Political conventions don’t do much for me. They’re drawn out, overly orchestrated and so full of half-truths, spin and lies that even the fact-checkers can’t keep up with them all.
I made sure I watched the speeches given by the main attractions — Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — as well as by Clinton’s running mate and my former classmate, Tim Kaine. But the rest I kept up with by reading the newspaper accounts the next day.
Maybe it was because I was on vacation during the week of the Republican convention, but it didn’t seem to have nearly as many “must watch” nights as the Democrats did.
A few observations:
Long is only
desirable off the tee.
The optimal length of a political speech is 30 minutes, 45 minutes tops. Hillary Clinton went 10 minutes over, Trump an interminable 25. Clinton’s problem was she tried to cover too many policy proposals. Trump, who had almost nothing in the way of concrete proposals, just likes to hear himself talk.
I started yawning midway through both of their speeches, but Clinton rallied by the end with her digs at Trump’s ego and her evoking of a country that tries to work together through its differences rather than getting torn apart by them.
In Trump’s case, I hung onto the bitter end, but I was tempted several times to go on to bed.
Smiling is OK.
The only person who scowled more than Trump over the past two weeks was Bernie Sanders.
The more that the Clinton-Kaine ticket tried to fawn over the disgruntled socialist, the more agitated his face seemed to get.
I’m not sure why young people were so enamored with the crank, but he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy you’d want to go have a beer with. I sure hope the country is not in as foul a mood as he is.
Trump does have a woman problem.
Opinion polls say that Trump badly trails Clinton among women voters as she seeks to become the first female U.S. president in history. I believe it.
I watched the Republican nominee’s speech with three female members of my family. At one point, I looked around the room, and all three were snoozing. If Trump’s speech had been a reality show, he would have been canceled after the pilot.
What’s Hillary got against dresses?
Maybe the Democratic nominee thinks she has to look masculine in order to get past the gender bias that has kept women out of the Oval Office except as first ladies. Or maybe she thinks that as women age, it’s more flattering to cover up from the neck down.
Whatever, there’s nothing all that stylish about a pant suit. Clinton must have a closet full of them, and the white number she pulled out for her acceptance speech was better than most. But it would be OK for her to show a glimpse of calf now and then.
Let’s hope for the sake of women’s fashion that if she wins the White House, she won’t be a clothing trendsetter.
Enough with
the kids.
It has become obligatory at conventions for the nominees to trot out one or more of their children to testify as to what great parents the candidates are and have been.
Supposedly this humanizes the nominees, and I guess it does to a point. But it’s also part of the fakery.
Not all parents and kids get along, and odds are probably good that the tensions are higher where the parents are consumed in their careers, whether that be in business like Trump or in politics like Clinton. Maybe Clinton, given her maternal instincts, was able to juggle career and family better than most. But Trump? Not a chance.
And the Oscar
goes to ...
I know it’s part of the packaging, but I like the videos the campaigns produce to introduce the candidates to convention-goers and, more importantly, to the tens of millions of TV viewers watching.
Clinton’s video had more of a Hollywood touch and a more interesting story line than Trump’s. It allowed Clinton to tell her own story at points, which helped connect her to the audience. Trump, uncharacteristically, didn’t open his mouth on his. Clinton’s video emphasized personal aspects of her past — the tough childhood of her mother, for example — that enhanced her likeability. Trump’s went on and on about his business successes and little about what formed his character or his principles.
Clinton also had the advantage of Morgan Freeman, the Academy Award-winning actor who grew up in Greenwood, handling the narration. Trump’s narrator, Jon Voigt, is a fine actor, too, but he’s no Morgan Freeman.
