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In a Republican of McCain's vintage, I found it hard not to hear a patronizing tone as he introduced Sarah Palin today, though I'm sure he was bending over backward to avoid it: "Hey, what a feisty young gal I've got here." And something tells me this isn't a ploy to lure undecided women, much less unaligned Hillary supporters: A pro-life NRA babe isn't going to do it for them. Isn't McCain's real target the Evangelical vote? The gambit is already working. James Dobson of Focus on the Family announced earlier this year that he wouldn't and couldn't vote for McCain. Today he pronounced himself converted, thanks to a ticket that now includes someone for whom "the sanctity of life isn't just a political position." Now maybe Dobson will get busy mobilizing the faithful, because it's not just age, but organizational skills, that the McCain campaign has to worry about.
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Not that I wish him ill, but wouldn't the most surreal outcome of McCain's selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate be that McCain gets elected, shortly afterward he dies in office, and the president of the United States becomes a 44 year-old breast-feeding, moose-eating mother of five?
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Sarah Palin has, if nothing else, generated a lot off buzz for the McCain campaign. And a lot of mixed reactions. Dahlia didn't like her speech, but I was charmed. Now we have higlights of the speech available, so everyone can see for themselves.
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Dahlia, you direct your rage at The Man and The Media whereas mine goes in another direction. This is the game conservative women politicians have played forever: grab power but know just when to defer. If they play it exactly right, they can shield themselves from the disdain of the Rushes and Tuckers of the world. Sometimes they use the mommy card, or the good wife card, or just a few good tears. I remember in the early nineties writing about Enid Greene, one of the right wing warriors of the Gingrich generation whose campaign, it turned out, was mucked up in scandal. So when the time came to apologize, she just stood up onstage and wept, and talked about her baby daughter. Danielle Crittenden used to complain about women not using their husband's name (shes married to David Frum) Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham are masters at it. Palin could be photographed pointing a shotgun at Ted Stevens and no one would ever call her a ballbuster. She would just conveniently drop a diaper out of her purse, or blink those beauty queen browns, and that would be that. When I was younger, I used to rage at the hypocrisy of the Scarlett O'Hara strategy. But that was when I was sure it was doomed. Now, I just marvel at how successful its turned out to be. Maybe this is the Fourth Wave?
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Back in the late 1980s, there was a moment when British newspapers suddenly started hiring women—columnists, editors, whatever—en masse. The explanation for this change was not that Rupert Murdoch, Conrad Black, or the other British press barons had somehow become feminists: The explanation was that the newspaper market had suddenly become unbelievably competitive, and some marketing genius had worked out that women like to read articles which are written by other women. Women readers being just as good as male readers—better, even, since advertisers reckon they are in charge of household budgets—the British press fell about itself trying to hire women who would entice other women to buy newspapers. The job market for women in journalism exploded.
Seems to me that with the nomination of Sarah Palin we are witnessing a similar phenomenon. Hillary didn't get the presidential nomination herself, but her primary campaign did demonstrate something that the political marketing geniuses had hitherto denied: Women, at least some of them, will vote for other women. Neither John McCain nor the Republican Party had to be converted to feminism in order to draw the next obvious conclusion: If women vote for women, and women's votes are just as good as men's votes, then a female vice president could be a hugely important addition to the ticket.
The point here, of course, is that a thousand speeches about women's rights couldn't achieve what John McCain's cold calculation of his political interests managed to achieve. Women make progress in today's world because they are needed and wanted, not because they can succesfully pass equal-rights legislation or stage a protest march. Perhaps the job market for women in politics will now explode, too.
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Sarah Heath Palin is not the only resident of Wasilla, Ala., who got a career boost from the McCain campaign’s announcement that she will be No. 2 on the GOP presidential ticket. Alaska writer Kaylene Johnson’s biography of the two-year Alaska governor titled, Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska’s Political Establishment Upside Down was recently released by Epicenter Press, a “leading publisher of books about sled dog racing.” Johnson, a neighbor in Wasilla, where a younger Sarah was once Miss Wasilla, has written a largely flattering biography but exposes a few telling character traits. For example, among the details about Palin’s “boisterous and busy family,” Johnson mentions the little-known cover-up the future nominee had with her siblings (“We had a pact,” one sister admits, “If any of us … broke something, we promised not to tell.") The de facto campaign biography also reveals that though “everyone pitched in” for the mandatory "weeding … or stacking firewood,” Palin's father admits only Sarah displayed an “unbending, unapologetic streak of stubbornness.”
Although the $19.95 hardcover does not yet appear on the publisher’s list of best sellers, chances are, after today, sales to journalists will skyrocket. For those who can’t wait for their copy, the first chapter, “Growing Up Sarah” is posted on the publisher’s website.
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Something that keeps running through my mind as the blogs light up with posts about whether Sarah Palin is a serious candidate or presidential arm candy: What would Chris Matthews and Rush Limbaugh be saying about Palin had she been Obama’s veep choice instead of McCain’s? Would we be seeing Sarah Palin nutcrackers by the weekend? Would Fox News be airing a segment next week about her “nagging voice” in which so-called experts opine that ‘“men won’t vote for Sarah Palin because she reminds them of their nagging wives.” Would Chris Matthews liken her not-yet-ready for primetime voice to “fingernails on a blackboard?” Having watched Palin’s tribute to Hillary in Dayton this afternoon would Matthews accuse her of “playing the woman card?” Will he repeat the great wisdom that “"modern women" like Palin are unacceptable to "Midwest guys?” Will Tucker Carlson cop to the fact that every time he sees Palin, “I involuntarily cross my legs?” I don’t doubt Sarah Palin will face brutal misogyny in the coming weeks on the trail, and that infuriates me. But I’m willing to bet she won’t be called a “she-devil” or “bitch,” it won’t be happening in primetime, and it won’t be considered hilarious.
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And I thought I was a big deal for doing this post with a four-day-old baby in my arms! To me, Palin is a much more familiar type—one for whom I feel something more complicated than awe. She is obviously not a homeschooling mom but reminds me a lot of the Christian homeschooling moms I met when I was reporting my book about young evangelicals. Palin is Christian mom on steroids, what the best homeschooling mom could accomplish if she'd only had five kids instead of 10. She's peppy, hyperconfident, the ultimate multitasker. She registers voters with one hand while changing diapers with the other. She knocks down bridges and then gives birth.
Her pretty little eyes twinkle behind those librarian glasses as she repeats a string of American cliches with no irony ("heroes," "profiles in courage," "commander of the national guard"). So strong is her conviction, so unwavering her faith that she could take down the whole dark army on a Monday afternoon, if only her middle one weren't running a fever. So busy is she that she never stops to contemplate the obvious contradictions: that she believes in the patriarchy but doesn't live it, that she disdains feminism while taking full advantage.
In those moments when you are feeling awe, I just caution you all to remember where that limitless energy comes from: not uppers or Diet Coke but that same steady source that led Bush into Iraq and kept him from ever questioning his decision: Faith, Without a Doubt.
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Can we just stop for a moment and consider how amazing it is, in more than one sense of the word, that we have a vice-presidential nominee who has a son going to Iraq AND a baby? The time span itself leaves me flabbergasted. That is motherhood extended, motherhood practically eternal. It makes me want to know a lot more about Palin, but it also makes her seems awfully different than almost any woman I can think of.
You're right, Melinda, that Palin's demonstration of putting her anti-abortion views into practice will add a twist to the debate. Though I'm not sure I want the personal story of the vice-presidential nominee to overshadow the larger question about policy choices for the rest of us. Actually I am sure--it would be a mistake, and so the Democrats will probably try to tread as lightly as they can here. The more important question has got to be the one Dahlia raises, about whether this will come to seem like the catapulting forward of a woman who can handle the leap up the ladder and then some, or like the shaky choice of a campaign desperate to seem younger and hipper and daring. Since she's been in the national spotlight so little until now, Palin's performance over the next week or two matters a lot more than most VP choices would. She's got to seem like more than the sum or her quirky, unorthodox, bedrock conservative parts.
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I need to amend my earlier post about Sandra Day O’Connor. There’s a difference between being a less-than-perfect candidate and a painfully under-prepared one. Watch the Dayton speech. I am all for pandering to women, but not this way.
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In nature and on presidential tickets, symmetry is attractive. So both parties are offering us something old; something new; and something red, white, and blue, since both veep nominees have sons shipping off to Iraq soon.
Though I think it's smart that Sarah Palin is overtly pitching to the Hillary Holdouts—duh, isn't that the point?—it will be interesting to see how strong supporters of abortion rights react to a woman who really did a lot more, as Rachael said, than just talk about the value of every life; she consciously decided to take responsibility for the life of a child she knew would be born with Down syndrome. Apparently, she's so hard to fluster that after her water broke, she finished giving a long address before heading to the hospital. So it was perfect that her baby, born just last April, slept sweetly through the hoopla in Dayton today, in her sister's arms.
Giving her speech, Palin wasn't the second coming of Cicero, it's true. But she did put me in mind of my Kentucky grandma, who could do everything from plow a field to braid a rug, and taught me to fish with a cane pole. That's the sort of warm association that will be way more helpful to her party than a fourth senator would have been. At first glance, at least, this fishing, (basket)shooting, can-do kind of gal is not just a frontierswoman, she's bloomin' Daniela Boone.
On the personal level —where voting decisions are actually made—there is a lot to like about this PTA mom, high-school jock, and former union member, who can see Joey Biden's working-class roots and raise him, what with her high-school sweetheart of a fisherman hubby and her eau de saumon aroma. "We both grew up working with our hands,'' which have a French manicure now, I notice. She even coaxed what seemed to be a genuine smile out of McCain, who often looks like he has a toothache on the stump. She embodies his "reform'' message better than McCain himself does, since she actually waved off the famous bridge to nowhere: "I told Congress thanks but no thanks,'' she said today, to wild applause. "If our state wanted a bridge, I said we'd build it ourselves.'' And with her emergence on the national scene, I can hardly wait for the Northern Exposure reruns.
On the other side of the ledger, it seems that we could wind up with another president who can't pronounce nuclear. But for some reason, it doesn't grate as much coming from her.
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Absolutely agree that this was an inspired, brave and buzz-y choice for veep. Everything the Joe Biden pick was not. I think Team McCain has gamed this age we live in better than the Obama camp, for which they deserve serious credit. Now this is gonna be an election. And here I was getting ready to retire my girl-cleats for the rest of the fall. I couldn’t be more excited.
One quick thought on the “inexperience” charges against Sarah Palin. I have no problem at all with a candidate who is slightly less tested than some of the white male contenders she beat out. For one thing, I am not sure what "experience" even means when it comes to the vice presidency. For another, one of the single best decisions Ronald Reagan made was the nomination of an unknown and (relatively) inexperienced woman to the Supreme Court, just because she was a woman and it was high time. I can’t imagine what this country would look like for women today if he hadn’t.
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All right, now I'm excited. Back in March, I cast my primary vote for John McCain with confidence. His values, his stance on the issues matched mine better than those of any other Republican. His campaign was on a roll, the reports of its death the previous summer having been greatly exaggerated. He seemed to have the best chance of winning. But once he got the nomination, he just seemed ... lackluster. Granted, almost no one is going to look charismatic compared with Barack Obama, but when I saw an episode of The Daily Show with McCain talking to the press at a supermarket, standing in front of a large display of Dole orange juice, I knew what the joke was before Jon Stewart could open his mouth. . John McCain = Bob Dole.
But now he's gone and picked Sarah Palin, the young governor of Alaska for his running mate, and I could not be happier. Aside from her political bona fides, she is one cool woman. She's married to her high-school sweetheart, an Eskimo fisherman and "champion snowmobiler," according to her Wikipedia bio. They have five kids, all with slightly hippie-ish names, like Track and Willow. (No Prestons and Whitneys in that bunch.)
She's bound to appeal to fiscal conservatives, because she's as far as you can get from her fellow Alaskan Ted Stevens, the GOP senator recently indicted for "false financial disclosures" (read: corruption). She unseated Gov. Frank Murkowski in a primary and has both pushed through ethics reform and trimmed the fat from the state budget. She even killed the infamous "bridge to nowhere" project that brought Congress and Alaska so much ridicule.
Politically, it's a great move by McCain to appeal to the disgruntled Hillary voters that Obama might not have successfully wooed during the convention this week. Yes, she's pro-life, but she's not just talk. Faced with the heartbreaking news that her fifth child would likely have Down syndrome, she continued on with the pregnancy and gave birth to a son while in office, a son she calls "perfect." And like Hillary, she's one tough cookie. You don't take on an entrenched pol like Murkowski and succeed in a rugged state like Alaska if you're a lightweight.
She might have been a dark horse, but in hindsight, we should all be asking why that was so. A candidate who's going to appeal to the base, energize the campaign, and potentially reel in some Hillary supporters. Why would it have been anyone else?
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Just yesterday, I was thinking how waiting for John McCain to choose a running mate was like watching St. Peter's for white smoke; your little baby heart is hoping that the choice will be outside the box, sending a message of inclusion and care for other people's problems, but in the end ... hey, who woulda guessed, it's Cardinal Same-old, Same-old.
Now that he's chosen Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, however, I am delighted to have been proven wrong. A naked grab for the Hillary vote? Yeah, and so what? Does progress ever happen for other-than-pragmatic reasons? Palin is a smart, reforming, 44-year-old pro-life mama of five who will bring energy to the ticket and help McCain with conservatives for sure.
The downside, of course, is that given McCain's age and history of health problems, it was extra important for him to pick someone who really could be president tomorrow. And by so explicitly demonstrating that he thinks Palin is ready, I'd say that undercuts the idea that Obama, who is three years older and far more experienced than she, is somehow still too green.
There's also that investigation into whether she did or did not try to get the state trooper her sister is divorcing fired ... but even if true, a lot of women in particular might not be outraged.
In the end, none of Palin's competition for the vice-presidential nomination would have worked: Romney? You can't have a guy who makes the candidate wince every time he looks at him. Lieberman? So many Republicans and Democrats would have been alienated by that choice that I never understood what he was thinking with that one. And Pawlenty and Ridge: Not exactly game-changers. Which Palin could be.
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Emily Bazelon will be online today at noon with Slate's Christopher Beam to discuss what Barack Obama should do now that the convention is over, what he can expect from the opposition, and what possible pitfalls he needs to avoid. Send in a question!
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There was no Britney in Barack Obama's convention speech, which was a loaded triple-bacon burger of substance, quite restrained in its use of emotion, lest anyone accuse him of blinding us with mere rhetorical skill born of clear thinking, in a text he wrote himself. There were a few funny lines but a bunch of important ones, and several that distilled the election:
On energy policy, it was brave of him to say, as he did, that "Washington's been talking about our oil addiction for the last 30 years, and John McCain has been there for 26 of them. In that time, he's said no to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars, no to investments in renewable energy, no to renewable fuels. And today, we import triple the amount of oil as the day that Senator McCain took office. Now is the time to end this addiction, and to understand that drilling is a stop-gap measure, not a long-term solution. Not even close.'' A lot of people don't want to hear that, but it's true and must be said.
And on terrorism, it was bold to suggest that John McCain—who, as you might have heard, was a POW in Vietnam—is going to follow the Bushie playbook of talking tough but marching off in the wrong direction: "John McCain likes to say that he'll follow Bin Laden to the Gates of Hell—but he won't even go to the cave where he lives. ... You don't defeat a terrorist network that operates in 80 countries by occupying Iraq.''
But for me, the most important passages of all were these: First, he said that he welcomes a big fat fight over policy differences (and even "temperament''—meaning that all of you who worry he's gonna be too nice to McCain can put your shoulders down). "But what I will not do,'' he said, "is suggest that the senator takes his positions for political purposes. Because one of the things that we have to change in our politics is the idea that people cannot disagree without challenging each other's character and patriotism. The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain. The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and Independents, but they have fought together and bled together and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a Red America or a Blue America—they have served the United States of America. So I've got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first.''
Which is not only right but smart, because he's calling McCain out and at the same time reminding us why he caught our eye in the first place, at the convention four years ago, when he talked about how blue and red (and green and orange) voters really are tired of those tired and wasteful divisions.
Then he went beyond that generality of "c'mon, people now, smile on your brother ...'' and spelled out what common ground would look like: "We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country. The reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than for those plagued by gang violence in Cleveland, but don't tell me we can't uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals. I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in the hospital and to live lives free of discrimination. Passions fly on immigration, but I don't know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers.''
Each of these sentences contains hot-button words that most political consultants would urge clients to avoid at all costs, but that's what was so impressive; he is betting that voters really are smart enough and grown-up enough to want the common-sense approach they always say they want.
Then, in what I took to be a wry underscoring of this theme that patriotism isn't a red or blue thing, the note he ended on, literally, was from a country song, Brooks & Dunn's "Only in America," which George W. Bush played constantly on the campaign trail in '04. Even as a fan of country music, however, I hope this was a one-time joke; "Boot Scootin' Boogie'' just holds too many bad memories.
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He kept it down to earth tonight, which was the plan and a good idea—too much making people swoon would prove John McCain's charge that what Obama really is is a celebrity. And Obama nicely turned away the celebrity dig with a description of how he came from striving people who worked for everything they ever got. But he is at his most interesting, most compelling when he talks about himself, which is an unusual gift. When he switched to his policy plans, the specifics of what he wants to actually do for the country—he will make us energy independent in 10 years, for example—I just thought, "Sure you will." During the past couple of days, as both Bill Clinton and Joe Biden tried to talk about what Obama has done in his life to make us believe that he is ready to be president, you can't help but be struck by how little that adds up to. In the biggest speech to the country he has ever made, he didn't even try to list the accomplishments that make him qualified for the presidency. Yet, as you listen to him, strangely, that doesn't seem to matter.
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On the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, Barack Obama answered back tonight with a simple, “I Have a Plan.” He’s distilled the trademark soaring rhetoric and big ideas into a handful of crisp one-liners: “The change we need doesn't come from Washington. Change comes to Washington.” And “America, we cannot turn back.” But beyond that, it was a policy speech: Wonk 101. A point-by-point refutation of the claim that the man is all empty talk. He uncorked the soaring bits only at the very end and seemingly only to remind us that if he wanted to he could do it again the next time.
Obama deflected all the Swift Boat slime with a flick of his wrist: “If you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. ... You make a big election about small things.” He went and clocked McCain, who both “doesn’t get it” and forgets that “we all put our country first.” And as this convention sometimes seemed to gasp for air amid all the vast, monster egos, Obama was smart enough to stop talking about himself. “What the naysayers don't understand is that this election has never been about me. It's been about you.”
This was a strong speech and probably not an easy one for Obama, who might have preferred to light up the night sky like he did in ‘04. But for my money, he reminded everyone who’s ever been blown away by Barack Obama that being blown away by Barack Obama is not a one-, or two-, or three-shot deal. It’s something we could, and should maybe start to count on.
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I've got a bone to pick with Peggy Noonan's assessment of the Democratic Convention speeches in today's Wall Street Journal. Well, two. First, since when is Laura Bush "the most popular First Lady in modern American political history?" I know she polls well—as my husband pointed out, she reveals little, and what's not to like about things you don't know?—and I'm not sure how we're defining "modern American political history" exactly (when I Googled it, many references to the term seemed to encompass the latter half of the 20th century, if not the whole thing), but I have hard time seeing her as any Jackie O.
Second, Noonan contends that in her speech, "In order to paint both her professional life and her husband's, and in order to communicate what she feels is his singular compassion, [Michelle Obama] had to paint an America that is darker, sadder, grimmer, than most Americans experience their country to be." Seriously? Give me a break. Peggy Noonan obviously has not been laid off recently.
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Maybe, Emily, I didn't see Bill Clinton's speech the way you did because I actually expected him to do Barack Obama some good tonight. But then, that I expected better of him is an old, old story.
History was made in the Pepsi Center this evening, when William Jefferson Clinton arrived on schedule. I would not say that Michelle Obama twinkled at the sight of him ... and could not say whether Hillary did, because there was a lady waving a flag standing in front of her. But before too long, I was remembering why I voted for Ralph Nader in 1996. Back then, Clinton had the political capital to get a much better welfare reform bill but cared more about himself than all those down-on-their-luck Americans he was always biting his lip over. Tonight, he had the chance to make a much better pitch for Barack Obama. But again, instead, forever and what else is new, talked about how much better things were when he was president.
Who was it again that he was referring to when he said Obama "has the intelligence and curiosity every [emphasis his] successful president needs''? Or helpfully pointed out that he and Hillary have made Obama the candidate he is today: "The long primary tested and strengthened him.'' Oh, and not to worry because "he will continue and enhance our nation's commendable global leadership in an area in which I [emphasis his again] am deeply involved—the fight against AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.''
Though every word he said about how much better off we were when he was president was true, of course, I hadn't realized that burnishing his legacy was the point of the exercise. He had the crowd going bananas before he ever opened his presidential beak, and one of the lines they loved best was, "People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.'' Woohoo, true again. But how that moves one voter to Obama I'm sure I don't know.
"America can do better'' than it has under Bush. "And Barack Obama will do better.'' Really? That is one weak offense, Bubba. And the old hound dog did not exactly rip John McCain's head off, either, going on and on about how his wife's former drinking buddy loves this country and sure suffered in Hanoi. The best I could give him would be a gentleman's "C''. But at the moment, I am too mad to manage it.
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Bill, the original stickler for exact language, manages to give a roaring, inspiring endorsement of Obama without entirely selling out his wife: "Barack Obama is the man for this job."
[Emphasis mine. Just sayin'.]
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Wow. I have spent these many months—years?—gnashing my teeth over Bill Clinton, ruing his narcissism and practically forgetting the good he did as president. And there he is tonight, showing us his best side: the commanding, masterful framer of Democratic goals and values vs. Republican ones, and repeatedly bringing the choice back to this presidential election, this Democratic candidate, Barack Obama. It wasn't just "He is ready to lead" and "They say he's too young and inexperienced ... sound familiar?" (I'm paraphrasing.) It was the weaving of Obama with real policy of the future and the best of the Clinton past. And what a great new twist on his signature line about hope. Maybe it's all about defying expectations. Whatever—it doesn't really matter. Bill, you nailed it.
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Yeah, and she might also have whipped us up an omelet while she was up there, with feta, maybe, a little spinach, and some whole wheat toast would have been nice. But I personally am glad that Hillary did not sing any hosannas to Obama, or even try to sell us on how wonderful he is. Why? Because this was her Moonstruck moment, her last best chance to slap some sense into her crowd—metaphorically, of course—and scream "Snap out of it!" as if she were Cher and they were Nicolas Cage. To have done that and then pivoted to a sales pitch? Nope, she made the right call.
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Hillary did give a good speech—with the clear subtext that she should be giving it Thursday night, not tonight, and look what has been lost by her not being the nominee. She was strong and commanding and convincing. And then the camera cut to the face of Bill Clinton, all teary-eyed, lip-biting, suffused-with-love-for-his-woman, and I thought, “Sorry, Hillary, we just couldn’t go there again.” After she spent all the time she did tracing women’s suffrage and what a world-historical figure she was, she rejected the obvious next move of mentioning that this year’s Democratic nominee is similarly a figure of history. She could have then segued into saying something, anything, about the specific qualities of Barack Obama. You’re right, Dahlia; it’s ultimately up to Obama to sell himself. But with the race right now looking as tight as it is, a bunch of put-out PUMAs could be a mighty big problem.
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Hillary Clinton crushed tonight. Performed the pants off Mark Warner and Bob Casey and Deval Patrick and even the bolo-tied Brian Schweitzer -- who almost stole the show by mere virtue of the fact that unlike most of tonight’s speakers, he didn’t appear to be battery-operated. Clinton was as compelling, persuasive and commanding as we’ve come to expect. The fact that she ran circles around the men tonight reminded me why the glass ceiling with the 18 million cracks in it really is poised to shatter. I can’t recall a woman rocking a convention like that, ever.
It’s true. She talked about herself a lot. I think she’s earned every minute of that. Clinton made the case for why we “don’t need four more years of the last eight years” and why Americans work too hard, and have endured too much to suffer through more failed leadership. The mutual respect between her and Michelle Obama was nice to see. Like Emily, I could have wished she had made the case for Barack Obama as Barack Obama, beyond a fleeting reference to his early work in Chicago and the general claim that he is not John McCain. But then I can’t imagine being able to stand up and pay homage to a guy who destroyed my dream of a lifetime, either. Let’s give her credit for doing what she had to do: She lit up the crowd (and not a moment too soon) she reminded her supporters of the real stakes here; and she stuck a shrimp fork in John McCain’s eye enough times to really hurt a guy. So she didn’t sell the country on Obama. If he can’t manage to do that for himself, he’s got bigger problems than a bunch of put-out PUMAs.
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I thought Hillary did a great job tonight. I liked how enthusiastic she seemed about Obama and the Democratic Party generally. She didn't have that extreme tightness she gets in her face sometimes when she's saying things she clearly doesn't believe. And Melinda, you're totally right that she pumped up Obama by delivering a healthy dose of old-fashioned motherly chiding: "Did you get all energized just for me, or did you care also about the young marine, or the single mother with cancer raising children?" (to paraphrase). It was the best kind of guilt trip, one that's less about the guilt than about restoring you to your original sense of mission. Still, I wish that she had been even more explicit than she was: for example, why not address the McCain ad head on and say, "Make no mistake: I expect my supporters to go out to go out and vote for Obama in November."
For, boy, did Hillary's speech not have an effect on the female Clinton-loving delegate CNN interviewed afterward, who was so focused on her own sense of loss she clearly didn't give two flying pigs about anyone else's. Cancer-ridden mother, be damned. This delegate cried, huffed, and puffed about the fact that Obama won the nomination; her partner's fingers kept creeping up onto her right shoulder in anxiety. She was so worked up that I felt puzzled watching her: Is there something wrong with me? Why don't I find Hillary's loss to Obama that upsetting? I consider myself a feminist, for God's sake. But I just don't see her loss as a blow to feminism, I suppose. After all, Hillary got further than many candidates do—including many male runners-up. I suppose you could say she has more experience than Obama and should clearly be our candidate, as this woman was arguing. But experience hasn't always won in the past. And the fact that it didn't this time doesn't mean that her gender is to blame. I guess I see the cup as half-full. I also can't bring myself to feel that the "PUMA" movement is at all useful in a feminist way; it seems like special pleading.
Though I did have that old twinge of excitement at seeing Hillary in the mix. And yes, Melinda, I loved that pumpkin suit! And the makeup! (Even though I felt guilty about noticing it. I rarely care how male politicians look—though I do find myself scanning Obama in similar ways. What's that about?) Meanwhile, I was so put off by CNN's relentless focus on "women" in the audience (punctuated by shots of Bill Clinton, who looked like a cat in the cream when his presidency was mentioned) that I distracted myself by reading some outlandish metaphors into Clinton's outfit: If she couldn't be Cinderella in this story, she'll be the pumpkin that's turned into a carriage, and she'll get Barack—her Cinderfella—to that inaugural ball. If only she can get her supporters to agree to this version of the fairy tale.
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When Hillary asked in her speech tonight, "Were you in it just for me?" she crystallized for me why I wasn't behind her. I think if you are in it just for her, you're kind of throwing away the election for the Democrats. Hillary has always been polarizing—a lightning rod for right-wingers to organize, unite, and crusade against. Putting her at the head of the ticket would have been suicide for the Democratic Party. What she would have achieved for women becoming the first woman candidate for president would likely have cost the Democrats the election, unfortunately. And that's just not something at this point in history I, for one, am willing to risk. (Which is exactly the point she seemed to be making--that there's too much at stake right now not to unite as a party for this election--now that she's out of the race.)
That said, I thought she gave a good speech, and it was precisely because she asked the question "Were you in it just for me?" She appealed to her supporters to look beyond their own grudges and look out for the greater good of the party. She did what she needed to do to be the unity candle. I just could have done without so much of her own personal campaign catharsis. I'm glad she learned a lot, and now I'm sure her supporters feel better, having been acknowledged. But let's get on with the uniting part of it. Please, let the pity party be over.
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The fire-bright shade of orange Hillary picked to wear tonight must lie directly across the color wheel from the particular shade of punched-up blue that flanked the DNC podium. The contrast couldn't have been sharper. And I thought Hillary couldn't have been sharper, in her presentation, in her poise, in her tribute video. She was great. She just wasn't great for Barack Obama.
Here's where I felt it: "Were you in it for me?" she asked her supporters. "Or were you in it for" the young Marine, the mother struggling to make ends meet, etc. Good, that justified the minutes she'd just spent on real-people stories. Then I waited for the turn, for her to say: Because this election isn't about me. Now, it's about Barack Obama. He will make your lives better in the ways I wanted to do and would have done. Because he is ready to lead the American people. He will take us where we need to go. And now you need to be in this election for him, and so for yourselves.
OK, I don't have a future as a speech writer. But that was the mark she should have hit harder and didn't, wasn't it? She got close for a second with, "before we keep going, we've got to get going, by electing Barack Obama!" That was the kind of line she was up there to deliver. There should have been more of them. By the end, the orange was starting to look red to me, as in Scarlet O'Hara red--the bright color you wear to the party you had to be brave to come to. Dahlia, you said that Michelle Obama was brave last night. I thought that Hillary was brave tonight. But not, also, giving enough to hand to her former opponent everything he may need.
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Props to the lady in the electric pumpkin pantsuit. Because as Barack Obama's mama used to tell him, a little guilt is good for you. And Mama Hillary spelled that out again tonight, signaling to her people with all the subtlety of her bright orange outfit that if they want to leave her sitting home alone in the dark while they go running after that John McCain, well that's fine, no problem at all, really, because she's hardly done anything for them—other than work her heart out for 35 years. Oh, and it's only the FUTURE OF THE WORLD at stake: "I haven't spent the last 35 years in the trenches, advocating for children, campaigning for universal health care, helping parents balance work and family, and fighting for women's rights here at home and around the world, to see another Republican in the White House ... No way, no how, no McCain.'' Are we clear? "Were you in this campaign just for me?'' Nooooo, you were better than that, surely? "This won't be easy; progress never is. But it will be impossible unless we put a Democrat in the White House.'' Any questions? She was gracious to Michelle Obama, generous to Joe Biden and the first to lay a finger on John McCain: "In 2008, he still thinks it's OK that women don't earn equal pay ... With an agenda like that, it's no wonder George W. Bush and John McCain will be together in the Twin Cities next week; it's awfully hard to tell them apart ... We don't have a moment to lose or a vote to spare ...'' Case closed.
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I have a strange soft spot for Michelle Obama, largely because she was born in 1964, the year I was born, and because she reminds me of women I knew in college. Our generation of women were not the first to get to the Ivy League. We had a different cross to bear: We were the first to be treated as absolutely ordinary there. As Michelle's infamous senior thesis attests, some felt a residual need to rebel against the old institution anyway, struggled with the idea of themselves as "insiders," or attempted to remain "outsiders" for just a bit longer.
But most, obviously including Michelle, adjusted and moved on. All of which is a roundabout way of agreeing with Dahlia and Dana that this was a brilliant speech precisely because it avoided the sometimes grating language that Hillary might have used, and precisely because it was in fact post-feminist rather than feminist: The perfect way to address her/my generation is not to brag about how we got there first (because we didn't) but to talk honestly about the myriad ways in which we've tried or failed or managed to adjust, having arrived. Which she did, rather well.
All of that stuff about how parents try to set good examples for children was particularly well done, from Michelle as well as her brother and mother, and somehow not sick-making, as these things at conventions usually are. There, laid out for us, was an example of parents who persuaded their children to adopt their values: Would that we all could be so succesful in doing so.
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