The service part still seems easier than the public part
By A.M. | PHILADELPHIA
SARAH SILVERMAN, who told the Bernie-or-Busters that they were “being ridiculous”. Senator Cory Booker’s optimism, rousing despite its multiple perorations and atmosphere of audition. Joe Biden’s roaring paean to America and its resilient middle class. Michael Bloomberg’s stinging billionaire-on-billionaire put-down (“I’m a New Yorker—and I know a con when I see one”). Barack Obama’s elegant elision of the virtues of self-government with the risks of Donald Trump’s authoritarianism, before an audience seemingly as enamoured of the current president as ever. On this last night of the Democratic National Convention, the Reverend William Barber, a civil-rights leader who set the hall alight. On the first night, Michelle Obama. Especially Michelle Obama.
There was lots of memorable oratory at this week’s convention in Philadelphia; intended to boost Hillary Clinton, these performances risked eclipsing her finale instead. It had been a slow reveal: absent on the first day, on the second Mrs Clinton spoke briefly by videolink after her formal nomination, which, in the end, her cantankerous rival, Senator Bernie Sanders, helped to orchestrate. On the third, she appeared on stage—but silently—after Mr Obama took his elegant turn. Finally, on July 28th, “the woman in the arena”, as he had called her, adapting Teddy Roosevelt, entered it properly, for what was billed as the most important speech of her life.
It wasn’t a let-down, but nor was it quite a triumph. It had many good lines, but much of the writing was better than some of her delivery. And the messages were jumbled by her understandable bid to yoke her liberal base to the white blue-collar and floating voters whom she needs to persuade, and whom previous speakers, including her vice-presidential pick, Tim Kaine, had also courted. So there was a reference to “coal country” as well as pledges on gay and women’s rights and spirited advocacy for religious and ethnic minorities. Mrs Clinton ambitiously promised free college tuition for the middle class, and vowed that she didn’t intend to confiscate Americans’ guns: “I just don’t want you to be shot by someone who shouldn’t have a gun in the first place.”
All this went along with an effort to reintroduce herself to a country that, in large part, stubbornly refuses to like her. In her long career of public service, Mrs Clinton said, “the service part has always come easier than the public part”, an acknowledgement that she still seems, to many Americans, opaque, unsympathetic or downright rebarbative. The humanising mission was abetted by an introduction from her daughter, Chelsea, and a swish mini-biopic narrated by Morgan Freeman. (Between the Hollywood contingent and the pop stars, who on the final night included Carole King and Katy Perry, the razzmatazz of the Democratic convention easily outshone the Republicans’ event, where the glitz relied mainly on the guy from “Duck Dynasty”, a reality-TV show.)
Mrs Clinton’s task was complicated by the persistence, inside the hall, of heckling from a few Sandernistas—a startling self-indulgence given that, on the eve of the convention, their party’s now-official nominee trailed Mr Trump in some opinion polls. Earlier they had heckled John Allen, a stentorian retired general, and even a combat veteran who was maimed in a suicide bombing, with chants of “no more war”. Those were drowned out by much louder cries of “U-S-A”; together with a profuse waving of the Stars-and-Stripes, the chants contributed to what often felt like a pageant of patriotism—one which, to many observers, seemed to befit a Republican gathering more than a traditional Democratic one. Most television viewers will have seen the flag-waving but missed the childish antics of the hecklers.
Earlier, the themes of national security and tolerance were bridged in an astonishing appearance by Khizr Khan, the father of a Muslim-American soldier killed in Iraq. There had been numerous heartwrenching cameos during this well-choreographed convention, notably from the mothers of Sandra Bland, a black woman who died in police custody, and of Christopher Leinonen, a victim of the Orlando massacre. But the moment Mr Khan produced a copy of America’s constitution and waved it reprovingly at Donald Trump was the most memorable.
That anticipated the best parts of Mrs Clinton’s own speech, which were her attacks on her opponent. Mr Trump, she observed, invoking Ronald Reagan, had “taken the Republican Party a long way: from morning in America to midnight in America.” She rebuked his pessimism with Franklin Roosevelt’s dictum about “fear itself. “America is great,” she declared, in a twofer that took on both Mr Trump’s gloom and his bigotry, “because America is good.” As Mr Obama had, she portrayed Mr Trump’s egotism as fundamentally un-American. Her countrymen, she said, “don’t say ‘I alone can fix it’. We say ‘we’ll fix it together’.” In one of her slickest zingers she noted that “a man you can bait with a tweet is not a man you can trust with nuclear weapons.”
Over the course of the convention, the enthusiasm for Mrs Clinton in the hall had progressed from dutifulness to something more authentic. The tipping point was the speech given by her husband Bill, who amid his rambling folksiness managed to portray her as a woman of principle and a real-life human being. Most of the Sandernistas were silenced if not entirely won over. How far she can yet extend that appeal remains to be seen, however. Too many of the speeches focused on virtues of the candidate that are not much in dispute: her brains, her political consistency, her hard work, experience and so on. It is unclear whether the most damaging perception—that she is untrustworthy—can be salved.
Another attribute that was often touted was the candidate’s toughness. Chelsea Clinton reverted to that mantra in her insistence that her mother was “a fighter who never, ever gives up.” The reason for that emphasis may in part be because of the salient threat of terrorism, in part a tacit recognition of the bare-knuckle dust-up that American politics has become—and in part because Mrs Clinton is a woman. To historians her achievement in becoming the first female presidential candidate for a major party may be the most important aspect of this convention; it mattered hugely to many of her supporters in the room. But it can sometimes seem that, in the broader electorate, this momentous breakthrough has not garnered quite the notice or accolades it deserves. That may be precisely because it seems so belated, or because Mrs Clinton’s candidacy seemed inevitable for so long. Or because she is Mrs Clinton.
