Wrapping up the Kerr-vention

Well, John Kerry certainly seemed fired up in this speech, and that alone made it a big improvement over his previous drowse-a-thons. And using Abraham Lincoln's words against the current incarnation of his Republican party was a clever touch. But there definitely were some problems.

First of all, John Kerry has got to let the crowd cheer and applaud. I cannot emphasize this enough. Genuine excitement at the venue filters through to us folks watching at home, so let it happen! Wait for the adulation to die down a little, and THEN proceed. And if you tell a joke, let the crowd laugh at it before plowing into the next section of your speech. These are very basic rules of public speaking. It shows that you're actually paying attention to your audience. Kerry should know this by now.

Secondly....enough nonsense about how we're the "can do people" and a "country of the future". Of course we're a country of the future. Time goes forward, not backward, doesn't it? Now if Bush were maniacally plotting to alter the laws of time, this might have some relevance. (Perhaps he's saving such transgressions for a second term.) But that obviously isn't the case, so it just comes across as meaningless. And the more meaningless stuff you frontload a speech with, the greater risk you run of losing your TV audience in the first five minutes.

Third, who is he trying to fool with this statement?

You don't value families by kicking kids out of after school programs and taking cops off our streets, so that Enron can get another tax break.

Fair enough, but does this really implicate the man you want it to? According to Citizens for Tax Justice , Enron paid no income taxes at all in four of the last five years of the Clinton Administration. Their corporate tax welfare benefits in that timespan totaled $1 billion dollars. Exactly which party is Kerry is railing against here?

I liked the talk of lessening our dependence on Middle Eastern oil. And I have no quarrel with putting American ingenuity to the task of harnessing alternate renewable sources to such purposes in the future. However, this line gave me pause:

And our energy plan for a stronger America will invest in new technologies and alternative fuels and the cars of the future -- so that no young American in uniform will ever be held hostage to our dependence on oil from the Middle East.

Now try to imagine Michael Moore saying the same thing. Not that hard, is it? By linking our dependence on oil to our armed forces, Kerry seems to be saying that the war in Iraq was indeed all about oil. It's nice that the loony left got a shout-out in this pseudo-hawkish speech, but that's exactly what this statment is: loony. If our interests in Iraq were truly centered around oil, we never would have invaded the place and spent billions of dollars on reconstruction and democratization efforts. We simply would have dropped sanctions against Saddam and resumed the purchase of his oil. It would have been a lot easier and a lot cheaper (not to mention far more immoral.) And I think our high gasoline prices bear testament to that position.

Aside from that, I think his speech was successful in that it wasn't a failure (damning with faint praise, perhaps?) He didn't drop the ball, which is all he needed to do at this point. And he didn't look or sound too French, which is always a good thing. But he's still got a lot of work ahead of him, because speeches like that aren't going to be enough to get him in the White House.

-Dave O'Connell

P.S. I'd like to amend my earlier remarks about how only one convention speech impressed me. C-SPAN re-aired 8 hours of speeches over the weekend and I caught a few that I had missed the first time around, including Ron Reagan's classy speech on stem-cell research.

However, I wouldn't add Gore's, Carter's, or Clinton's to that list. Gore's was split in half between joking comments and bitter comments about the 2000 election, leaving me to wonder if he should just get over the damn thing already. For his own mental health, I mean. Carter delivered his speech competently, but why is the guy who helped feed North Korea's nucelar ambitions through his dealmaking as a Clinton envoy even bringing up the subject of North Korea in the first place? Clinton's speech dragged at the beginning, but perked up near the end when he employed a clever rhetorical device in which he criticized himself as he was criticizing Bush. Score him points for that one, and I don't think Clinton has a bad speech in him, but it was a merely okay outing.

And who let Little Orphan Annie on stage?