Høi turns out to have some interesting things to say, despite the fact that he might as well be describing a space alien, so far apart are Paul’s libertarian political views and those prevailing in Høi’s native Denmark, land of 25% value-added tax and the world’s highest income tax. He sets up the Republican situation in Kentucky as a straightforward struggle between Rand Paul on one side (“pitchfork Republicanism”) and Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (he of the “polished floors”) on the other. That’s because Paul is not really of the Republican Party, although he did just win its nomination for Senate in Kentucky – he’s really a creature of the Tea Party, what Høi calls “a fundamentally conservative grassroots movement.”

So the two men are not on the same side, and Paul’s success is a threat to McConnell in two respects, each of which Høi develops clearly:

1. Paul’s political positions are “radical,” even for Republicans, e.g. a balanced-budget amendment to the Constitution, calling a halt to Congressional budget earmarks, abolishing most cabinet departments (Education, Energy, Veterans Affairs) as not prescribed by the Founding Fathers. But the American people are attached to their veterans benefits, their earmarks, their federal education support; such views may be exciting to hear articulated, but ultimately they do not go over well once voters come to realize someone actually wants to put them into practice. The unpopularity Paul is courting among a wider range of national voters, because of his “Republican” label, threatens to damage Republican electoral fortunes on a wider scale;
   
2. Not only Republican electoral fortunes, Rand Paul also threatens Republican office-holders more generally as the new star of the Tea Party movement. For that movement is, if nothing else, anti-incumbent and so potentially hostile to Democrat and Republican alike. Again, the antagonism between Paul and McConnell, despite their ostensible membership in the same party, can be expected to spread more generally to the Tea Party movement offering its own candidates in opposition to incumbent Republican office-holders elsewhere, as has already happened in Utah where (as Høi notes) sitting Senator Bob Bennett was denied renomination on the Republican ticket recently by a voting groundswell of Tea Party activists.
   

[T]his must have made McConnell tear at his thinning hair, for McConnell has done everything he could to obstruct President Obama, he has used all the tricks in the book, the classy ones and the not-so-classy ones, to thwart him, and then into the bargain he has to hear about being accommodating.

That’s just the fickleness of politics, I guess, and that might now be turning against Rand Paul himself due to his post-election PR problems concerning the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which Høi does not bring up; maybe he’s saving that subject for a future column. He also makes no mention, other than speaking in passing of a “career politician” (levebrøds politiker), of Trey Grayson, who was Paul’s actual opponent – not Mitch McConnell – in that recent Kentucky Republican primary. In other words, the Paul vs. McConnell story-line is probably a bit overblown, even if it is also enormously simplifying – maybe Høi needs to do that for his Danish readers. Still, I like his insight into the new Republican candidate for Senate in Kentucky, the sort of American “space alien” about whom he is paid to go live in the US and report.

                          

Democratic convention: plenty of black-, brown-, etc. skinned people hanging around, many of which female; Republican convention: Very few of these; instead, relatively many “sturdy to fat white men,” in clothes more formal than he remembers seeing in Denver. Democratic: live band in the hall, lots of dancing; Republican: piped-in music, about the only dancing being that routine with all their identical cowboy hats that the Texas delegation performs. Democratic: a high-tech podium with a large video-screen upon which you are sure to see the live head-shot of someone being mentioned in the speaker’s speech, if said subject-person is at all to be found in the convention hall; Republican: an installation not so technically adept, basically calibrated to display humongous photos of a young, wounded John McCain. (Say, did you know that he spent quite a few years captive in Hanoi as a North Vietnamese POW?)

C’mon Levi – Lose the Kid Already!

Remarque actually uses the majority of space in this blog-post of his to grouch about his lack of access to those whom he really would like to interview. I guess that’s about what we can expect from such a rank journalistic outsider (“Interview request from the Volkskrant? Who dat?”), but he also does not help his cause with his rather eccentric choice of subjects. He wants to interview the McCain boys, because he remembers reading in John McCain’s autobiography about how McCain really didn’t want to go into the military, but felt he had no choice because both his grandfather and his father had become highly-accomplished naval officers. They have also gone into the military: do they feel the same way? And he also desires dearly the opportunity to pose a question to another figure scheduled to show up in St. Paul, one cast into public renown only recently, namely Levi Johnston, that hockey-mad Wasilla High School senior who got Bristol Palin with child. And the question would be along the lines of “C’mon Levi, what if your future mother-in-law didn’t happen to be the right-wing, anti-abortionist Alaska state governor: would you still be getting married and having the kid?” From the indication on Levi’s MySpace page (“I don’t want kids” – MySpace profile since taken down), he rather suspects the answers would be in the negative.

Remarque also has includes a head-shot of Levi in this article, and he is indeed said to be a hunky redneck, but ladies (and you non-traditional males), there’s no need to click on Remarque’s link just for that. That very same head-shot, plus another photo of him in action on the hockey-rink, plus a demure portrait of the mother-to-be in hoodie-sweatshirt, and then of course all the details about the love-affair known as of this point are available in English courtesy of the New York Daily News. (Britol Palin’s pregnancy was an open secret back home, and the lede: “He’s a superhunky bad-boy ice hockey player from cold country; she’s a chestnut-haired beauty and popular high school senior.”) In fact, if you compare them you can tell that that’s the same photo of Levi that Remarque uses on the Volkskrant page, but it’s somewhat distorted. Oh, and check out the hockey-rink picture, specifically the advertising hoarding to the rear. “Supporting Valley Hockey: Valley Urology“: Alaska really does seem to be some sort of different country, doesn’t it?

Street-Fighting for Universal Health Care?

Speaking of a different country, let’s turn briefly now to France, to the French Communist Party organ L’Humanité and its coverage of (as you might expect) the street-demonstrations happening outside the Republican convention itself (Wave of arrests at the Republican convention; no by-line). The article writes of 10,000 showing up to protest on Monday even as the convention itself was reduced to the bare administrative minimum out of consideration for Hurricane Gustav. According to L’Humanité, those protestors were objecting to the War in Iraq, which is also how I heard it elsewhere. On the other hand, yesterday’s (i.e. Tuesday’s) protestors were said to be demonstrating “for universal health care, better social protection, and free university tuition.” Those are all things the French Communist Party stands for, but somehow I tend to doubt that this is an accurate portrayal of their policy platform. The article does also note how these demonstrations in Minnesota sparked a number of violent confrontations with the police, as compared with the demonstrations at the Democratic convention in Denver which passed without any such incidents. It also mentions three journalists who were arrested while covering the demonstrations (against “this convention,” as the article puts it, “which would not suffer any criticism”), including the founder of Democracy Now, Amy Goodman.

This is all good red-blooded leftist journalism, from a source which, even if foreign, George W. Bush would still also be glad to label as the “angry left”, describing circumstances that certainly lead to violent confrontations between demonstrators and police (although the question remains open whether that violence was mainly the fault of the former or of the latter). I was disappointed, though, because it seems there was a deliberate wave of preventive searches and arrests that occurred last weekend, before the convention even started. Talk about your violation of First Amendment (and Fourth Amendment) rights, talk about intimations of an incipient police state: L’Humanité could really have had a field day reporting on that! I’m sorry I didn’t see anything like that, but perhaps I just missed it – remind me to go back and search through my RSS reader again.

                          

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not trying here to push any Republican-inspired “Messiah” or “Moses-parting-the-seas” irony to cast last evening’s events in a disparaging light. Indeed, it was an impressive spectacle – complete with letter-perfect weather! – that itself rightly dominated the news-cycle and to which reactions still dominate that news-cycle this morning.

The same is not quite true in Europe, which has plenty else to talk about today, but Barack Obama’s speech has still gotten plenty of attention even now (i.e. as your EuroSavant writes this), less than 12 hours after it was delivered. Let’s again start with reactions from those who were vouchsafed their own up-close look at the Senator’s speechifying, last July in Berlin, namely the Germans.

First to Sabine Muscat, Financial Times Deutschland (Obama – on firm ground):

It was a place for great words, but this time they stayed away. For it was more important for Obama this evening to hit the right tone. But he thereby lost his own style. . . . His speech had to fulfill many demands. It had to be personal, for many voters still maintained that they didn’t know him. It had to be specific, so that it could finally become clear that Obama stood for a program and not just pretty words. It had to attack his Republican opponent John McCain, in order to show that it was not only Republicans who could hit hard. A bit more of the down-to-earth would also be good, for sometimes Obama seemed scholarly and arrogant. Unifying the Party was a further necessity, to seal the peace after the hard primary campaign against Hillary Clinton. . . . [Nonetheless] Obama delivered a completely normal political speech. Even in front of the Greek columns, the bold vision that usually his is identifying characteristic went missing. There were many very good phrases in this speech, yet none of them really had the sort of impact that would propel then into the history books. . . . his politically wise and artfully delivered, if not very innovative, speech . . . showed how quickly an Outsider on the way to the White House has to adjust his individual style to the mainstream.

From the Neue Presse (of Hannover: Obama’s Night: Gripping election speech – but without exuberance):

It was a Hercules-size assignment that Obama was taking on: he had to enthuse and inspire, living up to his reputation of being as charismatic as John F. Kennedy once was. But he wanted to avoid gestures and phrases that would make it easy for the Republicans to defame him as a hollow pop-star or even as a presumptuous prophet. Obama was supposed to describe aptly the promised “change” for a “new America” but at the same time not be too vague, and to take on the economic fears of the middle-class, to reassure them. He wanted to attach himself to Martin Luther King’s dream, but he didn’t want to make himself into the black people’s candidate, but rather a politician of a unified, reconciled America that had finally overcome at least politically the racial divide. Obame showed himself equal to this gigantic task. . . . In Denver stood what was already a Barack Obama with his feet firmly planted on the ground, who deliberately forswore emotion on the stage defiantly decorated with Greek columns.

From Die Zeit (Obama’s Coronation Mass):

Barack Obama in his speech showed America the way into the 21st century. He raked his competitor John McCain and the Bush Era over the coals. Whether patriotism, arms control, or the duties of a commander-in-chief, he left no sensitive subject unmentioned. He painted the bigger picture and at the same time remained concrete. Obama spoke of the necessary painful realizations and of the duty of moral and political renewal. “America,” he called out,” we cannot turn back. Not in front of the many tasks that lay before us.” And under the ear-splitting jubilation of his 80,000 supporters he declared: It’s time that the Republicans admit their mistakes and that the Democrats carry out the necessary turn-around. “Eight years are enough” became the battle-cry that will ring into the following weeks.

From Christian Wernicke, correspondent in Denver for the Süddeutsche Zeitung (Obama speaks plainly):

Another great speech, naturally. That the Democratic presidential candidate is a master wordsmith is something that America has almost gotten used to. Especially at such an occasion as this – his acceptance “with humility” of the nomination before more than 80,000 supporters in Denver’s football stadium. And yet his verbal fireworks offered three surprises: Seldom has the Senator from Chicago spoken so sentimentally (about himself), so concretely (about his program), and so aggressively (about his opponent John McCain). . . . Obama called McCain out, politically and very personally. At the latest on Monday the opponent will fire back. Then the Republican convention begins.

And now to France: From Patrick Sabatier, special correspondent in Denver for Le Point (Barack Obama and the “promise of America”):

Obama’s speech did not reach the heights of lyricism of that of Dr. King, nor the force of that of Roosevelt or the vision of Kennedy, but the candidate nonetheless once more gave a demonstration of his very great eloquence. He presented a pitiless indictment of the bankruptcy of the Bush presidency, which he claimed had put in peril “the promise of America.” He mounted a frontal attack on the dogmatic ideology of the conservatives, whose “ownership society” (Bush’s slogan) has been revealed as “a society of every man for himself, and you’re on your own.” “Tonight, I tell Americans: enough!” Obama proclaimed, and was echoed by the crowd. Above all, he launched a bitter attack against John McCain, mocking him on the economy and social security. (“It’s not that he doesn’t care. It’s that he just doesn’t get it.”), as well as on the subject of national security. . . . He occupied himself above all, as had Al Gore before him, with depicting the Republican candidate as a simple continuation of the Bush policies.

From Sylvain Cypel, writing for Le Monde (Barack Obama promises the renewal of America):

In a speech marked by his hymn to the “American promise,” to the “American soul,” to his desire to reconcile Americans with each other, the Democratic candidate nonetheless dedicated a part of his appearance to defining his socio-economic priorities. Two axes predominated: the intervention of the State to relaunch the economic machinery and the re-establishment of the purchasing-power of wage-earners. . . . But did this speech remove the doubt about his personality? . . . The assignment will in any case be arduous. In the first place, his virtuosity does him a disservice: deep America does not hold “pretty talkers” in very high esteem. And who can believe, as the Democratic convention tried to paint him, that he is only “an American like all the others”? In the eyes of most he can only be outside the norm, by his origins, his career, his unexpected rhetoric. And in any case, as “the first black candidate in American history” his “exceptionality” is set. “Obama is so far from us. McCain does not formulate more practical proposals, but the average American can more easily identify with him,” said Jim LeMaster, a delegate [presumably Democratic!] from Nebraska. . . . Above all, the unanimous reactions [to last night's speech] were that, with a tone less lyric but with an unaccustomed firmness, he had shown that he will be for John McCain an entirely tougher adversary than John Kerry was four years ago for George Bush.

Oh, and if you’d like to see Obama’s speech translated into French, in its entirety, just go here: Verbatim: “We fall and rise again as a single nation. You can also peruse a minute-by-minute recounting of the events of last night at Invesco Field (i.e. pretty much live-blogging – and in French of course, since this is also from Le Monde) here.

Bleaches Whiter-Than-White?

Moving to Denmark, the daily Politiken takes a unique viewpoint on Obama’s speech (Obama woos the white middle-class), or at least adopts that viewpoint from its interviewees. The article begins by noting that the name “Martin Luther King” was itself not pronounced once during the speech. This is consistent with the thesis propounded by two “experts” (Danish academics with a specialty in US affairs) that an important function of Obama’s speech last night was downplaying his Afro-American aspect, in favor of trying his best to address and ingratiate himself with the white middle- and working-classes – the latter of which, in particular, he often seemed to have difficulties connecting with during the primaries. He succeeded, they both say – and managed to add some attacking licks on John McCain to boot.

Oh, and what a shame! Denmark’s Berlingske Tidende reports here (Grandma slept while Obama spoke) how Obama’s grandmother – on his father’s side – did not get to share in his Democratic presidential nomination triumph. She could not follow along with his great speech on TV, in the first place because the village where she still lives in Kenya does not have electricity. (And in the second place because it took place very early the next morning, Kenyan time.) Still, she’s quite confident that he’ll eventually make it all the way to the White House as President.

American Politics Too Emotional

Finally, a couple of what you could call “accessory” articles. In the first one, Der Spiegel writer Severin Weiland interviews CDU politician Peter Hintze, a close political colleague to Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel who attended the Democratic National Convention, in an article entitled “In Germany one is allowed to be more dispassionate.” Yes, the festivities and general hullabaloo at Denver’s Pepsi Center, and then at Invesco Field, is what really made an impression on Herr Hintze. Although it created truly moving moments – for Hintze it was the appearance of the dying Edward Kennedy – he is sure that this sort of emotionalism will never come to German politics: Germans are suspicious of it, out of bitter historical experience, and also from a desire to leave even top politicians at least a little bit of privacy. It follows, then, that politicians’ wives will surely never have the prominence they have in American politics. Interestingly, according to Herr Hintze neither will the Internet – that is necessary as a political tool in the US because the country is so big, whereas attempts to use it for German politics have so far failed.

And then another article from Der Spiegel, this from the magazine’s correspondent in Denver, Marc Pitzke, about Republican attempts to interfere in the Democratic National Convention (Republicans send saboteurs to the big Obama shindig). The lede: “A cease-fire during the party-conventions – that is almost an unwritten rule in the USA. Nonetheless the Republicans did not want to leave the big stage to Barack Obama alone; their trouble-makers showed up even in the Democrats’ convention-hall.” And he goes on to describe the impressionable 20-somethings sent by the Republican Party to Denver to make various mischief. It’s not as if they are in camouflage: they do wear their McCain t-shirts, yet not only manage to find their way into the Pepsi Center but also attract a healthy amount of attention from the press. There is simply too much press there at the Democratic Convention, you see, and too little authentic “Democratic news” available to fill their needs. Apart from this, there is also the Republican “Command Center” set up near the convention site. (This is apparently the installation which also served as the site of the “Happy Hour for Hillary” that I covered here previously.) There you can find Republican luminaries like Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani – when the latter is not strolling into the Pepsi Center as well to greet his many “friends” in there – spouting anti-Obama talking-points.

But that’s OK: as Pitzke notes, the Republican convention follows next week – and the Democrats have already rented office space in Minneapolis. At this point let me go to my dictionary to remind myself the German for “good for goose” and “good for gander.”

                          

(Oh, and why French and Danish today? Just following this weblog’s general modus operandi, i.e. because I felt like it, although I also had a sense of not having discussed anything French or Danish lately and wanted to re-balance things a bit.)

However, I did run across an interesting piece by Johan Vardrup, the reporter sent to Denver by the well-respected Danish daily Berlingske Tidende, entitled Republicans hold happy hour for Hillary. From its very first line in the lede (“What won’t one do to fish for votes?”) you get a clear-cut sense of Vardrup’s attitude here: Damn, these Americans truly play some electoral hardball!

The subject here is the Happy Hour for Hillary staged on Monday by the Republican Party, staged in Denver of course, in fact just about as close as they could find a suitable place to the Pepsi Center where the Democratic convention is going on. And although it turned out that the eponymous guest of honor never showed up – despite the open offer of a free beer, as Vardrup notes – the point was really to offer a congenial forum for those of her supporters still not ready to support Obama, even to the point of considering voting for McCain (one of which, a certain Debra Bartoshevich, has already done a campaign ad for McCain, although Vardrup does not mention this in the article). In point of fact, Clinton through her spokesperson made it clear that she did not recommend that this “Happy Hour” be included in any Democratic delegate’s convention itinerary. Reactions that Vardup tracked on an on-line pro-Hillary discussion forum ranged from regarding this Republican move as a friendly gesture to calling it outright manipulation.

Man Who Knows Too Much = Presidential Loser

Moving on within the Danish press, I naturally called upon my favorite Danish observer of American affairs, Paul Høi and his weblog (off the Berlingske Tidende site) American Conditions. He hasn’t quite yet filed a reaction to Hillary’s speech yet – or indeed to the Democratic convention in any respect (wise man!) – but nonetheless his column of yesterday offers a “home run” of an insight into American politics. It’s entitled Stupidity, and perhaps it’s best to skip first to the very end of the piece for a summary of his point: “My rule of thumb: The man who knows too much is always eliminated in spy novels, and the same is true – whether one likes it or not – in American presidential elections.”

The thesis is simple: Americans want as their president not somebody manifestly above-average intellectually – i.e. superior to most of them – but rather about as smart as they are themselves. From Høi’s calculations, this explains the winner in (almost) all presidential elections since the Second World War, and it also explains the lamentable state to which the McCain-Obama campaign debate has already sunk at this relatively early point. Of course that debate need have nothing actually to do with the issues! It’s far more important for victory to succeed in painting your opponent as someone “elite” – “who eats brie and sips Chardonnay,” as Høi recalls was George H.W. Bush’s description of the cartoonist Gary Trudeau once his depiction in “Doonesbury” while he was president started to grate.

Høi is honest enough to admit that this viewpoint is hardly original with him. Early in his piece he refers to a 1999 article by Jonathan Chait advancing much the same argument in the New Republic, “Why America Loves Stupid Candidates,” which was accompanied by a crackerjack drawing of candidate George W. Bush with a dunce’s cap. But this pattern allegedly holds true all the way back to the 1948 surprise victory by Harry Truman over Thomas Dewey, with only one exception that Høi is willing to admit of, that being John F. Kennedy (who, we’ll recall, barely won the 1960 election and indeed might have gained crucial electoral support from the residents of several Chicago-area cemeteries). Jimmy Carter? He positioned himself as a simple peanut farmer from Plains, GA, while in 1992 Bill Clinton took care to don a working-class, “salt-of-the-earth” mantle (as Hillary did also this year, Høi admits). The 2000 election was naturally a classical manifestation of this syndrome: quite apart from any claims to have invented the Internet (generally manufactured by his detractors), just making clear to people how thoroughly he understood it was a grievous blow to Al Gore’s candidacy. (In this connection, here’s a bonus tidbit from the article: in Danish they actually have a word for “nerd,” – it’s nørd!) And we all have had almost eight years to get to know George W. Bush very well indeed, the second set of four largely thanks to the allegedy very “French” John Kerry.

And Your “Joe Sixpack” Winner Is . . .

So which of the current candidates is likely to benefit most from this underlying dynamic? Høi thinks it will be McCain, whom he terms clearly “the most anti-intellectual” of the two main candidates. True, true, McCain has appeared far more often on “The Tonight Show,” “The Daily Show,” etc. (not to mention in a movie), and is a far, far richer man than Barack Obama – but there you go again resorting to logic, my son, forgetting that we’re talking about American politics here! All of John McCain’s money really doesn’t enter into the equation, since according to Høi what matters is not finances per se but rather demonstrating a proper non-elitist attitude – i.e. that you’re just another “Joe Sixpack.” (Another linguistic bonus here: “Joe Sixpack” in Danish is mulde-Jens, from muld meaning “sod”!) The Obama campaign recently has belatedly recognized and started to fire back on this front, such as with the ads riffing off of John McCain’s inability to remember how many houses he and Cindy have, but Barack Obama might be fatally disadvantaged here – after all, he won scholarships to top universities, and even became editor of the Harvard Law Review. And so, as ever, the American electorate might again wind up with a president reflecting them most broadly – perhaps the president they truly deserve.

                          

Belgium’s excellent De Standaard has already gotten a jump today on what that paper promises will be its own extensive coverage of the convention throughout next week, with a preview-article by Evita Neefs that I found quite impressively enlightening (A Miss, a Democrat, and Some Blacks in Madison Square Garden).

In a obviously generic way, that title sums up the speakers the public will be presented with at this convention, i.e. a diverse array designed to breathe life back into the President’s self-description as a “compassionate conservative” as well as to bolster the image of the Republican Party as a “big tent,” with room inside for very many. (That “Democrat,” by the way, will be Zell Miller, apostate U.S. Senator from Georgia. The “Miss” is Miss America 2003.) Yet Neefs takes as her point-of-departure the thesis that that is not at all the constituency upon which George W. Bush has relied in the past to be elected president (or at to least get enough votes to be able to take it to the Supreme Court – but let’s not get into that again), and upon which he is mainly relying to be elected come next November. Rather, that constituency is the “New Right,” or mainly conservative, evangelical Christians, who among other things can be identified by their view that writing a prohibition of same-sex marriage into the American Republic’s founding document is a perfectly proper and desirable thing to do.

THE RISE OF THE “NEW RIGHT”

Neefs offers an abbreviated but illuminating history of that New Right movement, tracing it back to the Republican Party’s nomination of Barry Goldwater for president back in 1964 and Goldwater’s strategy of orienting his campaign towards what he assumed was a “hidden conservative majority” in America that was waiting for just the sort of true conservative candidacy that he offered (among his slogans: “A Choice, Not an Echo”) to support. Goldwater lost that election on a massive scale; nonetheless, this “hidden majority” strategy was not totally discredited, but instead lay dormant for a couple of decades until a Republican presidential candidate came along that was able to find that “hidden majority” and draw it into politics: Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s ascendence to the presidency also marked the coming-of-age of this “New Right” political movement that henceforth would provide the core of the Republicans’ constituency. As Neefs describes it, it was constructed along the twin poles of 1) Evangelical Christians, exponents of so-called “family values,” who were propelled into politics by their aversion to what they saw as American society’s drift into immorality during the 1960s, and 2) White Southerners, who were attracted into what once had been the “Party of Lincoln” after a Democratic president (Lyndon B. Johnson) enfranchised black citizens a bit too much for their tastes with the 1964 federal Civil Rights Act.

Neefs terms George W. Bush “Ronald Reagan’s heir” for riding this same “New Right” coalition into power. But the “compassionate conservative” label which Bush will be trying to resurrect at the convention must be understood as denoting a quite different electoral approach than “hidden majority.” In the latter case, you’ve found (or at least you go searching for) your fellow “true-believers” out there, and you rest assured that if you can connect with them and get them to the polls, that’s all you need to win; in the former, you don’t think you can afford to take the chance of relying only on their support, and instead try to broaden your electoral appeal as widely as possible.

PITCHING THE “BIG TENT”

It’s that latter strategy which, according to Neefs, will define what next week’s RNC will be all about – showcasing the Republican Party as that “big tent” rather than some “church” of only “true believers.” (She mentions in particular the “Log Cabin Republicans” group of homosexual advocates, who are notably pleased at the convention’s speakers line-up. Personally, after Bush joined Congressional Republican leaders only recently to push that constitutional amendment forbidding same-sex marriage, I fail to understand how such a group can continue to exist within the Republican Party – isn’t that sort of like having a “pork lover’s caucus” within the Muslim Brotherhood?) Unfortunately, many of those New Right “true believers” have gotten angry about this intention to sideline them in New York. They’re also angry at the Bush/Cheney strategy of drawing up the party platform early, and so presenting it to the convention as a fait accompli, with no room for discussion. (See ParaPundit for how campaign officials worked in this way to incorporate several rather non-conservative elements into that party platform, concerning immigration and other subjects as well.) Neefs quotes leading conservative Paul Weyrich’s recent remarks to the New York Times: “If it bothers the president to be seen with conservatives at the convention, it could also bother conservatives to be seen with the president on election day.” Bush officials are apparently so alarmed at this anger that they issued a second speakers list for the convention, including rather more of the red-meat New Right figures that these conservatives will want to listen to. But it seems that none of these will be scheduled to speak when there is live television coverage of the proceedings.

Could the unthinkable really happen? Could that New Right get so annoyed as to repudiate George W. Bush politically? Neefs points out that that is possible – at least in the form of many of those conservative voters not bothering to show up at the polls next November 2. She claims that many are mad at the President already because they believe he acted half-heartedly in pushing that constitutional amendment, that if he had tried harder it would have been passed by Congress (only to be sent to the individual states for ratification, of course). On the other hand, these voters have little other choice than Bush/Cheney, and so also “compassionate conservatism” – if that turns out to actually mean anything this time around.

                          

According to Burcharth, Kerry’s choice of Edwards demonstrates that he is thinking of only one thing: how to win next November’s election. As he points out, it’s true that picking one’s nearest rival in the party primaries has often been the practice in the past for a presidential candidate: John F. Kennedy chose Lyndon Johnson in 1960 and Reagan chose George H.W. Bush in 1980, for example. But in both those cases the VP choices had substantial and impressive public-service records to their names already, and that’s hardly the case for John Edwards.

Instead, it’s Edwards’ talents as a politician and a campaigner that Kerry needs. In particular, Burcharth claims, Edwards has shown himself to be absolutely on the same political wave-length as women, and blacks (and that goes double for black women!). His famous “Two Americas” campaign theme is not really interpreted as an invitation to any sort of class war, but rather as an appeal for fairness, an invitation to all Americans to come up to the table of prosperity.

The Republican Party attack machinery swung into action immediately after Edwards’ selection was announced, circulating to the press what Burcharth reports was a 35-page e-mail detailing the senator’s defects. Also, their attitude to the vice presidential debate with Dick Cheney that is scheduled for October is apparently “Bring it on!”, which is likewise the attitude of the Democrats. Anyone who will be in a position to watch or at least hear that debate should be looking forward to it as well; those with a subscription to the e-magazine Salon can read an excellent appraisal entitled The Smile vs. The Scowl.

A SEXY CHOICE

Beligske Tidende also weighs in on the Edwards choice – in a big way, with four separate articles. (In contrast, I couldn’t find any coverage by one of the other main Danish dailies, Politiken. Go figure!) Probably the most interesting one (and not just because of the title) is John Kerry’s Sexy Choice. It offers an interesting analytical contrast between John Kerry’s vice-presidential choice in 2004 and George W. Bush’s in 2000, and begins with stating a postulate: “The choice of a vice-presidential candidate in the USA is a matter of what the presidential candidate needs.” Four years ago, in the retrospective calculation of Berlingske Tidende writer Poul Høi, George W. Bush was heading into the presidential contest already rather confident that he would prevail. Therefore he chose a vice-presidential candidate who had no valuable state to bring along into the Republican electoral column (Cheney is from Wyoming, with 3 electoral votes towards electing the President), and with what Høi calls an “uninspiring background.” What he actually was looking for instead was a solid and qualified replacement.

This is an interesting evaluation of those events, although Dick Cheney hardly had an “unimpressive background” going into the 2000 election. Indeed, back in the seventies he had been White House chief of staff to President Gerald Ford while still in his thirties. And of course he was Secretary of Defense under the senior George Bush at the time of the Gulf War. Unfortunately, during that period he also served time in the House of Representatives, where he compiled a voting record which revealed him to be of a decided right-wing conservative stripe.

In contrast to George W. Bush’s choice, John Kerry did need to make what Høi calls a “sexy choice” to gain the brus, begejstring og sexappeal that Edwards could bring to his campaign – that’s “buzz, enthusiasm, and sex-appeal.” His choice implicitly confirmed the troubles Kerry himself – who, according to Høi, “grew up with finger-bowl and lobster-fork” – was having connecting to people with his message. Indeed, Høi goes so far as to describe Edwards as another Robert Kennedy-type figure, another young Bill Clinton, who with his populist style can even be counted on to win votes back for the Democratic candidate from Ralph Nader.

GO AFTER JOHNNY – GO, GO, GO!

A further Berlingske Tidende article, “Go, Johnny, go, go, go”, also written by Poul Høi, adds further intriguing details about the Edwards choice. (The title derives from Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode,” played at the Pittsburgh rally at which Kerry announced his choice.) Kerry really wanted someone else – he wanted Gephardt, Høi maintains – but had little other choice than to pick Edwards in view of his still running neck-and-neck with George W. Bush in most polls. And even as Republican operatives went on the attack against the new running-mate – Høi mentions here the “First Choice” commercial that is now out, claiming that Kerry would have preferred John McCain as his running-mate, but McCain is solidly behind Bush – Dick Cheney supposedly called up John Edwards personally to congratulate him and welcome him into the political race. Still, the Republicans also prepared to send the President on a hastily-scheduled campaign trip to North Carolina, which is now wobbly in the Republican column after the nomination of its favorite son by the Democrats.