Power Line: Last Night at the Garden

August 31, 2004

Last Night at the Garden

Here are some more detailed thoughts on my observations inside the Garden last night.

First, John McCain. He got a warm reception from the crowd, but nowhere near as warm as Giuliani's. Of course, his speech was nowhere near as good as Rudy's. But I don't think I'm the only Republican partisan who doesn't quite trust McCain. Not as a soldier or as a man, but as a Republican. He never is quite willing to do what it would take to prevent himself from being used by the media and by the Democrats in ways that are damaging to his fellow Republicans. Crazy as it sounds, it was not, in fact, absurd for the Kerry campaign to believe that the co-chairman of Arizonans for Bush might be available to Kerry as a Vice-Presidential candidate. I think this suspicion of McCain showed in the delegates' response to him.

By far the loudest response McCain got--probably the strongest response anyone got--was when he denounced Michael Moore as "a disingenuous filmmaker who would have us believe that Saddam’s Iraq was an oasis of peace, when in fact it was a place of indescribable cruelty...” I think the Republicans should do more of this. The problem with Moore isn't that he is fat, crude or unpatriotic, although all of those things are true. His main fault is that he is a liar. He is also the intellectual leader of today's Democratic Party. The Republicans need to do more to hang him around the Democrats' neck, while empasizing his untruthfulness.

I'm a little surprised that I haven't seen more in the commentary on last nights festivities about what came between McCain and Giuliani--short talks by three relatives of those who perished on September 11, Deena Burnett, whose husband one of the leaders of the uprising on Flight 93; Debra Burlingame, whose brother Chip piloted the American Airlines flight that crashed into Pentagon, and Tara Stackpole, whose husband, a fireman, died in the World Trade Center.

It has been widely remarked that the main theme of the evening was September 11, but it was these three short speeches that made that theme most explicit. They concluded with a moment of silent commemoration of September 11, followed by the singing of Amazing Grace. (I hate to quibble, by the way, but if there are two songs I never need to hear again, they are Amazing Grace and New York, New York. Both, predictably, were sung last night.)

The speeches by these three women were powerful. But not only were they non-partisan, they were completely apolitical. They never mentioned President Bush or suggested any political loyalty or affiliation. But this kind of thing makes the Democrats squirm, and no doubt some Democrats will denounce even these exquisitely neutral presentations as "politicization" of the September 11 attacks. Which is their way of saying that they can attack President Bush, but it is dirty pool for him to defend himself.

All of last night's main speakers articulated the arguments for the Iraq war, and all drew the connections between that war and the terrorist attacks. But is was Tara Stackpole who did so most effectively when she concluded her speech by saying:

Timmy [her husband] is my hero. I am honored to share him with you. Just as I am proud to lend America my oldest son, Kevin, who is headed to Iraq in December with his Navy unit. America must never forget the sacrifices of September 11th or those that are made every day by our sons and daughters in the military service.

This was the most moving moment of the night; you could hear the crowd gasp when Mrs. Stackpole said that her son was going to Iraq. She was emotional but serene; if John McCain were as good a speaker as Tara Stackpole, he would have brought the house down.

Giuliani was great, of course. Several major themes wove through his speech. One was an appeal to independents and Democrats. Giuliani said:

I don’t believe we’re right about everything and Democrats are wrong about everything. Neither party has a monopoly on virtue. But I do believe that there are times in our history when our ideas are more necessary and important for what we are facing.

This is not the year, in other words, to base your vote on Medicare or environmental policy.

Another persistent theme was an appeal to Jewish voters. Giuliani's recounting of the modern history of terrorism began with the murder of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Olympics. He told the story of the murder of Leon Klinghoffer aboard the Achille Lauro, although as the Trunk brilliantly pointed out last night, he missed the opportunity to link that terrorist attack to Iraq and Saddam Hussein. And Giuliani used Kerry's contradictory depictions of Israel's security fence as an example of Kerry's flip-flopping. Giuliani's appeal to Jewish voters was subtle, but unmistakable. Let's hope it works.

Giuliani spent the first part of his speech recalling the events of September 11 and their immediate aftermath. This was important and necessary because of the media embargo on images of the terrorist attacks. Giuliani described watching people jump to their deaths from the upper stories of the World Trade Center and the wall of smoke and dust that rolled down the street when the first tower collapsed. His own leadership, and even heroism, on that day are well known, so the Democrats can't challenge his right to tell those stories. But it is shameful that the media, and in particular the television networks, have adopted a policy of not broadcasting images of September 11, for what appear to be transparently political reasons. So it falls to the Republicans to remind voters what that day was like.

What made Giuliani's speech great and the crowd ecstatic was, of course, his evisceration of John Kerry in the middle portion of the speech. It is well known that Giuliani was once a top-notch trial lawyer who successfully prosecuted Mafia chieftains--not a job for the faint of heart. But his timing and delivery are beyond that of even a superb trial lawyer; in another life, Giuliani could have been a comedian. His facial expressions, his shrugs, were professional-quality ridicule.

Watching Giuliani reminded me of one of the costs of the party's decline in the Northeast. The party's leaders are now generally Southwestern and Midwestern; as such, their styles tend to be laconic and soft-spoken. Giuliani is urban, Italian and Northeastern to the core, and he needed those traditions to deliver the speech he gave last night.

There was nothing new in Giuliani's denunciation of Kerry as a flip-flopper. What made Giuliani's speech nuclear, as I described it last night, were two things: Giuliani's brilliant delivery, and his stature as a hero of September 11. John Kerry simply cannot stand up to Giuliani's ridicule; the contrast between the two men, in style and substance, could hardly be greater. Let's hope the Party finds many opportunities to get Giuliani before the voters between now and November.

Posted by John at 08:10 AM |

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