August 31st, 2012
I’ve been offline most of the day haven’t kept touch with the congealing opinion on Clint Eastwood’s performance last night. But with 20 hours of distance, the following two thoughts occur to me:
1) The further I get from it, the more I like it. His timing wasn’t perfect, but it was perfect in all the critical spots. And the parts where he missed his timing actually built a sense of mild danger about the performance. I don’t know how it played on TV, but in the arena I kept thinking, Dear God, this thing could go completely off the rails any second. That frisson of disaster narrowly avoided lent the thing a kind of extra spontaneity and power.
Also, I’ve never seen anything like it at a convention. It completely broke the form. That, all by itself, made it interesting and memorable.
2) I think there’s the potential of real political danger in it for the Obama campaign. You could easily–really easily–imagine a world in which the Dems try to rebut it or mock it in Charlotte and instead they actually make the bite deeper. You could also imagine a world in which the empty chair becomes a pop symbol of Obama’s failed presidency. Romney and Ryan could leave an empty chair on every stage they mount. It could be a kind of iconic short-hand for popular disillusionment with Obama’s job performance.
Or, it could just fade into nothing. If I were in the Obama campaign or on the revamped JournoList, I’d tell Democrats and their partisans to pretend the entire thing never happened. Don’t mention it. Don’t mock it. Just ignore it and hope that it evaporates with the rest of the convention ephemera.
Oh, I’ve also got some reconsideration on Dark Knight Rises, having seen it, um, subsequently. That’ll have to wait until Monday.
9 commentsRNC Day 3 Notes
August 30th, 2012
Two quick kudos:
1) I didn’t catch the name of a cappella group which sang the national anthem, but it was one of the most beautiful arrangements I’ve ever heard. Phenomenal.
2) The law enforcement people in Tampa this week have been wonderful. Professional, helpful, friendly, even. A sterling, exceptional job they’ve done this week.
* I poked fun at the RNC set design–it looks like the Windows 8 tiles. But they’ve really grown on me during the week. I actually kind of love it now.
* Early prediction: Unless Mitt Romney passes out, the immediate CW on it will be that it was an excellent, strong speech–a forceful case for his presidency and a better speech than anyone expected him to give. The performance of his life!
Because that’s what people almost always say immediately after the nominee gives his acceptance speech. It takes a couple days for a more considered appraisal to settle in.
* That said, this has been a very competently-run convention. Probably the most impressive GOP convention I’ve been to, in terms of messaging and production.
* As Clint Eastwood ad libs, Venus Williams dropped the first set and it looking terrible. Roddick announced he’s retiring. We could be heading into the nuclear winter of American tennis. After Serena it’s a waste land.
* I’d never seen Rubio live before. I’m now a believer in his native political skills. His drop-in line as he walked out onstage–“I think I just drank Clint Eastwood’s water”–was incredibly deft and showed a totally intuitive sense of theater. As he speaks, I’m watching the teleprompter and he’s occasionally dropping in lines. And they all work. It’s a very impressive display of political gifts.
That said, his speech would have been twice as powerful if he had pressed through some of the applause lines, as Condi Rice did last night when she put on a clinic.
* Instant reaction to the Romney speech as it’s in process (I read ahead through the transcript for the rest): Whatever you think of the text, or the delivery–this is a pre-Ryan speech. It’s absolutely the speech he would have given a month ago when his theory of the campaign was “jobs-jobs-jobs, make the election a referendum not a choice.” So if you thought that strategy was smart then, then you probably think this speech is well conceived.
On it’s own merits, though, it struck me on first-blush as a good effort with some great moments.
Possible updates to follow later in the night; either here or on the Twitters.
1 commentRNC Day 2: Speaker Report Card
August 30th, 2012
Last night there were three big speeches: Rice, Martinez, and Ryan. All three were above average, but my own sense was that Ryan’s was the weakest of the three. Quick thoughts:
1) Condi Rice had both the best speech and the best delivery.If you read it as an essay it hangs together with a beginning, middle, and end. It both an arc and a point and had just enough poetry sprinkled in (“America has a way of making the impossible seem inevitable”) to make me think that Peggy Noonan may have taken an editing pass on it. And she even challenged her audience slightly. “But today, today, when I can look at your zip code and I can tell whether you’re going to get a good education, can I honestly say it does not matter where you came from, it matters where you are going?”–that’s not just a rebuke of teachers’ unions. It’s a rebuke to Republicans who deny the problems we’re having with class mobility.
It wasn’t just her text, though. Rice seems to have gone to the Christopher Walken School of Speechifying. Her delivery was marked not by changes in register or dramatic pauses for applause lines. What she did was tinker ever so slightly with cadences (“we know it was never, in . . . evitable”) and even pronunciation (“a-lies” instead of “allies”). It was as though she went through the speech, took out all the punctuation, and then re-punctuated it on her own with an eye toward making the delivery just slightly unexpected.
Also–and this is a lesson every speaker ought to take from Zell Miller’s epic 2004 speech–she didn’t let the audience bog the speech down with applause. People kept clapping, but Rice pushed through these pauses. (See that “Today–today” example above.) That’s how you sustain tension in a speech. If you let the audience interrupt you with cheers throughout, it has the effect of deflating the balloon slightly each time. But if you power through, the pressure builds. And the release at the end of the speech is then cathartic. I doubt we’re going to see a better speech either here or in Charlotte.
2) Martinez did well not to be blown off the stage by following Rice. Her demeanor is pleasant and sunny, but tough. She was a conversational speaker and that’s hard to pull off.
3) Ryan’s speech was good enough; his presentation was good enough. I suspect it was just fine as a national introduction. But it seemed to me that there was no through-line to the speech. There were some great moments and very good lines. But the speech itself was just kind of an amorphous set of remarks. It didn’t really go anywhere and I don’t know that it accomplished any specific rhetorical or narrative goal. As a performance I’d say it ranked far below Sarah Palin’s 2008 convention speech.
One final note about Ann Romney’s Tuesday night speech. It didn’t really do anything for me, though people seemed to love it. But one question: When’s the last time we had a presidential candidate’s spouse gave a convention speech and people didn’t declare how fantastic her performance was? The general verdict on all spouses is that they’re amazing, attractive women who are so eloquent and appealing and they are (almost invariably) their husbands’ secret weapons. So in this sense, Ann Romney is no different from Michelle Obama, Cindy McCain, Laura Bush, Liddy Dole, Hillary Clinton, and Barbara Bush before her.
This isn’t to say that Ann Romney didn’t do a marvelous job–just to point out that we always say how wonderful these women speakers are.
(Funnily enough, the one spouse over the years who struck me as being genuinely attractive as a person was Theresa Kerry–because she was (a) not particularly into the election and (b) candid and emotionally accessible in a way I found utterly charming.)
7 commentsNote from Tampa
August 29th, 2012
Oh. Oh no. How did that happen? (Prices redacted so as to keep this post sfw.)
Conventions as Rorschach Tests
August 29th, 2012
One of the more surprising lessons I’ve learned about electoral politics over the years is that political conventions play very differently depending on the vantage point. In 2004, for instance, I left Boston and New York convinced that the Democrats had put on an incredibly slick, highly effective production while the Republicans looked tired and ineffectual. That’s what I took away from watching them in person. Watching from the vantage point of TV, viewers seemed to think differently. And stepping back even further, to the point of the broader, less-engaged political audience, John Kerry actually lost a point or two in the polls following his convention while Bush ticked upwards.
These things just look different depending on how you’re seeing them.
So for whatever it’s worth, in the room last night, Artur Davis gave a heck of a stemwinder that people loved and Chris Christie executed a really difficult task–giving a rah-rah speech about deficit reduction that subtly tied our collective fiscal unseriousness to the unserious 2008 election. I thought it played very well. But I’m curious to see what the (more important) reaction will be from TV viewers.
2 comments
Memo to Convention Speakers, Both Parties
August 28th, 2012
Please retire the slogan “We want (It’s time to take) our country back.”
It’s un-American. Who is the “we” in this formulation? Who will we be taking it back from? Do we really think any group or team can own America in such a way that the country no longer belongs to other groups?
“Take our country back” is the type of construct you’d expect to hear in a tribal, riven state like Serbia. It’s not fitting for America.
I don’t know who started this ugly trope, but both parties use it these days and it’s time to stop.
8 commentsStatus Update
August 28th, 2012
Blogging will probably be light this week as I’m off doing other work.
However, my gift to you is this unbelievably beautiful Jody Bottum / Alan Davison essay on Strat-o-Matic. Sample majesty:
Despite its enthusiasts’ claims, Strat-O-Matic’s influence on Major League diamonds is indirect, at best, flowing through the interest in statistical analysis that the board game awakened.
But awaken that interest the game did—and something more as well. Deep in the psyche of boys lies a hunger for order and a world that makes sense, an intelligible universe of rankings and meaning. Deep in the psyche of girls too, maybe, although girls were alien creatures, at best, and we didn’t know any who played Strat-O-Matic when we were young. Besides, the inner lives of adolescent males hold other things—monsters and nightmares—that need to be starved even while the blessèd rage for order is fed on numbers. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of boys? But some of it, surely, wasted away from inattention during the hours spent deciding the best way to set the batting lineup of the 1961 Tigers.
Print it and read it outside sitting with a cup of coffee and all will be right with the world.
2 commentsHonest Question about Todd Akin
August 27th, 2012
I agree with nearly all of the analysis which says that Todd Akin should drop out of his Missouri senate race: Akin is likely to lose; his presence could drag down other Republicans on the ticket; that seat should be winnable for a competent candidate; etc.
The only bit I don’t agree with is the notion that Akin should get out for his own good. James Taranto, for example, says that Akin is probably getting bad advice from people such as Mike Huckabee.
Sure, it would be better for the GOP, Mitt Romney, and all of America for Akin to get out of the race. But from Akin’s perspective, would dropping out be good for Todd Akin?
There are three possible outcomes:
(1) Akin drops out like everyone wants him to.
(2) Akin stays in and loses.
(3) Akin stays in and wins.
Under scenario #1, it’s not clear what Akin gets out of the deal. I suppose he avoids the calumny of #2, but he’s so radioactive it’s not like the Missouri GOP is ever going to do him a favor down the line. If he drops out, his politically career is over.
Under #2, his political career is also over. Maybe there’s more bitterness on the part of his fellow Republicans. But at the end of the day, there’s not much less than zero.
Which leaves us with #3. Let’s say the chances of Akin winning are really, really short. Maybe 1-in-10 or 1-in-20. Well if he somehow does win, all of a sudden he becomes basically a Republican in good standing again. After all, he’ll be a United States senator, with quite a lot of power, and the GOP will need his vote. Look how Lisa Murkowski was welcomed back inside the tent after she defied the party by pursuing a write-in campaign against the GOP. Once you win, the leverage completely shifts–the party needs you as much as you need it.
So if you’re Akin, maybe it makes sense to take the really, really long shot because while the odds are terrible, the payoff is big and the practical difference between losing and leaving is negligible.
Again, none of this is to argue that Akin should stay in the race. (If I were his consigliere I’d tell him that there are worse things than failing at electoral politics.) It’s only to suggest that doing so may not be the product of bad advice or a misunderstanding of his strategic options.
7 commentsTrailer City
August 24th, 2012
Entirely predictable. Emotionally manipulative in the extreme. And basically impossible to resist. Just cry already.
2 comments
Old Tubesteak, RIP
August 24th, 2012
Joel Engel on the passing of a surf legend.
0 commentsAnnals of Tech Reporting
August 23rd, 2012
So Ben Reid at “Redmond Pie” is reporting that the Playstation 4 may support 4K resolution. Or something. It’s kind of hard to tell because the story is basically illiterate. Try to decode the following:
* “The company is set to bring forth an 80-inch XBR LED TV with 4K resolution, and from then on will begin to push 4K into the market, sans 3DTV a couple of years back.”
* “Sony is the first of the electronics companies to move towards 4K, and it wouldn’t be naïve to presume other outfits will follow suit.”
* “Blu-ray benefitted majorly from the PlayStation 3, helping the format see off HD DVD (remember that?) in the battle of the high-def media, and it may just be that same company that again sees 4K hit the ground running in the fast-paced world of technology. Those with little knowledge of tech now find themselves with mass Blu-ray collections, and Sony will be hoping it can push 4K resolution under the noses of PlayStation 4 users.”
* “The effect it could have on sales of 4K television sets cannot be stipulated enough, since those with a device capable of playing 4K resolution media will find themselves being unwittingly groomed for the next-generation in television viewing.”
Really?
3 commentsI’m in Love.
August 23rd, 2012
2 comments