DNC-Day 1

The opening night of the Democratic National Convention was a not too surprising pageant of heritage and core values that lays the foundation for what is to come. Speeches by Nancy Pelosi, Jesse Jackson Jr., Maya Soetoro-Ng (Obama’s sister), Edward Kennedy, and Michele Obama filled the evening.

A General Observation: I hate to start by being negative but I have to speak to the weakness of most political speeches today. It has become the habit of political speechmakers to attempt to say too much and thus to say nothing at all. This was the crippling habit of Bill Clinton, who had the potential to be a brilliant speechmaker but who in fact gained a reputation for some of the most boring speeches on record. When he had some good things to say, he imbedded them in speeches that ranged too broadly. Take a moment and try to remember a single memorable sentence from a Clinton speech. Outside of his statements connected to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, you likely will not be able to recall anything at all, much less anything with the beauty of Reagan’s “It’s morning again in America” or even George W. Bush’s “The commitment of our fathers is now the calling on our time.” By trying to hit every point of interest, Clinton ended up hitting no point of interest.

This was also the problem last night. There were good speakers on the stage, but the moment was often squandered. The worst was Michele Obama’s speech. Now, I should say quickly that I like Michele Obama and I believe she could have been magnificent last night, but the speech that was written for her was too broad, rambling and unstructured. It was also wrongly focused. Her writers failed her by dumbing her down and trying to present this brilliant Harvard Law School graduate as a harried campaign soccer mom. I am having a hard time imagining the process—having written a good number of speeches myself—that would have produced such a bland result. My advice to the Obama speech writing team is “Let Michele be Michele.” Making her a political Stepford wife will not serve your candidate well.

I thought that the most moving moment of the convention’s first night came while Senator Edward Kennedy was speaking and the camera’s showed Maria Shriver, Kennedy’s niece and Arnold Schwarzenegger's wife, wiping tears from her eyes. We imagine her thinking what many of us were pondering as the aging and ailing Lion of the Senate spoke: this may well be the last convention of his life.

What is not being carried on television is the exceptional emphasis on religion at this convention. Usually Democratic conventions offer the obligatory embarrassed nod to religion and move on. This time the convention is wrapped in religion, owing to the faith based politics of Barack Obama. There was, for the first time, an interfaith worship service on Sunday to launch the convention on the right tone. The first evening was closed in prayer by Donald Miller, author of the gritty Christian bestseller, Blue Like Jazz. And there will be other intriguing emphases on religion, including a prayer on the last night, just after Barack Obama makes the closing speech, by a Florida megachurch pastor who is pro-life. This is all part of the trend that I and others have identified before: the political left in America is rediscovering its religious voice.

A final thought: There are some beautiful things happening at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, but they are likely to be lost in the usual political convention habit of over-producing and under-inspiring. Surely the convention’s designers and writers are astute enough to understand that what this generation wants is the raw, the real, yes—event the gritty, and all of it packaged with sincerity and noble intentions. What we are getting so far is the Democratic Party’s Bland Vanilla Cookie Factory. And this from the bunch offering us an exciting young candidate of color and fire. Republicans, take note: You can carry the day with a creative, passionate, tough-minded convention. Bore us at your peril.

More soon.