Clinton calls for a round of applause for W – and gets it. Magic. David Frum on Twitter last night. Read more
[I]t’s apparent that Democratic conventioneers remain more enthusiastic about Barack Obama than Republican convention-goers ever got about Mitt Romney. Deval Patrick wins the night’s up-and-comer laurels, but Michelle Obama out-shined the entire line-up by a few billion lumens. Mrs Obama’s speech was paint-by-numbers, but the painting happened to be the Mona Lisa. Wil Wilkinson: The presidential race: Live-blogging the Democratic convention | The Economist Read more
I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters,” Mr. Obama told Patrick Gaspard, his political director, at the start of the 2008 campaign, according to The New Yorker. “I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m going to think I’m a better political director than my political director. Obama Plays to Win, in Politics and Everything Else – NYTimes.com I am amazed whenever I read... Read more
If Obama survives, the shifting composition of the electorate will also be a—and perhaps the—critical factor. In 1984, whites without a college degree represented 61 percent of all voters, and college-educated whites just 27 percent. But by 2008, noncollege whites had plummeted to just 39 percent of all voters, and college-educated whites increased to 35 percent. Noncollege white men, consistently the GOP’s best group, fell from 28 percent of all voters in 1984 to just 18 percent in 2008; the... Read more
Steve Coll compares Chris Christie’s keynote speech to Obama’s in 2004, and finds Christie sadly wanting. Obama came to Boston as an unknown and left as a rising star. Christie came to Tampa as a rising star and obviously hoped to acquire Obama-like momentum as the Republican Party’s “truth teller,” a more salable alternative in competitive “purple” states than Paul Ryan will be in the next election, if Romney loses this one. (Christie even wore a purple tie.) … More... Read more
Romney advisers so trusted Mr. Eastwood, 82, that unlike with other speakers, they said they did not conduct rehearsals or insist on a script or communicate guidelines for the style or format of his remarks. Romney Aides Scratch Their Heads Over Eastwood’s Speech – NYTimes.com Political malpractice of the highest order. I had to wonder whether Eastwood had given them an approved text but then went rogue. Now we know that they knew he was just going to wing it.... Read more
… the principals don’t seem to be experiencing much joy as they go through their market-tested paces. A kind of faux-ness permeates everything this year in a way that it hasn’t been quite so consuming in the past. The effect has been anesthetizing and made it difficult to take any of the day’s supposed gaffes, game-changers and false umbrages seriously. The campaigns appeared locked in a paradigm of terrified superpowers’ spending blindly on redundant warfare. How many times do they... Read more
Once again, on day two of the Republican National Convention, it was ominous how few mentions of the nominee himself were made. It wasn’t quite as stark as it had been on day one in the speeches of Chris Christie and others, but notable nonetheless. I asserted that the first night’s speeches were evidence that the speakers were all setting themselves up for future campaigns, as they had collectively (and perhaps independently) come to the conclusion that Mitt Romney was... Read more
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