I Can’t Believe I Watched the Whole Thing

And so the task of broadcasting political conventions from the first blow of the gavel to the last has fallen to C-SPAN, which alone treats them as events worthy of a citizen’s attention. You can debate the premise but you can’t argue with the result. The result is full of wonders. Last month I tried watching the Democratic convention on C-SPAN, off and on, and it offered a much more rewarding experience than watching the all-news cable channels. You never have to look at Chris Matthews, for one thing, or Keith Olbermann, for that matter, or Bill O’Reilly, come to think of it, or Sean Hannity, or Paul Begala . . . honest, I could go on and on. I did miss that nice Alan Colmes, though.

I stuck to C-SPAN last week, starting Monday night, and unlike those unlucky people who tuned in to FNC or CNN or MSNBC in hopes of watching the convention, I actually got to watch the convention.

MONDAY 7:30: Except I was late. By the time I settled before the TV with the instruments of my craft–notebook, two pens (one red, one blue), malt liquor–the evening session was well underway, and here I am watching my first speech, given by Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the House and the second- or third-most powerful man in government. He displays the same personal magnetism that has made his name familiar to fully 13 percent of the American people. He says he wants to describe “the right vision for America. It is the Lincoln vision, it is the Reagan vision, and it is the American vision,” but–wouldn’t you know it–he’s squinting. Hastert is a very big Speaker, and though I don’t know him personally this is obviously a fellow who is refusing to level with himself when he stands at the rack at Today’s Man. From the beltline upwards it looks as though he’s stuffed his coat with Beanie Babies. He looks like a shoplifter at a novelty shop.

Suddenly he stops speaking and turns from the podium. The speech is over. No one seems to notice.

Then, for the longest time, nothing happens. If you’ve ever attended a pro basketball game you’ll know the feeling: Play suddenly stops, though there’s no penalty or injury on the court, and everybody just stands around for two or three minutes. It’s a “broadcast time out,” required not by the pace or rules of the game but by the demands of commercial TV. Then, just as mysteriously, the game resumes.

Something similar happens several times an hour during the C-SPAN coverage. I don’t know why. Commentators always say conventions are “tightly scripted,” but on C-SPAN they seem pretty baggily scripted. When the networks tune in, the schedules tighten up, I’m sure. Otherwise, in the early hours of the evening, there are endless longueurs. People mill about or doze in their seats. A band opposite the stage plays disco music, inexplicably and not well. The C-SPAN cameras scan the delegates, pausing on those unfortunate Republicans who have chosen to do the Hustle. I doodle in my notebook.

I’m glad not to be watching the cable channels during such doldrums. Otherwise I would have to listen to commentary. Today the commentators are chewing over the most recent curious remark from President Bush, uncorked just this morning. The war against terror, he told the Today show, is not something we can “win.” Good thing they don’t let the president write his own speeches: “We will not tire, we will not waver, we will not falter, and we will not win!”

7:45: Dick Cheney arrives to take his seat in Madison Square Garden, wife and extremely cute grandchildren in tow. As he moves down the aisles toward his box, men extend their arms toward him and lower their heads and round their shoulders, as they always will when placed in the presence of the Alpha male. And Cheney’s just the Beta male. When Bush shows up Thursday night these guys may melt into the floor.

8:00: The screen fills with a video honoring Gerald Ford. At 91, Ford is the grand old man of the Republican party and, as one of the most modest and decent men ever to assume the presidency, deserving of universal respect. The tribute lasts 90 seconds–roughly half as long as his term in office.

8:30: For reasons that aren’t clear, the lights have dimmed and a band called Dexter Freebish is playing. I am told, by people who have cultivated a taste in contemporary rock-hiphop-garage-ska-jangle-gothic-industrial-surf-progressive-electroclash pop music, that this band is terrible, a wash-out–which makes their appearance here yet another failed attempt by clueless Republicans to look hip, in the time-honored tradition. I wouldn’t know myself. The band sounds indistinguishable from a dozen others I’ve seen heaped with praise over the last 10 years and, paralyzed by fuddy-duddyism, I refuse to pretend I can any longer tell why one new band is supposed to be better than another. I have come to feel the way my father must have felt in 1965, when he couldn’t tell the difference between the Beatles, who were brilliant, and the Dave Clark Five, who weren’t, on the grounds that they all played electric guitars, wore pointy boots, and needed haircuts.

Watching the members of Dexter Freebish strutting and windmilling on the cluttered stage, however, I did get nostalgic for the days when the Republican clumsiness in matters of pop culture was much more transparent and unambiguous. Used to be, when professional Republicans wanted to appeal to “the kids,” Herb Klein or some old Nixon hand would call up a Broadway producer friend, who’d hire the Cowsills or Debby Boone or Up with People, and these “youth acts” would gleam and grin their way across the stage while the kids in the audience listened politely and Herb and the other oldsters looked on approvingly, perhaps even snapping a finger now and then and remarking to one another that, hey, this rock music isn’t all that bad, is it? The cluelessness was kind of pathetic, but there was a dignity to it–or rather, it presumed a kind of dignity on the part of the oldsters who were trying to pander but weren’t quite pulling it off. It presumed that there was some separate “youth culture” that the adults didn’t belong to and didn’t really want to belong to, having better things to do. Now, of course, the youth culture is the culture.

9:20: The actor Ron Silver performs a speech in support of President Bush. Silver is an excellent actor, and the speech is sharp as a Ginsu knife, but Silver is, as he modestly calls himself, “a well-recognized liberal,” and there are moments when he betrays an unmistakable uneasiness with the company his hawkish principles have now forced him to keep. Halfway through the speech Silver suddenly yells, “The president is doing exactly the right thing,” and the crowd takes up the chant “Four More Years!” Silver seems briefly thrown. He’s old enough to remember the early ’70s, when this same chant was most famously deployed for the reelection of, gulp, Richard Nixon. Silver looks out wonderingly, and his eyes widen at the thought: “Oh my God: I’m surrounded by Republicans.” And then the realization: “Oh my God: I’m one of them!”

He is, too. He’ll get used to it.

9:30: More disco. Lots of disco. Even the C-SPAN cameramen are bored. We’re only a few hours into the convention and already they’ve run out of pretty girls and guys in weird hats to zoom in on. I break my own rule and switch to other channels. Larry King is interviewing Andy Card.

“Andy, people say this is the most mean-spirited campaign in memory . . .”

“Actually Larry, I think in terms of mean-spirited the worst were in the late 1800s.”

“That’s right,” says Larry. “Tippecanoe and Tyler, too.”

On the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, two of the political analysts are . . . disagreeing. Is that allowed? One of them says that “John McCain cultivates the media.” The other responds, “I don’t think John McCain cultivates the media.”

Truly, America is a divided nation.

10:15: John McCain’s closest adviser, a man named Mark Salter, is coincidentally the best speechwriter in the country, so it’s no surprise that McCain’s speech is beautifully written, a subtle blend of argument and exhortation. “What our enemies have sought to destroy is beyond their reach. It cannot be taken from us. It can only be surrendered.”

But McCain is followed by Rudy Giuliani, and though Giuliani’s themes are the same as McCain’s his speech doesn’t seem written at all, but improvised, a randomly integrated collection of rhetorical modules. This isn’t a surprise, either. Since leaving the mayor’s office, Giuliani has become a motivational speaker and itinerant celebrity-for-hire. He can make as much as $100,000 for a one-hour speech–which comes to about $20 per spoken word, if I reckon right.

He was giving this speech for free, of course, and he was intending to be generous, lavish even, for he spoke far beyond his allotted time. By the time he finished, its market value was easily $150,000. Boiled down to half its weight it could have been a good speech. There were no interesting or arresting turns of phrase, but many anecdotes, told anecdotally and starring the mayor himself, who was obviously enjoying himself. What self-regard the man has, what a titanic presumption of his own charm! It was difficult to gauge the crowd reaction through C-SPAN, but seeing him deliver the speech on screen–15, 20, 25 minutes–was like watching a solo love-in. In one of the speech’s many climaxes, he imitated a construction worker giving a bear hug to President Bush. Giuliani wrapped his arms around himself. He swayed to and fro. And he held on just a moment or two too long. I started to think that maybe everybody should just tip-toe out of the convention hall and leave the former mayor alone with the man he loves.

All the New York Republicans I know promise they will vote for Giuliani when he runs for president in four years. Their reasoning seems to be that Giuliani deserves the presidency because, as mayor, he cleaned up their neighborhoods, replanted Central Park, and made it safe to walk to their favorite restaurants–a suitably provincial rationale for the residents of the most provincial city in the world, in service of its most self-indulgent celebrity.

In Arlington County, Virginia, where I live, we have a fantastic county manager. Maybe she could be vice president.

TUESDAY 7:25: The Republican convention is in session for four hours each night, but it’s increasingly clear that the Republicans do not have four hours of speakers worth listening to each night. Hence the disco music. Hence the longueurs. Hence this: Every 15 minutes or so, the big screen at the podium suddenly fills with the face of a woman pretending to be a TV news reporter conducting an interview. There are several of these women, all of them apparently employed by the Republican National Committee. They are identified as “convention jockeys,” which is a nice way of saying they are aspiring TV news Twinkies–Deborah Norvilles-in-training. The Republican party is a party of dreamers.

But their effect is disorienting. The offstage emcee will suddenly announce: “Let’s go to [Twinkie name] in the [some state] delegation.” And then the Twinkie, following a script, pretends to interview a delegate. The questions I’ve heard so far are: “How does it feel to be in New York City?” “Are you looking forward to Governor Schwarzenegger’s speech tonight?” and “Tell us about your favorite experience at the convention.”

Forty years ago, the historian Daniel Boorstin coined the term “pseudo-event” to describe what was then a relatively new social phenomenon: happenings that had no intrinsic significance but were staged for the sole purpose of generating news coverage–press conferences, for example, or awards ceremonies. Political conventions degenerated into pseudo-events a generation ago. But a pseudo-event requires news coverage, and as the news coverage has dried up, convention planners have had to invent their own pseudo-coverage, such as these make-believe interviews. The modern pseudo-event now mimics the press coverage of a pseudo-event. The Republican convention, in other words, is a pseudo-pseudo-event.

It’s enough to make your head hurt. I’m wondering if there’s any more Colt 45 in the fridge.

8:10: In a lovely coincidence, just as this pseudo-revelation dawns on me, Elizabeth Dole takes the stage. She is, as always, wreathed in smiles. She says: “Folks, this time I promise to stay behind the podium,” and dismal memories come flooding back. Mrs. Dole is referring to her landmark speech at the 1996 convention in San Diego that nominated her husband, Bob Dole, for president. Last month, in Boston, some commentators criticized Teresa Heinz’s speech for her husband John Kerry as unprecedented and self-indulgent. They had forgotten Mrs. Dole’s 1996 performance, and they’re lucky. Back then, in extolling her husband’s virtues, Mrs. Dole picked her way down the stage steps in her high heels and wandered the audience with a portable microphone, a slightly less scary incarnation of Sally Jessy Raphael. She told homey stories and little jokes, dispensed bits of kitchen-table wisdom and extended her healing hands to the delegates who surrounded her.

It seemed possible then, and it is undeniable now, that Mrs. Dole, by importing the cheesy protocols of daytime talk shows into the ancient customs of a political convention, had breached a line of formality and personal reticence that would never be restored. The Republicans who indulged her then still bore the scars of the 1992 convention, which the press had denounced as “harsh” and “extreme.” In San Diego they resolved never to make the same mistake again. They cheered her wildly. And in New York they still follow the example she set. With the exception of the marquee speeches, from McCain and Giuliani last night and from Arnold Schwarzenegger tonight, the convention has so far been a series of soft-focus videos, followed by a parade of the lame and the halt, the luckless and distressed, telling tales of personal uplift that are somehow traced to the policies of the Bush administration. These are Mrs. Dole’s children.

So tonight, in the heart of her speech, she quotes her spiritual offspring: “As the president said, ‘If you want to help in the war on terror, love your neighbor.’ Love your neighbor!”

8:20: One of the Twinkies says that President Bush has increased aid for adoption, and homeownership is at an all-time high, apparently, thanks to special homeownership grants.

8:25: A man named John Quinones says that “as a Hispanic and as an American, I believe in less taxes and less government,” and then introduces the president’s nephew, George P. Bush, who boasts that President Bush “proposed the largest education funding increase in history.” Suddenly he starts speaking Spanish.

8:45: C-SPAN shows one of the convention Twinkies interviewing a delegate: “How does the first lady inspire others?” she asks.

9:10: Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, vibrating like he’s spent the afternoon doing espresso shooters at Starbucks, is holding up the Drug Discount Card that President Bush has bestowed on America’s seniors. “You can get your card today,” he says. “It’s simple. Just call 1-800-MEDICARE and tell them you want your card. Tell them Dr. Frist prescribed it.”

My young daughter, who I will quote just this once, looks up at the screen. “Why do they have commercials in the middle of their convention?”

9:20: A TV star named Elizabeth Hasselbeck says President Bush has increased funding for breast cancer screening by 20 percent. Her mother had breast cancer, it turns out, though it’s not clear whether the increased funding is a direct consequence of that. Breast cancer is “our nation’s issue.”

9:29: Rod Paige, the education secretary, says President Bush in three years has increased funding for disadvantaged students more than President Clinton did in eight. Pell Grants, too. Also pre-K and Head Start.

9:40: Republicans are the party of limited government, says Michael Steele, the lieutenant governor of Maryland. And “President Bush didn’t just hope for increased homeownership in America, he put his hope into action.”

10:15: In a stirring speech, Arnold Schwarzenegger describes how he became a Republican watching the Nixon-Humphrey race in 1968. He manages to deliver a sentence that has never been uttered before in human history: “Listening to Nixon speak sounded more like a breath of fresh air.”

And the crowd roars when he says, “If you believe your family knows how to spend your money better than the government does, then you are a Republican.” Too true–unless, as I’ve learned tonight, the government is spending money on adoption, home mortgages, job training, mammograms, kindergarten, prescription drugs, secondary schools, college tuition, and graduate schools. Other than that, the money is yours to use as you see fit.

WEDNESDAY 7:58: The loveliest moments with C-SPAN are those one savors before the convention begins. The unblinking cameras linger on cityscapes. There’s no chatter. The ambient sounds are muted. Crowds drift along the streets at dusk, as their identification badges dangle and sway and catch the light from plated storefronts. Through security checkpoints, manned by huddled cops, buses quietly roll. I sit happily with pad and pen before the TV screen. And to think that millions of my fellow Americans are wasting these precious minutes listening to Bill O’Reilly shout at some Democratic wussy.

8:10: One of the Twinkies has a young fellow from Arizona in her grip. He’s the youngest delegate at the convention, apparently, and wise for his years. He addresses his comments to his fellow young persons: “If you don’t vote,” he says, “you can’t complain.” Has anyone ever formulated a better reason to depress voter turnout?

8:13: Brian Sandoval, the attorney general of Nevada, takes the podium to announce that his wife just had a baby. The convention is a little like Woodstock in that way.

8:20: Somewhere backstage, lurking in the wings, is a high school drama coach who, for the good of the party, should be killed. He, or she, has evidently been tutoring the convention speakers in hand gestures, and the effect is disastrous. Last night, Dr. Frist, talking about Medicare, looked as though he was shadow boxing with a giant, invisible bear. And now here’s Sen. Rick Santorum, running the full hand-movement repertoire of Bill Clinton, the greatest gesturer in American politics.

Clinton was so good at speaking with his hands, in fact, that no one else should try. Santorum does the Clinton Thumb Thrust adequately, but it is badly timed. He fails utterly at the famed Clinton Cross-stitch, in which the tip of the index finger touches the tip of the thumb in imitation of threading a needle, and his Clinton Medicine-Ball Catch–two cupped hands held parallel and moved forward and back, as though receiving a toss to the midriff–is nothing short of a catastrophe. To these he adds his own Santorum Wince, in a semaphore of anguished sincerity, and the generic More-in-Sorrow Head Shake. I haven’t heard a word he’s said.

8:25: Clinton’s everywhere tonight–his shadow, I mean, his enduring influence in the dark arts of political show biz. Towards the end of his presidency Clinton turned the White House over to a few filmmakers from Saturday Night Live, who videotaped a jokey skit starring the president and his wife. It wasn’t the most undignified thing Clinton ever did in the White House–what would that be, do you suppose?–but it came in second, and Republicans were suitably appalled.

And now President Bush’s men have done the same, and the convention sits quietly watching a jokey video filmed at the White House and starring Andy Card, Karl Rove, Scott McClellan, and the dog Barney. No one but the viewers of C-SPAN, and delegates in the Garden, get to see it, however, so President Bush still has a chance to win reelection.

8:27: Thanks to the drama coach, Senator Mitch McConnell, introducing his wife, the Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, looks like he’s beset by a swarm of bees. Among many other tricky moves he makes a try for the Clinton Catch a Falling Star–fingers curled, right arm stretched skyward. A disaster.

8:30: Secretary Chao is worse. She tells a personal story about her immigrant forerunners, but it is drowned out by the cacophony of her moving arms. I imagine the two of them, the senator and the secretary, trying to spend a quiet evening at home, accidentally knocking over lamps and breaking windows as they discuss what to have for dinner.

The absurdity is a problem inextricably bound up with the rise of informal, supposedly personal speechmaking–the kind that conventions now specialize in. A speaker deploying more traditional, more elevated rhetoric may look ill at ease but never absurd, since the content of the speech doesn’t force him to assume a phony informality. Chummy speechmaking, by contrast, practically requires the speaker to attempt gestures as relaxed and informal as the sentiments being expressed. But the speaker is never relaxed, not really. So the hands come into play. And he looks silly.

Secretary Chao talks policy, too. Homeownership in this country is at an all-time high.

9:11: Here’s an RNC video about the American Dream Downpayment Initiative, which has pushed the rate of homeownership to record highs.

10:00: I think someone finally killed the drama coach, and I think it was Zell Miller. Introduced to the crowd, he emerges from the wings and marches to the podium. He stops. He stands straight as an I-beam. His arms are frozen at his sides. None of this waving around for him. He looks like a man who just killed somebody: beetled brow, ferocious eyes, yes, he knows it was wrong and he shouldna done it but by God I done it and I ain’t ashamed.

Two minutes into his speech it’s clear he will be the star of the convention, for good or ill. I expected as much and so this afternoon Nexised up a copy of his previous keynote speech, at the Democratic convention in 1992, when Miller’s avowed enemies were George H.W. Bush and the equally dangerous Dan Quayle.

“I know what Dan Quayle means when he says it’s best for children to have two parents,” Miller thundered. “You bet it is! And it would be nice for them to have trust funds, too. We can’t all be born rich and handsome and lucky!”

The speech in ’92 was a roiling stew of resentments.

“George Bush doesn’t get it? Americans cannot understand why the rich can buy the best health care in the world, but all the rest of us get is rising costs and cuts in health coverage, or no health insurance at all. . . .

“Four years ago, Mr. Bush told us he was a quiet man, who hears the voices of quiet people. Today, we know the truth: George Bush is a timid man who hears only the voices of caution and the status quo. Let’s face facts: George Bush just doesn’t get it.

“He doesn’t see it; he doesn’t feel it, and he’s done nothing about it. . . . If the ‘law and order president’ gets another term the criminals will run wild, because our commander in chief talks like Dirty Harry, but acts like Barney Fife.”

I kept hoping the C-SPAN cameras would show Barney Fife himself, the 41st president, sitting there with the rest of Barney Fife II’s family in a guest box at the Garden, but if they did I missed it. A good and faithful partisan, and a superior man, the elder Bush was probably smiling at the sight of Miller, a less faithful partisan, wheeling his guns around to blast the Democrats he had so delighted in 1992.

10:20: Better than Miller, Vice President Cheney shows how effective a speaker can be when he keeps the hand gestures to a minimum. His technique is impressive–Reaganesque, even: a modulated voice, a subtly expressive face, and sufficient confidence in his text to allow words to convey his meaning.

“Mortgage rates are low,” he said calmly, in rock-steady tones, “and homeownership in this country at an all-time high.”

THURSDAY 8:30: The music is getting better–the hired band has worked backward from disco to Motown, offering a version of “Knock on Wood” and then, careening further back, a Glenn Miller swing number.

But it is clear that the business of the convention is done, and all await the finale of Bush’s speech. There’s a strange plug for physical fitness, and several more gauzy videos. “I’m optimistic about America,” President Bush says in one, “because I believe in what America stands for.” In another, he delivers the good news about homeownership rates.

8:45: A highlight of the Democratic convention last month was the Parade of Generals and Admirals. Every Democrat with a military rank got to march across the stage in Boston to the thump of martial music. The Republicans do even better, producing not only a host of brass but also P.X. Kelly and Tommy Franks, who points out that the Bush administration, in four years, has increased funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs more than the Clinton administration did in eight. Those Democrats are so stingy!

9:15: Mel Martinez, Republican candidate for the Senate from Florida, is added to the schedule at the last minute. We C-SPAN viewers, if no one else, will know why. “As President Bush’s secretary of housing,” he said, “we worked together to implement a homeownership initiative that is seeing real results. Today, the homeownership rate in the United States is at an all-time high.”

9:45: Someone resuscitated the drama coach. With his flapping arms, George Pataki looks as though the right wind might carry him up to the rafters, there to float among his fellow balloons. Instead he extols the president’s many virtues: “When he said he was going to do something, he meant it,” Pataki said. Such as? “He said he’d help small businesses, protect Social Security, and expand homeownership. He said he’d do it. And he did.”

10:10: By the time Pataki is through, I’ve started flipping channels. All the networks and all the cable news channels have caught up with C-SPAN and are ready at last to air the president’s acceptance speech as conventions should be aired, unexpurgated, without editorial comment–the C-SPAN way.

It was a good speech, too, of course. And he did not fail to mention homeownership rates.

Andrew Ferguson is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard.