But the evidence, as of this writing, is that Obama gained measurable ground last week, at least before being hit by another set of poor jobs numbers. Whether the gains last, or fade as other Obama bounces have done this year, depends on how effectively Team Romney pivots to reenter the conversation this week, and how much the dark economic clouds dominate post-convention coverage. It is fair, though, to conclude that Democrats used their week more effectively than their Tampa counterparts.
Part of the difference, obviously, is the bravura speechmaking of Bill Clinton, who seems destined to hold two spots of prominence in this era: the last universally popular president and the sole politician of his generation who mastered the technique of persuasion. In a time span in which Barack Obama and George W. Bush won the presidency primarily by selling themselves, and in Bush’s case, and perhaps Obama’s, held the office by relying on their opponent’s deficiencies, Clinton alone has the gift of arguing for a theory of government and policies that match it.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: The Democrats’ Fury
Contributing RP, and former Republican National Chairman, Michael Steele, reported on the past weeks’ political conventions in an interview with John Stewart on his prestigious “Daily Show.” Watch it here:
After two unaccustomed weeks away from writing on this site, I return with some observations about the shortened, but effective Tampa convention. The primary one is that Mitt Romney completed a phase in which he has strengthened himself without having to accumulate unnecessary risk: unlike George H.W. Bush, whose bid to inject energy into the Republican ticket saddled him with Dan Quayle, or John McCain, whose move to exploit Barack Obama’s residual weakness with working class white females prompted him to gamble on Sarah Palin, Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan has added a needed reservoir of boldness with a downside that has proved, so far, to be minimal: two weeks of hammering from Democrats have not had measurable negative impact (the comparably weak favorability numbers for Ryan have much more to do with the hyper polarized climate than the partisan knock-up of his budget proposals) on Romney’s standing. Nor, given Ryan’s deftness so far, the ample experience he has defending his proposals, and the compromised hand Democrats hold on Medicare, is there much reason to fear that the upcoming debate between he and Joe Biden pose more danger than opportunity.
Second, the most obvious vulnerability for Republicans heading into Tampa—that the party’s more hard edged social conservatism might spill too much into view—never materialized. Ironically, had Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin not imploded a week earlier over his tone-death, primitive case against a rape incest exception to an abortion ban, the Republican platform’s own hard line might have garnered more withering scrutiny. Instead, the swiftness and intensity of the Republican blowback against Akin cast one obscure candidate rather than a platform plank as the extreme element in the abortion wars, offering Romney and his party an opportunity to isolate the far right rather than being crowded by it.
Third, Condoleezza Rice’s elegant speech the convention’s second night, marking Rice’s evolution from respectful neutrality to forceful opposition to Obama, was the most significant defection on stage last week—and that is no false modesty on my part. The relatively apolitical Rice’s evisceration of Obama’s tentativeness on the diplomatic stage (as opposed to his assertiveness in marshaling American power in unilateral contexts like the campaign against terror networks) couldn’t be diminished with ad hominem attacks. The surest sign of her impact: the fact that Democratic commentators like Chris Matthews were reduced to coopting the moment by praising its substance and making a mountain out of her failure to call Obama’s name.
Fourth, Marco Rubio’s tour de force address preceding Romney may not have been classic introduction fare, but it signaled that the Florida senator could conceivably dominate the landscape in the next few years in the event of a Romney defeat in a way that resembles George W. Bush’s meteoric ascension in the late Clinton years: like Bush, and unlike Romney, John McCain, or Bob Dole, Rubio seems capable of assembling a front-runner’s coalition that is comprised of grassroots activists as well as establishment donors and operatives. For all of Chris Christie’s brilliance as a conservative reformer in an unpropitious environment, and Paul Ryan’s bona fides as a fiscal truth-teller, it is Rubio whose rhetorical narrative seemed to most energize the delegates. The template is one that could prove enormously appealing if the party’s aspirations shift to reconnecting conservatism to both imagination and boldness, as opposed to austerity. (It will help that unlike Christie, he will not face the peril of a reelection prior to 2016, and unlike Ryan, will not be in any way accountable if the ticket ends up losing.)
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: Takeaways from Tampa
Last week, Bill Clinton was the consummate trial lawyer that he would have become had his Arkansas comebacks not worked out: saddled with bad facts, he talked three times as long and tugged on twice as many heartstrings as he and his text had planned.
To use a riff that Clinton regularly invoked, was he right? Infrequently, and the wrongs included some whoppers: like the Democratic meme that a grinch named Mitch McConnell stole Obama’s prospects by pledging to block his reelection. The only problem: when McConnell said it, he had a meager 40 votes in the Senate, and managed to stop a grand total of 0 Obama initiatives in the first half of this term (even after gaining a 41st vote to preserve the right of filibuster). Then there is the inconvenient truth that the allegedly obstructive McConnell cut a deal with Democrats that avoided a massive scheduled tax hike at the end of 2010 and by so doing, almost certainly saved Obama from a second recession in three years.
And the jobs bill that the grinch supposedly blocked in 2011: still waiting for an Obama loyalist, Harry Reid, to bring it to the floor in a Democratic Senate. Which of course calls to mind the multiple Obama budgets, the prescriptive documents that Clinton once called “blueprints for the future”, that failed to command a single Democratic vote in either house. An oddity perhaps of the legislative process, but one more thing that undercuts the theme that it is a unique kind of right-wing intransigence that has undone Obama.
What about the notion that hard-hearted Republicans have it in mind to devastate Medicaid and to leave the old and poor in a tear-inducing state? Powerful, beautiful words–it just happens that it was the Obama Administration that threatened to shut down state Medicaid programs if governors refused to accept the Affordable Care Act’s new Medicaid regulations, until seven Supreme Court justices stopped them. Or the glossing over of the Affordable Care Act’s 700 billion dollar reduction in Medicare on the grounds that it was “merely” a reduction in provider fees: a shrewdly constructed distinction until one recalls that the essence of Medicare is reimbursing providers rather than making direct outlays to patients.
It was telling, too, that Clinton in full flight, and with 50 minutes to do it, never found his way to a rendition of Obama’s record that is as succinct and as definitive as the former president’s take on his own tenure: 22 million jobs, expanded wealth and reduced poverty, and fiscal policies that augmented enough purchasing power to amount to a check to American. The Obama case, even in its most lovingly embroidered light, is too textured with mitigation—replacing precipitous losses with still meager private sector job growth that is way short of the natural expansion in the labor pool; a healthcare overhaul that does not contain private costs; a Wall Street reform that does not rein in wild speculative losses at JP Morgan; heightened poverty and child hunger on a liberal president’s watch, a relatively successful legislative record that few Americans feel affected by. That the master orator could not condense it into a success story with no “buts”, and the fact that the words “Barack Obama has succeeded” were missing from Clinton’s text and the ad-libs, speaks volumes to Obama’s dilemma.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis: Clinton for the Defense
On the last evening of the 2000 Democratic National Convention, as the newly elected State Treasurer of Kentucky and a former staffer of the party’s presidential nominee, The RP spoke for three minutes in near-prime-time about his mentor and friend, Al Gore. It would be the highlight of his political career — he’d suffer through a decade more in the muck, never to be on such a large stage.
But thanks to the magic of YouTube, you can enjoy this twelve-year-old flashback:
By Jonathan Miller, on Wed Sep 5, 2012 at 8:30 AM ET
Contributing RP Artur Davis was given a prime time slot to speak last Tuesday at the Republican National Convention. Below, we have a transcript of his speech and a few excerpted articles about it:
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you.
Some of you may know, the last time I spoke at a convention, it turned out I was in the wrong
place.
So, Tampa, my fellow Republicans, thank you for welcoming me where I belong.
We have a country to turn around. This week you will nominate the most experienced executive to seek the presidency in 60 years in Mitt Romney.
He has no illusions about what makes America great, and he doesn’t confuse the presidency with celebrity, or loftiness with leadership.
What a difference four years makes.
The Democrats’ ads convince me that Governor Romney can’t sing, but his record convinces me he knows how to lead, and I think you know which skill we need more.
Now, America is a land of second chances, and I gather you have room for the estimated 6 million of us who know we got it wrong in 2008 and who want to fix it.
Maybe we should have known that night in Denver that things that begin with plywood Greek columns and artificial smoke typically don’t end well.
Maybe the Hollywood stars and the glamour blinded us a little: you thought it was the glare, some of us thought it was a halo.
But in all seriousness, do you know why so many of us believed? We led with our hearts and our dreams that we could be more inclusive than America had ever been, and no candidate had ever spoken so beautifully.
But dreams meet daybreak: the jobless know what I mean, so do the families who wonder how this Administration could wreck a recovery for three years and counting.
So many of those high-flown words have faded.
Read the rest of… Artur Davis’ RNC Speech and Media Coverage
Last week, GOP U.S. Senate candidate Todd Akin once again said that he is staying in the race, despite calls from his own party to drop out following his controversial statements about rape and pregnancy.
In the following clip, contributing RP Jason Grill and Republican Annie Pressley debate whether Akin still has any shot at winning in November:
By Jonathan Miller, on Mon Aug 27, 2012 at 1:30 PM ET
A touching piece in Sunday’s The New York Times about the man who helped inspired me (and many others) into public service; but more importantly, has set a standard for post-politics that should be a model for us all, regardless of party. (Oh, and best yet, Al Gore is quoted using the phrase “recovering politician”): [The Grey Lady]
How odd is it that Barack Obama’s acceptance speech seemed the least consequential part of the week that just ended in Charlotte? While the average, not over saturated with politics voter probably received Obama’s talk more favorably than most pundits, who from left to right (with the charmingly amusing exception of Al Sharpton) panned the talk as fair to middling, it was certainly an address that was low on ambition or imagination. Michael Gerson is probably right to suggest that an incomparable number of political low-lights could offer it at a Democratic banquet next weekend without making much of a stir.
Part of the difference, obviously, is the bravura speechmaking of Bill Clinton, who seems destined to hold two spots of prominence in this era: the last universally popular president and the sole politician of his generation who mastered the technique of persuasion. In a time span in which Barack Obama and George W. Bush won the presidency primarily by selling themselves, and in Bush’s case, and perhaps Obama’s, held the office by relying on their opponent’s deficiencies, Clinton alone has the gift of arguing for a theory of government and policies that match it. 
