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Waiting for George to speak
Wake me when it's over
BY DAVID S. BERNSTEIN

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2004, NEW YORK -- All the way up to the big speech, Thursday night's convention program was so bad it seemed intentionally so. Perhaps the campaign didn't want the delegates heading into prime time in that frothing-at-the-mouth mania that they enjoyed the night before. But this was dull, dull, dull; this was like watching the time-filler slides when you arrive early for a movie.

The unannounced speech by Tommy Franks provided a nice endorsement, but not much else. He fumbled forward with minimal inflection, and less warmth. Worse, the military man who led what an ever-increasing number of Americans now view as a botched job in Iraq and Afghanistan failed to change minds on that critical score. Yes, we removed the Taliban, we removed Saddam. What about all these things we read, about the entire western province of Iraq out of governmental control? About a still-inevitable bloody showdown in rebel-controlled Fallujah? About the need to call in a Shiite cleric from Iran to salvage a near-disaster? About Karzai controlling little beyond his capital city of Kabul? Can you tell us anything, General, that might dissuade us of the belief that a general draft will be necessary within six months to relieve overstretched troops?

"We see the smiles of little girls in Afghanistan," the General said. "We see resolve in the faces of emerging leaders."

Lynn Swann and Dorothy Hamill gave an awkward plea for physical fitness, looking like bad Academy Award presenters. Michael Williams, a nobody, said nothing. Mel Martinez droned an uninspiring Cuban-American rags-to-riches story. And throughout, treacly video segments showed George (who seems to spend a lot of time on some country porch, not in the White House), wife Laura, and the daughters he raised in his own image -- overprivileged, uncurious, and directionless.

Then up came Al Gore -- oh, no, George Pataki. Stiff, slow, and lifeless. He managed to describe New York's first responders charging into the Twin Towers on 9/11 without eliciting applause. And humorless. The desperate crowd roared with laughter and chanted "flip-flop," but were folks at home impressed with these lines? "This is a candidate who has to Google his own name to find out where he stands." "This fall we're going to win one for the Gipper. But our opponents, they're going to lose one with the Flipper." And, like so many speakers this week, Pataki evoked the World Trade Center and the Iraq war as one and the same thing. Perhaps the endless repetition is making it so in Americans' minds, but there have been no new arguments this week.

There was more entertainment from the occasional protester, including a gray-haired woman two rows directly behind me who unfurled a "Strong but Wrong" banner. Two of them managed to briefly disrupt Bush's speech.

Ah, but the magic hour of ten o'clock arrived: here was when America was tuning in, giving their President -- who a majority disapprove of -- a chance to win them over. And it got worse.

The Fred Thompson-narrated video biography might not have been the worst political film ever made, but it belongs on the list. Let me get this straight, George W. Bush fought back against the 9/11 attacks by going to a Yankees game? And he managed, heroically, to throw out the first pitch all the way from the mound even though he was wearing a bullet-proof vest? Any ordinary man, say a liberal wimp from Massachusetts, surely would have thrown from in front of the mound, the film suggested. "But he knew," Thompson intoned, "so George Bush took the mound."

And the video ended. I thought there might have been a technical glitch, a delay shifting to the next reel, where Bush actually does something about 2800 dead people other than playing catch with Jorge Posada. But no, that was actually the point of the film. Yeesh.


Issue Date: September 3, 2004
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