I know last night was supposed to be about defining John Kerry and “The Kerry-Edwards Plan for America’s Future.” But what struck me most about last night (other than its unintended persuasiveness as an argument against the 22nd Amendment) was its quietly effective promotion of Everyday People. The Sly and the Family Stone song was there of course – with waaay too many other kumbaya ‘60s tunes — but the theme ran through the evening in a number of other ways.

There were the live feeds of Democrats from various electorally important states, often featuring one citizen’s case for John Kerry. These testimonials were clearly unscripted and often awkward. The men and women selected were generally as inarticulate as, say, me. Once they finished, the camera panned back to reveal a room full of people who didn’t really know how the hell they were supposed to react. The effect was as if the neighbors had been made to gather together to pose for someone’s brand new webcam.  

Also awkward, if highly energizing, was the testimonial of Reverend David Alston, Kerry’s shipmate in Vietnam. Clearly as uncomfortable as, say, I would be speaking before a national audience, Alston delivered his still-forceful speech without pausing for the audience’s repeated applause. We were left to decide whether to submit to the ecstatic atmosphere in the build-up to the Clintons or to pipe down and hear what the man had to say.

Still, if I’m Joe Undecided from Ohio watching all of this on TV, I think I could relate to these folks, and I think I’d appreciate their presence and the respect shown them at the convention. Cambridge, Massachusetts is embarrassingly far from my blue-collar roots in small-town Maine, but I’m not so disconnected from my roots that I couldn’t see my old neighbors reflected in the faces from Little Rock and Milwaukee on the screen. To my mind, letting these everyday people speak for themselves is far more effective than any people-versus-the-powerful speech could have been.

Delegate

Delegate

Watching Alston speak

In The Fray Contributor