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Saturday, Jul 11, 2009
Bill Clinton's impassioned paean to John Kerry caps a day of Democratic unity -- and fires up a party determined to wrest back the White House.
Jul 27, 2004 | The balloons are still hanging from the ceiling of the Fleet Center this morning. But there was a moment last night, just as Bill Clinton moved from his methodical explication of Republican policies to an emotional endorsement of Sen. John Kerry, just as the crowd began to think not only about the Clinton past but also about the Kerry future. There was a moment there when you thought surely that they'd crank back up "Don't Stop (Thinking About Tomorrow)," that John Kerry would step onto the stage, and one-by-one Hillary and Chelsea and Al and Tipper and Teresa and maybe even John and Elizabeth Edwards might appear from the wings, and the balloons would drop and the scattershot images from the first day of John Kerry's convention -- or was it Bill Clinton's convention? -- would come together in one cohesive whole.
That moment never came, but day one of the Democratic National Convention was still a triumph of sorts for the Kerry campaign. The goal was to put a happy face on dissent, to get through a day without producing a snippet of video that the Republican National Committee or their friends at Fox could use to prove that angry anti-Bush hatred seethes right under the surface of the Democrats' extreme makeover. (The Heinz Kerry "Shove it" video notwithstanding.)
On that count -- and on many others -- the Kerry campaign succeeded. The Clintons endorsed Kerry without overshadowing him, Al Gore aired the Democrats' grievances without rancor, and Howard Dean and Dennis Kucinich and their supporters made it clear that they would behave themselves -- and that they were, more or less, happy to do so.
Asked Monday night if the Kerry campaign had asked him to tone down his speech tonight, Dean told Salon: "They don't have to tell me. We've gotta win this thing."
That understanding underscored everything Monday night, from Gore's good-humored take on the 2000 election to Clinton's charitable assessment of Bush administration sincerity. "Democrats and Republicans have very different and honestly held ideas on the choices we should make rooted in fundamentally different views of how we should meet our common challenges at home and how we should play our role in the world," Clinton said in a nationally televised prime time speech in which he calmly laid out the differences between the priorities of the two major parties.
"They think the role of government is to concentrate wealth and power in the hands of those who embrace their political, economic, and social views, leaving ordinary citizens to fend for themselves on matters like health care and retirement security," he said. "Since most Americans are not that far to the right, they have to portray us Democrats as unacceptable, lacking in strength and values. In other words, they need a divided America."
The convention is designed in large part to solve the problem of voters saying they don't know enough about Kerry, and Clinton presented an impassioned portrayal of Kerry -- perhaps only rivaled by that of Kerry running mate John Edwards. "Here is what I know about John Kerry," Clinton told the convention. "During the Vietnam War, many young men -- including the current president, the vice president and me -- could have gone to Vietnam but didn't. John Kerry came from a privileged background and could have avoided it too. Instead he said, send me."
But the delegates roared their most boisterous approval for Clinton's critiques of the Bush administration, executed with his trademark cataloguing of wonkish policy factoids. Only Clinton, really, could bring thousands to their feet pumping their fists at the mention of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. And his speech was laced with jokes that left the delegates howling with approval, including one at the expense of the Bush tax cuts. "When I was in office, the Republicans were pretty mean to me," he said. "When I left and made money, I became part of the most important group in the world to them. At first I thought I should send them a thank you note -- until I realized they were sending you the bill."
It was, at times, vintage Clinton, at least vintage Bill Clinton. Hillary Rodham Clinton's performance was less interesting and less inspired, although that may have been more the fault of the schedule than the speaker. After initially leaving her off the convention list, the Kerry campaign plugged in Hillary to introduce Bill on a night that was also supposed to introduce John Kerry. With her speech devoted to the two men, there was little time for Hillary to speak of anything else, including herself.
Although President Clinton's speech was the night's big prime time attraction, Gore's was in many ways more eagerly anticipated. Would delegates see the sleepy Al that at least some Democrats blame for his Electoral College defeat in 2000? Or would the country see the man Matt Drudge calls "Al Roar," the fiery speaker who has gone after the Bush administration with a passion he never showed four years ago?
