The Republican Convention: Day One

Hello readers, today the Republican Convention officially began. Rather than provide a cohesive summary of the proceedings with a theme, I’m going to share my convention thoughts in a “news and notes” format. You could also call it a stream of consciousness or a set of randomly incoherent opinions.

Each night of the convention has a tag line “Make American _______ Again.” Tonight’s “fill in the blank” word is “Safe,” thus the opening night of the show focused on the theme “Make America Safe Again.” Over a week ago, Donald Trump self-anointed himself the “law and order candidate.” This was a phrase, incidentally, used by Richard Nixon in 1968 in his successful bid for the Oval Office. Because it was Nixon’s line, Trump has been panned by the mainstream media for this but, if he successful in making it stick, it could be very effective in the campaign.

With terrorist attacks, mass shootings and now police officer shootings dominating our news pages every day, Americans are more concerned than ever about safety and security. Trump has a “tough guy” persona that plays very well in this environment.

Anyway, here are some highlights and low-lights of Day One (with one observation from the news Sunday):

• Melania Trump: for all of the faults of Donald Trump, there is a universal feeling that he has a wonderful family. The “apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” theory is a huge asset for the bombastic candidate with respect to his adult children. Tonight, the normally media-shy wife of the billionaire candidate was the keynote speaker of the night and she delivered. Let’s face it: it’s not easy to take your eyes off Melania Trump. The potential First Lady is a stunningly gorgeous woman. While her speech lacked a humanizing anecdote about her husband, it was generally well received by commentators on both the left and the right. Let’s face it, Donald Trump has a huge edge among male voters while Hillary Clinton has a huge edge among female voters. For the men, Melania’s speech offered a validation of the super rich successful man and a reason not to change the channel to ESPN. For women, she showed that she is is more than just a gorgeous trophy wife. The native Slovenian, speaking on national TV in a language that is not her native tongue, acquitted herself as a thoughtful, intelligent woman and one who believes in her husband. Whatever one may think about the cliche of a thrice-married billionaire married to a super-model, the Trump marriage is a far better example than appears to be the fake Clinton marriage.

  Late note: there was one potential major problem with Melania’s speech. Late Monday night, MSNBC played clips of Melania’s speech against Michelle Obama’s speech in 2008 and there are a lot of words spoken in the exact same sequence. 22 out of 26 words were spoken exactly as Michelle said them eight years ago. The anchors are using the words “plagiarism.” Nobody would blame Melania for this; it was clearly done by a speech-writer but, given the mainstream media’s anti-Trump fervor, expect this to become a major scandal. Trump needs to say “you’re fired” to this speech-writer instantly.

• The 60 Minutes Interview: Before getting to the first day of the convention, I feel compelled to mention the awkward interview that Trump and his VP nominee Mike Pence did with 60 Minutes on Sunday. The interviewer, Lesley Stahl, pointed out several policy differences between the two candidates. There were many cringe-worthy moments, most notably when Stahl pointed out the Pence voted for the war in Iraq. Trump has pounded Hillary Clinton for her poor judgement on the Iraq war vote. His attempted defense of Pence’s vote on the same war was laughable.

60 Minutes, CBS

Donald Trump: Many people have, and frankly, I’m one of the few that was right on Iraq.

Lesley Stahl: Yeah, but what about he–

Donald Trump: He’s entitled to make a mistake every once in a while (about Pence).

Lesley Stahl: But she’s not? OK, come on–

Donald Trump: But she’s not–

Lesley Stahl: She’s not?

Donald Trump: No. She’s not.

— Donald Trump on 60 Minutes, July 17

Trump also interrupted Pence more than once and I have to admit, I felt a little bad for the Indiana Governor, who looked like he was still trying to curry Mr. Trump’s favor on The Celebrity Apprentice.  One really interesting bit: towards the end of the interview, Stahl asked if he wanted to “govern” and deal with the “nitty gritty” and “tough decision making,” Trump’s answer “Sure, no, no, I want to govern.” He looked down: his answer was not convincing. I remain convinced that he’s having the time of his life running for president but still isn’t sure if he actually wants to do the job. His performance on 60 Minutes did not allay those suspicions. Anyway, this joint interview was pretty awful; I don’t think you’ll see them together again. Pence’s role on the ticket will be merely to mollify the social conservatives in the party.

Paul Manafort

• The Cleveland Convention: in the morning, Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort did a round of interviews on the morning shows blasting Ohio Governor John Kasich for not attending the convention, which is taking place in the state in which he governs. Manafort and Trump are clearly irked by this. Manafort insisted that the campaign made overtures to make peace with the vanquished presidential candidate but Kasich has refused to endorse the nominee. Anyway, Manafort called Kasich “embarrassing” and “petulant.” What truly stunning to me is that it seems that the personal beef between Trump and Kasich escalated to the convention floor. The delegation from each state sits together and placement is everything. The California delegation, who represent a state that will certainly support Hillary in the general election, has been seated close to the stage while the Ohio delegation is seated at the rear. It may be true that all of those delegates were pledged to support Kasich (who won the state during the primary process) but it seems to me that it wasn’t a useful way to make peace with grass roots activists in a state Trump absolutely must win in the fall.
• America’s Mayor: let’s face it, if delivering a rousing convention speech was the key to being president, Rudy Giuliani would be completing his second term as Commander in Chief. Oops, wait a minute, our current president made his mark with a rousing convention speech. Scratch that: being pro-choice and not thoroughly pro-gun was enough to doom Giuliani’s presidential run in 2008. Tonight, Giuliani was the featured speaker when the major networks came on the air at 10:00p PT. He echoed themes of Obama’s “no red states or blue states” 2004 convention speech while offering a full throated endorsement of the nominee. While touching on themes of both homeland security and domestic enforcement, he delivered his speech in a “mostly” non-partisan way and offered validation that Trump was ready to ascend to the highest office in the land.

“When they come to save your life, they don’t ask if you’re black or white, they just come to save you!!”

— Rudy Giuliani (about police officers)

• The military: certainly the big part of the “Make America Safe Again” theme of the evening related to the military. Among the speakers were Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, the first female combat veteran to serve in the Senate, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton (a Captain in the Army), “Lone Survivor” NAVY Seal Marcus Luttrell and others. I have to admit, I was cringing a little bit when it was pointed out on one of the networks that it was one year ago today that Trump said of John McCain (a former Vietnam POW), “I like people who don’t get captured.” I also cringed a bit when former Texas Governor Rick Perry said on-stage that “Making America Great Again starts with taking care of our veterans.” It was just a year ago that Perry called Trump a “cancer on conservatism.” Retired General Michael Flynn delivered the final speech in “prime time.” He was a VP semi-finalist for Trump.
• Cops Lives Matter: one of the best received speakers of the evening was Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who began his remarks this way: “Ladies and gentleman, I would like to make something very clear. Blue Lives
  

  David Clarke

  Matter in America.” Needless to say, one of the biggest issues dominating the news coverage today is the deaths of African-Americans at the hands of police officers and, of course, the “retaliation” murders of cops in Dallas and Baton Rouge. Clarke as one of the biggest critics in the black community of the “Black Lives Matter” movement, which some say is at least partially responsible for motivating the officer assassins. The eloquent Clarke is well known to viewers of Fox News but not to the rest of the nation. I think the Trump campaign missed an opportunity by not having him speak in “prime time,” from 10:00p to 11:00p ET, when the major networks join the cable networks to cover the convention. This is the time slot that non-political-junkies tune in, if for no other reason than they were watching something else as a lead-in. The final featured speaker after 10 ET was Flynn. His speech, which followed Melania’s, was rather pedestrian. I think it would have been a better decision for the general TV audience to see Clarke, a black face who supports the “law and order” theme of the candidate. It is well known that the vast majority of African-Americans will support Hillary Clinton; it would have been helpful for the nation to see that not everyone does. But of course this didn’t have to be a choice: the Trump campaign could have asked both speakers to trim a few minutes and showcased both Flynn and Clarke.

• The celebrity factor: many months ago, Trump talked about how he was going to put some more show-biz into the convention, which would include celebrities. Well, I have to say, Day One looked like an ordinary convention. The celebrities were, umm, let’s just say, a bit underwhelming. Willie Robertson, Scott Baio, and Anthony Sabato Jr. were the celebrities. To be fair, Hollywood conservatives often get black-listed but I can name several who have much, more star power than the bunch we saw tonight: Kelsey Grammer, Robert Downey Jr., Jon Voight and Clint Eastwood are a few names that come to mind (OK, maybe it was smart not to invite Clint again after his train-wreck appearance for Romney in 2012.

The bottom line on balance, for me, is positive. This was a “normal” convention opening night. It was mostly gaffe-free and did nothing but put the unconventional nominee in a better light. Thumbs up for Day One for the Donald.

Thanks for reading.

Chris Bodig