New York
THE DIFFERENCE is pretty stark. The first night of the Democratic convention in Boston was a carnival of losers. It was dominated by Al Gore and Jimmy Carter, who both gave prominent speeches. The mood was one of studied, celebrated victimhood.
The Republicans have their share of losers, too and on the first night here there are tributes to Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, but they take the form of short, pre-taped video montages. It’s an obligatory tip of the hat, but nothing more. Instead, the Republicans are concentrating on their winners, and the two big stars on display are Rudy Giuliani and John McCain, who are the future of the party.
There are other, more significant differences. Democrats emphasized the general notion of “A Stronger America.” Republicans are reminding the audience that we are a nation at war.
The crowd in Madison Square Garden waves signs saying “We Salute Our Troops” in big, G.I. Joe, block letters. During a musical interlude, the band Dexter Freebish dedicates a song to America’s soldiers. The big banners hanging above the TV studios say “A Nation of Courage” and “Fulfilling America’s Promise: A Safer World, A More Hopeful America.”
Ron Silver, an actor who was a liberal Democrat before September 11, gives a stirring, serious minded speech about the war. He says explicitly that America is at war with “Islamic extremists”–this plain language would have been inconceivable in Boston. “This is a war we did not seek,” he says. “This is a war waged against us. This is a war to which we had to respond.” In a flourish worthy of Churchill, he thunders, “We will never forget, we will never forgive, we will never excuse.” If the Democrats are the grievance party, the Republicans are the war party.
JOHN McCAIN’S job is to make sure that TV viewers don’t see Republicans as a scary, hairy-chested, Neanderthal war party, but instead as a tough, determined, more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger war party. He is effective.
McCain uses searingly clear moral language. “It’s a fight between right and wrong, good and evil,” he says, talking about war with the Islamists. “Only the most deluded of us could doubt the necessity of this war,” he says. And later, “There is no avoiding this war. We tried that, and our reluctance cost us dearly.”
His defense of Bush’s decision to topple Saddam is sober, saying that “our choice was not between a benign status quo and war. It was between war and a graver threat.” He calls Bush’s mission “necessary, achievable, and noble.”
At two points in the speech McCain goes out of his way to reach out to Democrats. He says that he doesn’t doubt the sincerity of Democrats in their commitment to fight terrorism. Later, talking about the election, he says that it is good to “engage in spirited disagreement” but that “we have nothing to fear from each other.” “It should remain an argument among friends who share an unshaken belief in our great cause, and in the goodness of each other. . . . We are not enemies, but comrades in a war.”
It is stirring stuff. (It’s also unthinkable that a Democratic speaker could have said this in Boston; even if he believed it, he would have been booed off the stage.) And it suggests that, for all the talk of base in this election, Team Bush is trawling for undecided voters tonight.
IN BOSTON, the Democrats were clearly bothered by the specter of 9/11. Not quite knowing what to do with it, they had a moment of silence to commemorate it and then went whistling. The Republicans put on a parade of 9/11 widows. Afterwards, they ask not for a moment of silence, but for a moment of “prayer.”
THE CONSEQUENCE of these differences is that Republicans are running an atypical campaign for an incumbent party. Instead of sitting back and playing defense, running on the president’s record, they’re drawing deep contrasts with Kerry, behaving more the way a challenger would. The distinction they are intent on making tonight is that Democrats are the September 10 party, and Republicans at the September 12 party.
Rudy Giuliani’s speech etches that contrast into granite.
Giuliani is relaxed and presidential. He bobs between making light-hearted jokes about himself and forceful arguments about the war. In one passage he details the history of the appeasement of terrorists and does not flinch from laying blame on Germany (for their coddling of the ’72 Munich terrorists), Italy (for its lapse in the ’85 murder of Leon Klinghoffer), and the entire world of European sophisticates (for their awarding of the Noble Peace Prize to Yasser Arafat). “Before September 11, we were living with an unrealistic view of the world,” he says. It is a frank, unvarnished, and powerful passage. Americans have not heard anything like it in many years.
From there, Giuliani moved on to John Kerry. He begins by saying, “I respect him for his service to our nation”–here the crowd at Madison Square Garden broke into hearty applause. He then proceeds to dismantle Kerry’s record, working all the while in light tones and jokes. Lorne Michaels is clearly responsible for how effective Giuliani is in this mode: He uses the same persona he honed during his appearances on Saturday Night Live.
There was a window of time where it was possible for John Kerry to run to Bush’s right in the war on terror, if he had been so inclined. He could have convinced America that he was the one who would take the Islamist threat seriously, that he would be able to prosecute the war in ways the president couldn’t. Kerry did not seem interested in going down that path, and for months the window has been closing. Tonight it may have shut.
Jonathan V. Last is online editor of The Weekly Standard.
