So, being immersed in DNC hype here in Boston, it’s tough not to get a little into it. So here’s a round-up of some things worth reading from today.
A slightly sad story (melodramatically written) about what Michael Dukakis is doing in his hometown: “We caught up with Dukakis Sunday evening at a C-list party for the Florida delegation at Northeastern University, where he still teaches at 71. He and Kitty worked the room alone - no security, no advance team, just a single aide hovering nearby…”
Now, I’m not the world’s most political person, but I just can’t see how a rerun of “According to Jim” is more important than the convention. According to this Times story, Jim Lehrer had this to say to the big three networks’ anchors about the networks:
“We’re about to elect a president of the United States at a time when we have young people dying in our name overseas, we just had a report from the 9/11 commission which says we are not safe as a nation, and one of these two groups of people is going to run our country,” Mr. Lehrer said. “The fact that you three networks decided it was not important enough to run in prime time, the message that gives the American people is huge.”
(That said, PBS’s coverage is less than stellar; there must be a better contrarian panelist than the NY Times’s invertibrate token conservative, David Brooks. )
The fact that Boston is locked down, expressway closed, train stations closed, billions spent, besides being an implicit victory for terrorism, has had Bostonians dreading a miserable commute for weeks. So, so many people took vacation or worked from home, that the commute turned out to not be so bad. I rode my bike instead of taking the T, to avoid having to read the police my rights.
Didn’t actually see Gore’s speech, but aside from the nice one-liner about being the first one laid off, he made a point that I think the Democrats should keep hammering: “Wouldn’t we be safer with a president who didn’t insist on confusing al-Qaida with Iraq? Doesn’t that divert too much of our attention away from the principal danger?”
Can I just vote for Clinton again? OK, I don’t really want to vote for Clinton again, but he’s a hell of a speaker, no? His speech was brilliant on many counts, but in my opinion, this it-takes-a-draft-dodger-to-know-a-draft-dodger logic is right up there with the greatest Clintonisms of days past: “During the Vietnam War, many young men, including the current president, the vice president and me, could have gone to Vietnam and didn’t. John Kerry came from a privileged background. He could have avoided going too, but instead, he said: Send me.”
It’s such a brilliant position to take. It makes him seem generous to praise John Kerry at his own expense, but it does more damage to the current president. And in the end, you end up respecting John Kerry, but kind of loving Clinton.
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