Clinton Steals the Show

First, a glimpse of FleetLife.

Wandering around the convention hall, I bumped into Mark Green, who lost the New York City mayor's race to Mike Bloomberg and is now Kerry's co-chair in the state. He introduced me to his camcorder-toting teenage son, who is making a movie about the Kerry campaign. I offered up a few sound bites for the camera. It was then I realized that everyone really is covering everyone else here, an endless hall of media mirrors.

There are all kinds of stars here. Heading toward the ABC workspace, I heard a young woman shout, "Mr. Stephanopoulos! I've wanted to meet you for three years!" The production assistant, Grace Simmons, got her wish as she pumped George's hand. She told me she'd been a fan ever since Stephanopoulos, in his Clintonite days, co-starred in the movie "War Room."

In a makeshift studio, one ABC publicist BlackBerried another who was standing 20 feet away. How did we survive when we all had to, like, talk to each other?

Moments later I ran into Larry King. He seemed to be enjoying the convention -- he's doing two shows a night -- but, he lamented, "I know how it ends." Like many other media folks here, he began to reminisce about past conventions, such as listening to the rules fights in 1952, when it wasn't clear who would seize the nomination. Nowadays, no nominee dares even leave his choice of a running mate until the convention, not since Quayle in '88.

After Clinton's speech, I finally unplugged the laptop to leave my adopted home. Turns out a few thousand delegates had the same idea. Took quite awhile to reach the exit gate, where the Boston cops were helpfully providing directions.

I'm convinced that Chris Matthews doesn't sleep. After a 16-1/2-hour-day on Monday, I was trudging back to my hotel, which is past Faneuil Hall, and again I heard his booming voice from up on his platform, sounding like a man who was mainlining Starbucks.

I saw MSNBC President Rick Kaplan pacing nearby, giving orders on his cell phone. He told me he was glad not to be trapped in FleetCenter, to have the network's coverage based here among the crowds and the shops.

I told him there was another advantage: The food was better.

Maybe nobody sleeps in Boston. Passed a lot of crowded, music-blaring Irish bars (man, this city has a lot of bars), and at midnight in the hotel, heard another round of deafening fireworks. Either they're really excited about John Kerry or shooting off rockets is their idea of a good time.

This morning, trying to shake a case of convention-itis, I jogged near Boston's gleaming waterfront as the ferry to Provincetown pulled out. A brief moment of peace. But then I came upon the star-spangled ABC News bus, and heard a prominent media executive say, "I think I'm on for dinner Thursday night with Norman Lear." There's no escape.

All right. As promised, here's some of the first-day coverage:

"Franklin Roosevelt spoke of the 'forgotten man,' Bill Clinton of the 'forgotten middle class.' Now the Democratic Party of Senator John Kerry is reaching for that long -- and politically successful -- legacy with a promise to ease the 'middle-class squeeze' and restore the booming economy of the Clinton years.

"To that end, the Democratic National Convention on Monday night offered a simple message about the economy: It was better under the Democrats. The middle class had a brighter future. And Mr. Kerry has a plan to restore middle-class prosperity -- to stem the loss of jobs overseas, to ease the burden of rising health, education and energy costs on families, to get the nation's fiscal house and economy in order.

"Indeed, it was Bill Clinton himself who stood before a national television audience on Monday night and made the case, as he did so often in 1992, that the economic future need not be feared -- and that the Democrats offered a better choice when it came to tax and budget policy. He scoffed at the Republicans' decision to give big tax cuts to wealthy Americans like himself while, he asserted, shortchanging critical national needs like education. He criticized the Republicans for turning a huge surplus into a deficit."

Ron Brownstein focuses more on the issue of strength in the Los Angeles Times:

"Day One of the Democratic National Convention underscored Sen. John F. Kerry's determination to challenge President Bush on national security while emphasizing a deeply personal contrast rooted in their divergent experiences during the Vietnam era.

"From Presidents Carter and Clinton to 2000 nominee Al Gore and former Defense Secretary William J. Perry, a succession of speakers Monday night charged that Bush had failed to improve America's security since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. That signaled the Democrats' determination to confront the president on the national security record his campaign has assumed would be his strongest asset.

"Even more strikingly, Clinton and Carter not only articulated the familiar Democratic argument that Kerry's experience in Vietnam has prepared him to serve as commander in chief, but pointedly contrasted his service with Bush's decision to serve in the National Guard at that time. In an explicit and combative passage, Clinton declared: 'During the Vietnam War, many young men -- including the current president, the vice president [Dick Cheney] and me -- could have gone to Vietnam and didn't. John Kerry came from a privileged background and he could have avoided going too. Instead, he said: "Send me." ' "

That was the money quote of the night -- and a clever rhetorical device by the man often derided as a draft-dodger to include himself.

The Washington Post's John Harris zeroes in on the evolution of Clinton:

" 'We told you so' is an impossible sentiment for many Democrats to resist -- and they did not even try Monday night. The fresh young faces who exhilarated another Democratic convention when they first joined the cause 12 years ago are no longer so fresh.

"Bill Clinton's salt-and-pepper hair from 1992 is now solid white. Al Gore has lost a good bit of his hair. These familiar figures -- one man famous for survival, the other for electoral misfortune -- made their case that the country would be better off if the policies of the 1990s had been empowered for another term four years ago. . . .

"A homespun style softened the edge of biting partisan commentary, as [Clinton] made an impassioned case against Bush's economic and foreign policies, and for Kerry's character and national security credentials."

"Happy talk is here again. At least in prime time, and at least for a few days.

"Eager to stir their base while not scaring off undecided voters, Democrats took some swipes yesterday at President Bush but toned down their most partisan digs as they opened their four-day national convention.

"Al Gore, the former vice president and 2000 presidential nominee, dropped some of the more jarring rhetoric he has used in recent weeks, such as calling Bush a 'moral coward' and likening Republicans to Nazis.

"Instead, Gore reminded Democrats of the anger and frustration they felt over the 2000 election result and then urged them to channel those emotions into votes."

USA Today's Susan Page also observes the element of restraint:

"When the Democratic National Convention opened Monday, some speakers weren't saying what they really wanted to say, and many delegates weren't hearing what they really wanted to cheer.

"But almost no one was complaining about it.

"With a discipline unusual for Democrats, divisions in the party were papered over and tough rhetoric against President Bush was tamped down in a convention scripted by presidential candidate John Kerry's campaign.

"Out: bashing Bush.

"In: praising Kerry.

"Word of the day: strength."

Sounds like the word of the next three days as well.

"Even former vice president Al Gore -- who in recent speeches called Bush a 'moral coward' on the environment and a leader who lied to Americans about Iraq -- restrained his fiery language about the man who defeated him for the presidency four years ago."

Charlie Madigan, one of the Chicago Tribune's three bloggers, had this take on WJC:

"Okay, hit erase on the part of memory attached to the whole nasty impeachment effort and the behaviors and issues glued to it.

"It's gone, as gone as that 401K bundle that looked so remarkably fat before the bubble burst. Gone as the hope of equity backing for an Internet startup. As gone as a turkey in the corn. As gone as Alan Greenspan's thoughts about lowering interest rates. What remains is William Jefferson Clinton, one of the most successful politicians in modern Democratic Party history and still a man in strong standing with his party.

"He is unyieldingly, immensely and passionately despised by about the same slab of the electorate that passionately despised him all the way through his presidency."

No one, possibly not even Hillary, liked Clinton's speech more than the WashPost's Tom Shales:

"A veritable combination of Elvis, the Beatles, James Brown and Bruce Springsteen. . . . He was just plain magnificent."

But Slate's William Saletan says the man of the hour was Gore:

"In 2000, when Al Gore was debating Bill Bradley, my wife told me that the less she had to look at Gore, the easier it would be to vote for him. I was pretty hard on Gore, too. I still think he blew the election with a needlessly angry brand of populism. Afterward, I wondered how he ever got the nomination.

"Tonight he reminds me. He reminds us all. He electrifies the convention with the most powerful speech of the evening. . . .

"Behind the humor, Gore carries a hammer. The 2000 election taught several hard-earned lessons, he observes. The first is that 'every vote counts.' In a shot at Ralph Nader, Gore tells viewers not to let anyone take away their right to vote or talk them into 'throwing it away.'

"Gore wallows a bit in the tiresome Democratic habit of blaming his 2000 defeat on the referees. He asserts again, as falsely as ever, that the Supreme Court chose the president in 2000. But he does drive home one point no politician could have made clear in 2000, for the simple reason that hadn't been illustrated yet: What happens in a presidential election matters a lot."

Andrew Sullivan finds himself pleasantly surprised:

"I'm still somewhat in shock at the first night of the Democratic Convention. I kept thinking I was at a Republican convention. Tightly scripted, elegantly choreographed, seamlessly on the centrist message of war, unity, maturity and judgment. Foreign policy was front and center; faith was showcased; military service was held up as the ideal; prudent leadership was touted in a time of 'peril,' in Hillary's word.

"I wonder if they can keep this up. But I'm amazed they've tried. I've been writing for months now that Kerry's most effective message would be that he'd conduct the war on terror with more allies and more wisdom than Bush. But I never actually believed he'd be canny enough to do exactly that. But he has! If the first night is any indicator, the Democrats have played the smartest, strongest card of the campaign so far."

Even National Review's David Frum gives Clinton his due:

"10:50. Clinton has a riff about . . . how the Republicans are cutting taxes for millionaires like him. This is effective stuff! Who wants to see Bill Clinton get more money? I wonder whether John Kerry will pick up the theme. His family is at least 60 times richer than Bill Clinton's. Think how much bigger his family's tax cut would have been -- that is, if his family actually paid taxes. Fortunately for them, their money is protected by trusts and careful planning. So the taxes that will actually be raised will fall on people who earn less than Bill Clinton and have far, far less than John Kerry: for instance, you.

"10:59. What? No kiss from Hillary at the end?

"11:00. OK, I'll admit it. That was a good speech -- the only speech all evening with a trace of humor, the only one to make any kind of case for the party's soon-to-be nominee. It was generous in a way that Gore's, Carter's, and Hillary Clinton's were not. It wove together Democratic themes in a coherent way. It even offered the evening's only memorable line that was not a bitter accusation: 'Send me.' Good thing we're not running against him this year. On the other hand, too bad we're not running against her."

I knew he'd sneak something in.

Finally, Josh Marshall has a not-quite-up-close-and-personal encounter:

"As I was leaving the FleetCenter, making my way down an escalator to the first floor, I looked across the few feet separating me from a parallel-running escalator and saw, yes, Michael Moore.

"First, I should say, as I side note, that trying to pull off an impromptu interview, with pen and pad, calling out questions from one escalator to another, is a perilous endeavor, as you're apt not to be paying attention when the escalator ends or simply be looking the wrong way. But let's not distract ourselves with that. Just file that away for future reference.

"In any case, there I am a few feet from Moore; and it's one of the first times all day when I can think of a question to ask someone where I'm really curious and uncertain as to what the answer will be. So I ask him what he makes of all of this. No attacks on the president. Not even any mention of the man's name. It's like the anti-Michael Moore event. Or rather the non-Michael Moore event. (I caught myself the first time, realizing that hadn't come out precisely as I'd intended.)

"Clearly, the guy didn't know what to make of me. And as he breezes by he says, 'Oh, Really? I liked it. You don't even have to say it. Everyone knows how bad it is.'

"Think what you will about Michael Moore or evening one of the convention, I think that sums up precisely what this event is all about and the dynamic on which it's operating. I've seen a slew of articles today arguing that the Democrats must energize their 'base' while not alienating the swing voters John Kerry needs to climb from the mid-40s past 50%."

Talk about moving journalism. I've got to start riding more escalators.