It is with great pride and humility that we at THE WEEKLY STANDARD present the first set of convention awards. In honor of the spirit of San Diego, we are calling our awards the Treaclys. A partial list of nominees and winners:
FOR WORST SPEECH: Two standouts here among many mediocrities and minor embarrassments: Newt Gingrich and James A. Baker III. And the Treacly goes to Newt Gingrich. Two words: Beach volleyball.
FOR BEST SPEECH: Nancy Reagan, J. C. Watts, Colin Powell, Elizabeth Dole, John McCain. And the winner is Nancy Reagan, whose understated speech was moving and didn’t make you feel a little sick for having been touched by it.
BEST RHETORIC: The nominees are John McCain and Mark Helptin . . . um, we mean Bob Dole. And the winner is John McCain, who briefly reminded the convention what honor, duty, and country mean — and whom nobody actually listened to because we were all still recovering from Elizabeth Dole.
BEST VOTE: James Ball, of Lake Charles, La., a chemist at an oil refinery and a Gramm delegate who cast a first-round ballot for Robert Bork because ” the American people need to be reminded that one of the reasons we vote for a president is to appoint judges to the bench. Judge Bork, in the finest tradition of jurisprudence, didn’t legislate from the bench. I wanted to bring his name up because I hope he’ll be renominated.”
BEST SOUNDBITE: Gerald Ford, for “What we have in the White House is neither a Ford nor a Lincoln. What we have is a convertible Dodge.” Runner- up: Ford’s “As we gather here this week, our Republican hearts and minds are in hospitable San Diego — and our FBI files are in the White House.”
WORST SOUNDBITE: James A. Baker III, for “So when people say Bill Clinton has been around and is wise in the ways of the world, they’re sure not talking about his foreign policy.”
BEST RED MEAT: Kay Bailey Hutchison, for “America, it’s time to wake up to President Clinton and his high-taxing, free-spending, promise-breaking, Social Security-taxing, health-care-socializing, drug-coddling, power- grabbing, business-busting, lawsuit-loving, U.N.-following, FBI-abusing, IRS- increasing, $ 200-haircutting, gas-taxing, over-regulating, bureaucracy- trusting, class-baiting, privacy-violating, values-crushing, Medicare- forsaking, property-rights-taking, job-destroying friends. And that’s just in the White House!”
BIGGEST JERK OF THE CONVENTION: Pete Wilson, who made trouble on the platform, threatened a floor fight, then spent hours on television talking about the five minutes’ time he was denied on the podium because of the trouble he had caused — and then got to introduce Liddy Dole!
BEST GUY OF THE CONVENTION: J. C. Watts, who was genial everywhere he went and gave a remarkably powerful and inspiring speech.
