Quin Hillyer
One of the favorite pastimes for veteran convention watchers is to watch crowd response to try to predict who might be one of the party’s future leading lights. Barack Obama famously was catapulted to stardom by his convention speech in 2004. In 1988, the keynote speaker at the Republican Convention in New Orleans was New Jersey Gov. Tom Kean, but by far the biggest and most favorable audience response came in response to a speech about honor and country given by one John McCain.
In that light, a Democrat to watch might be Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer, who fully woke up a rather sleepy-seeming crown last Tuesday night, shortly before Hillary Clinton took the floor. His speech focused on energy policy, and much of the excitement seemed generated as much or more by the delivery as by the words themselves. But, continuing a common theme of this convention, Schweitzer got off a zinger about McCain’s numerous houses: “We simply can’t drill our way to energy independence, even if you drilled in all of John McCain’s back yards, including the ones he can’t even remember.
Also Tuesday night, John McCain’s home-state Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano received a fairly strong crowd response — especially when mentioning former, nationally known Arizona politicians: “Arizonans are proud of their political tradition, from Barry Goldwater to Mo Udall to Bruce Babbitt. There’s a pattern here: Barry Goldwater ran for president and lost. Mo Udall ran for president. He lost. Bruce Babbitt ran for president. And he lost. Speaking for myself, and at least for this coming election, this is one Arizona tradition I would like to see continue!”
