When Democrats attack

There’s a freebie bag they give you here at the DNC, and it may as well have included a voodoo doll of John McCain. Aside from Obama=JFK the other equation being hammed home is McCain=Bush. and I’ve been struck by how many more barbs there are here than I heard at the last convention in Boston in 2004. Back then John Kerry even went as far as to describe the president as charming, to accept that his likeability couldn’t be contested. In retrospect, the failure to bash Bush then is seen as a major error, so this time each speaker has to pepper their remarks with barbs about the wickedness of McCain. “If you want more job killing trade agreements, go work your heart out for John McCain” said Sherrod Brown, Ohio Senator. Michelle Obama is praised because she’s working class from the south side of Chicago, unlike the minted Cindy McCain. A refrain you’ll hear time and time again until election day is that “America can’t afford four more years of Bush’s policies”
 
The most sustained McCain attack came from Nancy Pelosi who devoted much of her speech to McCain. “Republicans say John McCain has experience. We say John McCain has the experience of being wrong.” And then she tried one of those strange devices beloved of American conventions, where the audience is led into a little chant. “On healthcare for 10 million American children, Barack Obama is right and John McCain is wrong. On a future for American independence, investment in renewable, Barack Obama is right and John McCain is wrong.” Thus it continued, until everyone was saying McCain is wrong.
 
Obama can’t go on the attack very well, and this a major reason why he’s enrolled Joe Biden to his hit man and trash McCain.  It’s an important role as this will be a combative, let-me-at-’em convention intending to present Obama as the underdog and McCain as the incumbent. Part of the Democrats’ problem is that, with all the media adulation, Obama feels like the incumbent all too often and the risk for them is that the election turns into a referendum on him.
 
PS: Given that plagiarism’s back in the news with the selection of Joe Biden, it’s perhaps worth mentioning that Pelosi’s “we’re right and they’re wrong” formula is reminiscent of a speech I heard Karl Rove give at a private party in New York’s Gotham Hall during the last Republican Convention. It wasn’t taped, but was blogged and much spoken of afterwards (I know at least one Tory who used this device for a keynote speech in London). Rove would list battleground subjects, then present a binary divide. On the economy, “we’re right and they’re wrong”. On marriage, “we’re right and they’re wrong”. Personally, I don’t begrudge Pelosi or Biden nicking good lines. There’s nothing new under the sun in speechwriting, and the power is always in the delivery.