko's accomplices, self-admitted in 2005, was Biden's Midwest field director and has been a friend for 30 years. I'm not surprised that Biden has Chicago connections; I remember being at an Adell, Dallas County, Iowa, Biden event in the spring of 1987, and accompanying him was Bill Daley.
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Hillary Clinton's Speech Was a Good Start on Her 2012 Run
Tweet Share on Facebook August 27, 2008 Comment (111)DENVER–My bottom line reaction to Hillary Clinton's speech Tuesday night: Good, but not quite very good, for Barack Obama in 2008. Even better, if things should turn out like they might, for Hillary Clinton in 2012.
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The Edgiest Democratic Convention Since 1988
Tweet Share on Facebook August 26, 2008 Comment (15)DENVER—This seems to me the edgiest Democratic National Convention since 1988. Then those running the convention were worried about what Jesse Jackson would do. Now those running the convention are worried, not so much about what Hillary Clinton will do—she will deliver a rousing call for electing Barack Obama—but what some of her followers will do, and about what Bill Clinton will do. The Obama campaign people are adjusting to the fact that Obama enters the convention not well ahead of John McCain, but only barely ahead or even; and that he enters a convention where a sizeable number of Clinton supporters—more than I predicted in early June—are unreconciled to his victory. I've already written about how the Obama campaign's decision to stage the acceptance speech in the Invesco Field outdoor stadium was pushed by the fact that the alternative was to speak in a small hall in which nearly half the delegates were elected to support Clinton.
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Solve Our Problems McCain and Obama, Say Two Focus Groups
Tweet Share on Facebook August 26, 2008 Comment (4)DENVER—I attended two focus groups, one Sunday afternoon conducted by Frank Luntz for AARP and one conducted Monday morning for the Annenberg Center for Public Policy by my former (1974-81) boss Peter Hart.
