Category: Convention Blogging

Being in Bloggers Corner has been one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Not only am I in the center of a historic event at a historic location, but the RNC gave us tremendous opportunities by locating us at the entrance of the radio center — which has been key to our access to some amazing people, including the famous and the yet-to-be famous as well. Some I haven’t mentioned simply because I had no opportunity to do anything in-depth with them. For example, today I asked Tim Russert of NBC to stop by and take a few questions from the bloggers as he waited to get on Sean Hannity’s radio program. Russert stopped over to say hello and exchange a few pleasantries with us, but he didn’t have time to do much more than encourage us with a “Blog on!” Sam Donaldson did much the same thing yesterday, although Tom Bevan walked Donaldson through posting an article on a blog.
However, after a late start to today and taking a slew of interviews this afternoon, most of which have been left untranscribed, we began to notice a press for time which we hadn’t felt before. More people began crowding around and engaging us in conversation, which we appreciated. Unfortunately, it impacted my productivity and with the keynote speeches coming up, I knew I had no opportunity to catch up — and no time even for dinner.
So I’ve made the strategic decision to go back to my hotel room to finish out the night with C-SPAN. I can get a different perspective on the speeches and work on a few more posts tonight. In the meantime, I’m cancelling a breakfast meeting tomorrow to spend the entire day at the Garden so I can catch up with a couple of more delegates I want to interview. I’ll live-blog the keynote speeches tonight from the hotel room instead of inside the auditorium.

One of the many distractions that all convention attendees must juggle are the continuous invitations to outside events, which sometimes conflict with convention business. Certainly this is true for the delegates, and it’s widely known that if a delegate plays his cards right, he need never pay for a meal. This also applies to the candidates, who must coordinate a flood of invitations by being readily accessible to constituents and supporters on one hand without getting tied down to such a full schedule that it interferes with their ability to network at the convention itself with media, delegates, donors, and so on.
I received an invitation to a typical outside event, a lunch given on behalf of Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman. Coleman serves as co-chair of the convention, which means that he has certain nominal duties to which he must attend here at the Garden. On this occasion, Coleman was able to put a couple of hours aside to join a number of people at a nice lunch sponsored by Target, and as a result, I got the best meal I’m likely to get on this visit to New York.
At the pre-lunch reception, I had the opportunity to meet Senator Colemand and his wife as well as a number of his staff and supporters. Colonel Joe Repya attended with his wife, and I secured an interview with him later, which I will post this evening. Coleman, who delivered a powerful but short speech at the Bush campaign rally earlier this month, instead spoke more personally about community-building. He challenged government and business to learn from each other — government to learn accountability, and businesses to learn to serve their communities.
It felt as though Coleman spoke more contemporaneously, mixing in observations about several of his friends and supporters in the room and especially his feelings about returning to New York after having achieved so many of his dreams. Coleman continued to impress me, this time as a man who easily connects with a smaller audience. More importantly, I got a rare opportunity to watch him interact with his staff and some Minnesota volunteers, and he took care to point out their success and hard work to others. Coleman remarked, unprompted, to one guest that the woman who got me into the lunch was the best supporter of President Bush he knew. Instead of just sitting at his lunch table and ignoring his guests, Coleman worked the tables, making two passes while I was there — I had to leave to get back to the Garden.
You may say that these qualities should be our baseline expectations for public servants like Norm Coleman, and of course you’d be correct. But the truth is that few actually meet those expectations, instead treating their staff as though they don’t exist and regularly blaming others for their own failings — as we’ve already seen in the Presidential race this year. Minnesotans can be proud that they’ve elected a man who works hard at being a decent guy.
The Northern Alliance will interview Norm Coleman at the state fair this weekend. Don’t forget to tune in on Saturday to hear our chat with Minnesota’s Senator.

In a brief visit to Bloggers Corner, DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe told the bloggers that John Kerry was in Cambodia — twice — and took fire, while taking the opportunity to get in a dig at George Bush:
Q: Does it bother you that the Democrats have nominated a candidate that told a fable about spending Christmas in Cambodia on the floor of the United States Senate?
A: John Kerry went to Cambodia twice. He was over in Viet Nam and at one point, as you know, he took some CIA operatives into Cambodia, and he did a lot more than George Bush ever did for his country. George Bush never got to Viet Nam.
Q: Mr. McAuliffe, do you have any proof —
A: You said only one question. You’re chewing up their time [gesturing to camera crew].
Power Line has the video. Go check it out. And note that of all the people who have appeared at Bloggers Corner, McAuliffe is the only one who refused a follow-up question.
For yesterday’s official Democratic version of Christmas in Cambodia, check out Hugh Hewitt’s post from yesterday’s show.

Former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson came by Bloggers Corner just a few minutes ago and spoke to the group about liberal Republicanism, the electoral college, the current campaign and its tone, and John Kerry’s Senate career. As you might imagine from his press conferences during his tenure in Congress, Senator Simpson spoke directly and even bluntly in responding to our questions. My audio of the interview turned out poorly as Sean Hannity’s show insists on blaring out their program over speakers pointed directly at our area, but I can rebuild the important parts.
In response to questions regarding the Electoral College, Simpson strongly defended the current structure and explained that any attempt to eliminate it would never pass muster with enough states. Too many smaller states would lose their impact on presidential contests, and as Simpson said, no one would ever see a campaign outside of New York, Chicago, and California.
Simpson also responded about the current partisan brinksmanship by telling us to expect it to get worse. He advised anyone finding themselves under unfair attack to fire back and not to listen to advisors instructing them to rise above the attacks and ignore them. “An insult ignored is an insult believed,” Simpson said, and related that he even contradicted his own family’s wishes and responded on the offense.
“You’re all keyed up,” Simpson said his wife warned him, and he replied, “I know. It’s going to be fun.”
On John Kerry, Simpson clearly felt that he lacked any sort of legislative record and even gave us some insight into who John Kerry may really be as an explanation:
Q: You spent several years with John Kerry in the Senate. What is your opinion on his legislative accomplishments?
A: A big goose egg would be a pretty good approach, because I never saw anything that he did. But don’t forget, he was under the shadow of Ted Kennedy and his issues were much like Ted’s. He’s not an evil man, but he didn’t do anything that I remember. I was involved in significant legislation on immigration and nuclear high-level waste, and Superfund, and I don’t remember him doing any of that.
Q: No leadership, then?
A: None. I didn’t see any. In fact, I think he was almost shy. I think part of his problem right now is that I think he’s basically a shy person. They’ve got him in a role that’s uncomfortable for him.
Q: Thank you, Senator.
Simpson’s insight into Kerry should not go unnoticed. He worked with Kerry for at least two terms in the Senate and had the opportunity to see him in action. I found his observation about Kerry’s shyness intriguing, and it fits with the lack of personal connection that has caused much discussion and debate during the campaign season. The distance people feel from Kerry may not be something he can control, let alone overcome.

Having read Tom Shales’ review of the Republican convention thus far, I’m not sure whether to be encouraged or irritated. Shales obviously thinks that the GOP has managed to out-stage the Democrats in putting on “rubber-stamp” conventions, as if we have had any other kind in the last five decades. Shales even notes success in impressing the media. However, he takes several opportunities to sneer down his cheaters at Republicans as a bunch of hicks:

People don’t commonly associate adjectives like “cool” and “hip” with the Republican Party, but the first broadcast television coverage of this year’s convention, from Madison Square Garden in New York last night, revealed the GOP to be more media-hip and glitzy than the Democrats were earlier this summer. …
The message of the Tuesday Night Follies was that Democrats are wimps and Republicans are symbolically still down in Texas fending off the invading army that’s trying to take over the Alamo. Remember it, hell! They’re still fighting. …
His performance could be dismissed as absurdly retro and old-hat by intellectuals and the politically correct but in a time ruled largely by fear, it came off as brave, rough and tough, as if John Wayne had come back to life to take one more whack at “bad guys” in an outdated western. Arnold even obliged the crowd by using the term “girlie man” when referring to anyone who is an economic pessimist, sending the audience into bombastic cathartic cheers. … [Schwarzenegger] even led a rhetorical chorus session keyed to the theme of how to tell you’re a Republican that was very similar in concept to hillbilly comic Jeff Foxworthy’s routine “You know you’re a redneck when ….”

Shales noted that even Dan Rather was impressed by Arnold, who reported that he had “slapped Kerry around like a hockey puck.” Shales himself had a great line about Fox’s coverage (which I’ve missed entirely while here in NYC):

At the Fox network, the Republican convention is being covered like a happy birthday party for God, with the channel’s right-leaning commentators and anchors hanging on for the joyride of their lives, all but turning cartwheels.

I don’t know if Shales is accurate, but it’s an entertaining moment in a contradictory review. If the Republicans are such hicks, then why is their convention — in the very heart of metropolitan America, Manhattan — so wildly successful? Could it be that the Democrats miscalculated when assuming that such “hicks” could connect with plain folk around the country, and even a chunk of their metropolitan friends as well?
Shales seems to think that “in a time ruled by fear” that fear is all the Repulicans are selling at Madison Square Garden. However, every single speaker has pressed the optimism that America can conquer the fear of terrorism by positive action. If anything, the speakers at the RNC have been selling hope, while Democrats — wrapped up in their irrational Bush-hatred — have been selling nothing but the fear of what another term for W would mean. Nuclear war! American isolation! Environmental destruction! Women in burkhas on the streets of New York!
Shales hasn’t paid attention. Hope touches the soul, regardless of political affiliation, while hatred and fear only motivates the small-minded. The Republicans have done a masterful job of focusing on the positive motivation that lies behind the tough tasks ahead. That apppeals to a much broader swath of Americans than Shales or the Democrats credit. If you have to be a redneck to have hope, let’s hope that Americans drawl their way to the ballot box on November 2.

Ron Fournier, AP’s premier political analyst, catches a whiff of desperation at Campaign Kerry as his numbers continue to erode and the Republicans stage a better convention than they had considered possible. Fournier reports that John Kerry has been bombarded with criticism and advice, much of it contradictory and all of it pointing to rising panic within the Democratic Party:

Anxiously watching President Bush’s convention, Democratic leaders are urging John Kerry to step up his attack on the Republican incumbent before eroding approval ratings become a serious political problem.
The candidate and his beleaguered staff are being flooded with advice, much of it contradictory. Some party officials want Kerry to criticize the president for sitting out the Vietnam War in the Texas Air National Guard. Others say that would draw unwanted attention to accusations about Kerry’s combat experience.
Democrats have seen Bush erase the gains that their nominee made at his convention a month ago in Boston, pulling into a tie in national polls that also show Kerry’s personal image deteriorating.

Fournier writes, in CYA fashion, that the polling erosion that most national polls now reflect for Kerry (especially on national security and character) may just be a “nudge of the pendulum,” but the Democrats have not reacted as though they believe it. Yesterday, they announced that they’re pulling Joe Lockhart out of mothballs in order to head their “Rapid Response Team,” an indirect indictment of Stephanie Cutter’s poor ad-libbing during the campaign’s deer-in-the-headlights initial response to the Swiftvet campaign.
In order to reverse himself, Kerry is being alternately advised to attack George Bush’s own Viet Nam record and to skip Viet Nam altogether and focus on current issues instead, especially the economy and Iraq, where Democrats consider Bush especially vulnerable. Fournier provides some examples of the dissonance over strategy:

“Bush and his surrogates have been vicious and unforgiving” with the Swift boat claims, said Frank Schreck, a top party fund-raiser from Nevada, “and they have scored a lot of political points.”
Schreck wants Kerry to bluntly compare war records with the president. “Why not stand up there and say, `He chose to have his father get him out of harm’s way while I volunteered to risk my life?'” The Bush campaign vigorously denies the president used his family’s political influence to avoid Vietnam. …
Outside the campaign, some Democrats want Kerry to put the intrigue to rest and shift his focus to the economy and Iraq, issues causing problems for Bush.
“My sense is the Swift boat stuff has been a major distraction, to say the least, for the campaign, and they need to get back to hammering him (Bush) every day on the economy and health care and the management of the war,” Carrick said.

Of course, Kerry may be the one candidate who can do both at the same time, given his record for consistency. However, it ignores the fact that Kerry has been doing both now, for months, both personally and through official Democratic surrogates such as Terry McAuliffe. McAuliffe did the round of radio interviews yesterday at the RNC as a sort of Johnny TANGleseed, trying his best to use the National Guard story that got such wide publicity back in February. Kerry himself back in April got shots in at Bush’s service. Later on he claimed to have not spent “one dime” in attacking Bush at all, but he had a page on his website detailing a number of scurrilous “questions” regarding Bush’s service.
Unfortunately, the Democrats have already fired all of their ammunition on this battleground. The memes that McAuliffe pushed and Schreck wants to resurrect have already been dissected ad nauseum by the mainstream media and have been revealed as unfounded. All that McAuliffe and the Democrats do by returning to this strategy is to (a) remind everyone that they made the quality of Viet Nam service an issue first, and (b) look absolutely desperate to change the subject.
The Kerry campaign has been exposed as an empty-suit charade that the Democrats thought would be good enough to dislodge George Bush. Why? Because everyone they know hates Bush. Like Pauline Kael, they assumed that meant everyone, period. And like Pauline Kael, they’re discovering that they have a curiously limited experience with the American people.

Mark Follman at Salon.com writes a review of the credentialed RNC bloggers for the Wednesday edition, and he doesn’t much like what he’s reading (registration or ad torture required). Follman points out that we bloggers set our expectations high and argues that we’ve failed to even try to meet them:

The bloggers, in brief interviews with the Journal, promised some big things themselves. After a good bit of hemming and hawing about their counterparts’ failure to turn out any meaningful coverage at the Democratic get-together in Boston, the cutting-edge RNC crew pledged to zero in on the important issues in New York.
“Readers rightly criticized the number of ‘hey, look at me’ posts from DNC bloggers,” remarked Kevin Aylward, a technology consultant who authors the Wizbang! blog. “I’m aware much of the audience isn’t interested in what I had for dinner and what my hotel room is like.”
“Being there isn’t good enough, nor is posting what you ate for lunch or which movie star or politico you bumped into in the elevator,” said Tom Bevan, editor of Real Clear Politics.
“Bloggers need to take the opportunity seriously and focus on covering the convention, not on themselves. Bloggers need to remember that it is opportunity and a responsibility,” proposed Matt Margolis, who contributes to Blogs for Bush.

After writing this far into an article about blogging for a web magazine and failing to provide his readers with even one working link back to these sites, Follman proceeds to chew us out for not performing to our own expectations:

At 10:14 p.m., during the heart of Sen. John McCain’s speech on the convention floor, Aylward unveiled his final headline entry of the evening:
“GOP BABES OF THE DAY
“The hostesses at the Cablevision Suite – smokin’ hot.” …
Then there was this post at 9:13 p.m. from Oxford University doctoral candidate David Adesnik, whose OxBlog, he told the Wall Street Journal, is penned by three graduate students “with a passionate interest in foreign affairs, electoral politics, journalism, law and single-malt scotch.”
“OH MY GOD! OH MY GOD! Miss America Erika Harold is visiting Bloggers Row!
“UPDATE: The extremely lucky Matt Margolis of Blogs for Bush has put up a picture of himself with Miss Harold.”

And so on, although I noticed that Follman managed to figure out hyperlinks just in time to link back to those posts which offended him so much. Congratulations, Mark; I know it’s tough to keep up with the details when you are expected to write two articles a week, as opposed to the ten or so we’re each producing per day here at the RNC.
I feel enabled to scorch Follman on this since, oddly, he failed to even mention Captain’s Quarters, presumably because he either found nothing objectionable or he just didn’t know I was there. Nor did Follman remember that we were not invited to be the Junior League Print Media; we were invited because of who we are and what we’ve done all along at our sites.
Wizbang has a regular, long-running GOP Babe feature. But besides that, Kevin has also posted stories on Al Franken’s assault on a Laura Ingraham producer, an opinion piece on Democratic claims that Republicans exploited 9/11 Monday evening, participated in the group scoop on the Tommy Franks endorsement of George Bush (we beat Hannity by 20 minutes), and a number of background items that Kevin thinks will interest his readers. Scott at Slant Point has interviewed a delegate about the platform for the convention, gone behind the scenes in a funny look at the wait staff, and written over 20 posts in the past two-plus days on the convention itself. Matt at Blogs for Bush has posted the audio stream of every nterview we’ve done, which takes both technical expertise and a great deal of Matt’s time.
In short, Follman decided it would be more fun to take cheap shots at fifteen people who work hard to give their readers their personal take on the convention by ridiculing their story choices as unprofessional. Well, Mr. Follman, we aren’t journalists in the sense that Salon.com hires — we’re bloggers, with a different if overlapping audience with such outlets as Salon itself. We weren’t hired to be journalists, we were invited to blog the convention.
And if there is a difference, it’s probably that we research our multiple posts better than the cherry-picking and poor HTML work that Salon seems to think meets professional-level standards. It’s no coincidence that Follman only provides links to the selected posts instead of the home page of each blog, where the work could be seen i n context. In our marketplace, such shoddy and transparently biased work would completely discredit a blogger and put them out of business. It’s telling that in Follman’s marketplace, it passes not only his own standards but Salon’s editorial review.
UPDATE: Jeff at Protein Wisdom notes that Follman’s superior journalistic intellect didn’t discover that one of the bloggers he quotes isn’t attending the convention. And check out the comments, where Follman first doesn’t figure out what the joke is, and then claims he was just playing along with it.

HOTEL PENN, 12:16 AM — It doesn’t take much imagination to know on what subject tongues will wag tonight and tomorrow, and it won’t be an analysis of Arnold’s speech. Instead, talking heads will focus on the performance of the Bush twins, introducing their mother’s keynote speech for Day Two at the RNC. Inevitably, the girls will be compared to John Kerry’s children and stepson, and just as surely they will suffer in the comparison … and it’s unfair.
True, I would have held them back a bit from treating the introduction as a wedding toast, which was one criticism I heard (sotto voce) in the Garden on the way out. But that would mean having them put on an act, which would have seemed a lot more phony. The one quality that strikes people most about the Bushes is their genuine nature, in that they don’t pretend to be people they’re not. Clearly, as we have been reminded on several occasions, the Bush twins are — as they said in their speech — young, irrepressible, and a little immature. Personally, I found their humor a little charming, if overdone. I noticed Rudy Giuliani laughing his butt off at the Sex In The City joke, doubled over in his seat.
Apart from that, no one had any reason to be disappointed in the featured speakers. While I think that Laura did a fine job, though, after further consideration I think her placement was a mistake. Last night the Republicans made a better choice by having Giuliani go last rather than John McCain, who technically outranks him and should have been given the featured spot. The same principle should have applied tonight, for two reasons. One is that the delegates would have gone out fired up, not just filled with a detached admiration. The second is that it would have been kinder to Laura, who is a fine speaker but could not bring the thunder the way Arnold did. And make no mistake, having Arnold come before the Bush twins will allow the mainstream media analysts to give short shrift to his speech tonight.
I got one comment asking me to compare Arnold’s speech tonight with Giuliani’s on Monday. Actually, they were quite similar in structure, if not so much in style. Both men spoke from painful personal experience about the goodness of America and the darkness of tyranny, although in Giuliani’s case it was a single attack while Schwarzenegger lived for years under the fear of the “Soviet boot,” a wonderful phrase. They both spoke about the power of freedom that causes men and women to throw off the yoke of oppression.
However, I think style makes a difference, and in this case, I give the bare edge to Giuliani. Both men used humor, but while in Arnold’s case it was biting and satirical — and devastatingly funny — Giuliani’s was a mix between that and more self-deprecating humor, a choice which Arnold discarded after his opening. It gave the crowd more of Giuliani the man, rather than Hizzoner the public figure. But I have to also say that both men fired up the crowd just about equally, and Arnold’s speech seemed shorter and punchier than Giuliani’s. I’d call it a draw between two champions.
Lastly, after informally polling the bloggers at Bloggers Corner (which we abandoned for the arena during the speeches), we all agreed that Michael Steele looks like a man on whom the Republicans can count. I’ll try to get an interview with him if he remains at the Garden.

10:25 An introduction for the First Lady by her twin daughters has started off very well, although they’re clearly nervous. They’ve poked fun at themselves, their grandmother, their father, Dick Cheney, Sex And The City, Karl Rove, Condi Rice, and Karen Hughes. They’re having fun doing a tag-team comedy routine …
10:30 “We had a hamster, too. Let’s just say it didn’t make it.”
10:32 A surprise — George Bush is live on satellite to complete the introduction. I wonder has this happened before, where a candidate appeared before the nomination? At least during the modern, scripted era of conventions?
10:35 Laura is on now, thanking the Bush family. The former President and First Lady, George and Barbara, held up We Love Laura signs. …
10:37 “Why do you think we should re-elect your husband as president?” An interesting way to frame her speech. It makes sense, as a First Lady usually doesn’t get too involved in the hard politics. And, in fact, she’s starting off with education, the cause she’s adopted for her time in the White House.
10:39 Women-owned business as a model for the ownership society — another pitch-perfect topic. Now she’s moved on to health care, although that gets less enthusiastic. Stem-cell research that respects the “dignity of human life” gets better response.
10:40 Economics gets a mention, only briefly, and in terms of home ownership. She transitioned to national security — not your typical First Lady topic. Laura focuses on the extraordinary contribution of a Colorado family that has three sons enlisted in the service, all deployed overseas …
10:43 Laura Bush speaks in the quiet, dignified manner that befits a First Lady, but I’m wondering whether it wouldn’t have been better to lead off with her and finish with Arnold. The crowd is responding to Laura, but there’s little doubt that the intensity has dropped off.
10:46 Millions more people live in freedom now than four years ago, and especially the women of Afghanistan. This speech obviously targets the women’s vote, especially among the undecided. It’s effective here in the chamber … we’ll see …
10:52 She gets more effective when she talks about her husband, with much more passion. She is technically excellent at speaking when covering other subjects, but she inspires people when talking about George.
10:54 “Because of strong leadership, we don’t hide under our desks any more,” referencing the Cold War and the determination that led the way to victory. A great, if subtle, reference to Ronald Reagan. …
10:56 A good speech, perhaps even an excellent speech, and certainly a dignified and classy endorsement of her husband.
Addendum: You may be missing this at home, but the Harlem Boy’s Choir is performing one of my favorite Civil War songs, Battle Hymn Of The Republic. They are doing a magnificent job, truly a wonderful end to the evening.
Further notes: Another speaker has come out — a survivor of the Holocaust is speaking about her experiences in the camps and her liberation. She is speaking now about Bush’s commitment to battling terrorism, both here and in Israel. I don’t have her name, but she shows the most passion I’ve heard so far tonight.

10:03 Arnold is speaking now, talking about his immigrant experiences. He opened with a two jokes about himself and his acting, and one barb at the Democrats.
10:04 However, he now is speaking about the fear he felt as a young child, living in dread of the “Soviet boot” — and he has fired up the crowd, reminding them that the Austrians are only free due to American determination and resolve, the first indication that he will emphasize the need for those qualities now…
10:06 He openly talked about Richard Nixon as a “breath of fresh air” for a young boy yearning for freedom. Interesting; the crowd has no qualms about evoking Richard Nixon.
10:09 Arnold continually refers to his immigrant status. It appears to be his theme, and he’s tying it to a big-tent theme. Of course, Arnold represents the more liberal wing of the party.
Now he’s about to do a series about knowing if you’re a Republican — and it’s pretty effective. (I’ll clip this later from his text.) It’s all about responsibility, personal freedom, and American sovereignty, which has brought the crowd to its feet, whistling and stamping. “If you believe we must be fierce and determined to terminate terrorism, then you are a Republican!”
10:12 “Don’t be economic girly-men!” If you invoke Nixon, a girly-man reference won’t make you quail, of course…
10:14 Attacking the Two Americas theme — this is a theme that has run through all of the keynote speakers. It addresses the optimism that was missing from the Democrats in Boston. Rudy Giuliani utterly laid waste to this theme last night, but Arnold wants to make sure it’s really dead. …
10:17 Back to terrorism, and expect to hear more about this throughout the rest of Arnold’s speech. It’s an ironic moment, having one of the most famous immigrants to the US speaking to Americans about their decency and their goodness. ..
10:21 In the middle of a story about a wounded serviceman Arnold visited, a small disturbance erupted on the floor in front of the VIP box where Cheney and Giuliani are sitting. I didn’t see enough of it to find out what happened, but whatever it was, security forces pushed it off the floor quickly …
10:24 After leading a chant of “Four More Years,” Arnold finishes by thanking the crowd, and even takes a curtain call of sorts. A very good speech, and one that was very popular with the crowd. More later.