Political Prose

Putting on a happy face for the party

The modern-day political convention, at its best, is a lovefest, where egos are coddled and factions appeased, and the party reemerges as a united front, singing the praises of their chosen leader. The Democratic Nation…


The modern-day political convention, at its best, is a lovefest, where egos are coddled and factions appeased, and the party reemerges as a united front, singing the praises of their chosen leader. The Democratic National Convention has so far stuck to the script. After more than a year of sometimes brutal campaigning in the primary season, Democrats of every pedigree are coming together to pay their respects and collectively kiss the ring of the all-but-anointed Democratic candidate, John Kerry. One of the less-than-obvious singers of Kerry’s praises was Dennis Kucinich, the Ohio congressman and the last person standing alongside Kerry in the Democratic primary race (at this point, just symbolically). “We Democrats are one,” he said. “We are left, right, center. We are one for John Kerry.” While the anti-war Kucinich railed against the “distortions and misrepresentations” that had brought the U.S. military in full force into Iraq, he maintained that a John Kerry victory would “not just be the victory of one party, but … a victory of faith over cynicism.”

The previous night the symbolism had been even more intense: at the podium was Howard Dean, the former governor from Vermont, once Kerry’s chief rival for the nomination, the man who shocked many in the political establishment with the grassroots, Internet-enhanced campaign that his supporters waged. A moderate governor who, as presidential candidate, rallied liberal anger against Bush’s foreign policy, Dean used to quip on the stump that “I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.” He was speaking a different line last night. “We are all here to represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,” Dean declared, adding that he stood “shoulder to shoulder” with his former rival.

As Dean ended his speech with an admonition that “only you have the power,” fluorescent blue and red stripes billowed across the stadium-sized TV and the song “We Are Family” pumped through the speakers. It was jubilant; it was corny; it was what you expect of a convention. Like soldiers closing rank, each of the week’s speakers — from liberal mavericks like Dennis Kucinich to centrists like Bill Clinton — have struck the same themes of unity (of party) and adulation (for Kerry). Kucinich, for instance, has taken the most radical position of any major Democrat against the Iraq War — he calls for an immediate withdrawal of troops, a highly improbable scenario even in a Kerry administration. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party platform approved this week outlines a strategy for Iraq that is all but the same as the Bush administration’s, as Middle East expert Juan Cole has pointed out: There is no strong anti-war plank, and a Kerry administration would remain committed to staying in Iraq for the foreseeable future.

The spirit of solidarity has even sunk into the psyche of those Democrats who stand outside the party establishment – the young “Deaniacs” who brought the Vermont governor to the national stage last year, the multitudes of angry men and women who felt their anger channeled by Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11, the progressives who heard their ideals expressed most articulately by the congressman from Ohio. Both Dean and Moore spoke at a local forum sponsored by the Campaign for America’s Future, a liberal think tank, this week. At the “Taking Back America” forum, organizers referred to the week’s event as an “alternative convention.” Sure enough, the rhetoric at the afternoon panel on Tuesday far surpassed the bland pronouncements at the convention hall. “You will not win this election by being weak-kneed and wishy-washy. The only way this is going to happen is if you be forthright and say what you believe … If you [Kerry] move to the right, you will encourage millions to stay home — the people who are already discouraged” from voting. Moore, the baseball-capped, blue-jean-wearing, and just generally rumpled documentary filmmaker who has been dubbed (by conservative critics) as the “leader of the hate and vitriol celebrity set,” also fired back at his enemies. “They aren’t patriots,” he said. “They’re hate-triots. They believe in the politics of hate.”

That said, even liberal warriors like Moore are slick and/or savvy enough to realize that they can’t leave 2004 to the whims of wavering voters. Moore, a stalwart supporter of Green presidential candidate Ralph Nader in 2000, now has little patience for the 2004 re-contender. “A word about Ralph Nader,” he said, as a chorus of Democratic boos cascaded down. “You’ve already done your job. The Democratic Party of 2004 is not the Democratic Party of 2000. The work has been done by Dean and Kucinich. Even the Al Gore of 2004 is not the Al Gore of 2000.”

In truth, the party is still diverse and contentious in its thinking. This united front is just a temporary state of grace. Kucinich, the Ohio congressman and (still un-conceded) presidential candidate, hinted as much in interviews this week: He is throwing his support behind Kerry, he said, because after the election he believes the anti-war movement can convince Kerry to change his mind on Iraq. In other words, Democrats are going to do anything it takes to win — but if Kerry does win, the old battles are likely to resurface with renewed vigor.

—Victor Tan Chen

Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

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Political Prose

Angels and aliens

If Monday was the night for the party’s stars, Tuesday was the night to show off its diversity. California Congressman Mike Honda spoke of his Japanese American family’s internment a half-century ago. African American p…


If Monday was the night for the party’s stars, Tuesday was the night to show off its diversity. California Congressman Mike Honda spoke of his Japanese American family’s internment a half-century ago. African American poet and activist Maya Angelou performed, followed by Arizona American Indians singing the national anthem in the Tohono O’odham language. Rhode Island’s U.S. representative, Jim Langevin, rolled out to the podium in his wheelchair to extol the virtues of the all-but-anointed Democratic candidate, John Kerry. But the night’s most dynamic speaker, by far, was Barack Obama, the all-but-elected candidate for senator in Illinois, a biracial graduate of Harvard Law School who has distinguished himself in the segregated city of Chicago for his ability to build bridges across racial lines.

Obama’s father herded goats in Kenya before coming to the United States as a student; his mother, who is white, grew up in Kansas. One grandfather was a cook serving the British colonizers; the other worked on oil rigs and farms before signing up for Patton’s army in Europe. Obama’s remarkable life story testifies to the promise of opportunity for all in this country; he declared: “I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on Earth, is my story even possible.” When his speech ended, the crowd erupted in cheers, and the stadium screen in the Fleet Center flashed a live feed from Obama’s church, Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where elderly black women in summer dresses clapped with exuberance.

Obama is almost certain to win come November (the Republicans have so far failed to field a candidate in his race). He is months away from becoming the only person of African descent in the Senate and, with his echoes of Clinton-style eloquence, will surely be a star in the national Democratic Party for years to come.

The other revealed talent last night was Teresa Heinz Kerry, the candidate’s wife and First Lady in waiting. Conservative analysts immediately assailed her for a “self-indulgent” performance, and it’s true that her speech was as much, or more, about her views than those of her husband’s. (Is a wife not supposed to speak her own mind? She insisted on this right: “My only hope is that, one day soon, women — who have all earned the right to their opinions — instead of being labeled opinionated, will be called smart or well-informed, just as men are.”) But it also showed that Heinz Kerry has the makings of an international superstar — sort of like a sub-Saharan version of Eleanor Roosevelt. Starting her speech in measured, accented English, she soon moved on to phrases of welcome in Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese. She spoke of growing up in Mozambique (a dictatorship where her father voted for this first time when he turned 73), her student activism against South African apartheid, her immigrant’s journey to the United States of America. Heinz Kerry wrapped up her remarks with a quintessential American quotation, the elegant oratory from Lincoln’s first inaugural address in which he urged his fellow citizens (on the eve of war) to rise above their old enmities and recognize their common destiny. “The mystic chords of memory, stre[t]ching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

It was a night to remember those better angels: the diversity — and tolerance of diversity — that has made this country strong. Convention organizers intend to highlight the party’s inclusiveness throughout the week. It’s not just a matter of race, gender, or place of origin, of course. The larger message is that Americans of all political beliefs — liberal and conservative — can fall behind the Kerry-Edwards campaign. Last night, speakers from Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick to New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson to Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy appealed to their audience in this spirit of national unity. “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America,” Obama said. “There is the United States of America.” At another point in the night, a message flashed across the big screen, describing a Republican Vietnam veteran who had decided to vote for Kerry thanks to the Bush-induced morass in Iraq. Republicans, it was implied, can be reasonable people, too.

But how well will the Democratic Party’s touted diversity play in the rest of the country — especially in those “battleground” states where the election (so the experts say) will be won and lost? Take just one of last night’s wild cards: Heinz Kerry. Will she attract women voters who want to hear someone with the courage to say (invoking Eleanor), “It is time for the world to hear women’s voices, in full and at last.”? Or, will she drive away conservatives who are made uncomfortable by the prospect of a strong woman? (It is a sad fact that this is still a concern in a national election in 2004.) Will Heinz Kerry’s foreign origins and her menagerie of difficult-to-pronounce languages draw the admiration of voters? Or, will her background further suspicions that she is an alien in political waters reserved for the native-born elect? (It’s not without good reason that Kerry refuses to speak his fluent French in earshot of American reporters.) Last night, the party was united; the next few months will show us whether the party can unite the country.

—Victor Tan Chen

Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen

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ITF at the DNC


Five representatives of InTheFray Magazine will be among the 15,000 members of the media covering the Democratic National Convention. Not to be left out of the blog-o-rama, ITF Publisher Victor Chen, Managing Editor Henry Belanger, Contributing Editor Dustin Ross, and contributing writers Scott Winship and Ayah-Victoria McKhail will be posting all week in nearly-real-time from the bowels of the Fleet Center in Boston.


Crowd stands for official photograph of DNC 2004

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Conventional collage


These photos were taken at the Democratic National Convention on July 26, 2004, by ITF Contributing Editor Dustin Ross.


Bill & Hillary Clinton


Delegate


Jimmy Carter


Crowd honors 9/11


Watching Alston speak


Handing out signs


National Anthem


Delegates celebrate


Outside the perimeter, protester gets interviewed

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Joe Undecided from Ohio


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.

—Scott Winship


Delegate


Delegate


Watching Alston speak

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Conventional perks


Since party conventions are no longer about nominating candidates, what are they about? Mostly free stuff. And celebrities. On Saturday night, The Boston Globe sponsored a media party in the new Convention Center on the Boston waterfront. Besides a bizarre entertainment lineup that included Larry Watson (a performer who combines the fashion sense of Sinbad, circa 1993, and the flair of Sexual Chocolate’s Randy Watson) and Little Richard, there was a Ferris wheel, a chocolate fountain, and all the free booze you could handle. On the way out, media members were treated to DNC tote bags stuffed with schwag that ranged from the predictable (a reporter’s notebook), to the curious (a box of Kraft Mac & Cheese shaped like donkeys and stars), to the inexplicable (National Auto Dealers Association used car guide).

The politicians notwithstanding (nor the Mac & Cheese), the biggest thrill of the Convention has to be the celebrity spotting. On a reportorial excursion to the luxury boxes, I saw Andre 3000 talking to U.S. Congressman Kendrick B. Meek of Florida. Not surprisingly, the politician was doing all the talking. Andre may have been conspicuous, what with the cravat and all, but among the old-timers and high-rollers in the executive suites, he went practically unnoticed.


Andre 3000, musician from the rap group Outkast


Watching Michael Moore in the Fleet Center hallway

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Bubba’s boomer guilt…


For all the references to military service that we’ll hear this week in Boston (did you know James Carville was a marine?), the most remarkable reference to Vietnam in my book was this one from former President Clinton:

“During the Vietnam War, many young men — including the current President, the Vice President and me — could have gone to Vietnam but didn’t. John Kerry came from a privileged background and could have avoided it too. Instead he said, ‘send me.’”

Talk about boomer guilt! Still, the self-criticism made the point that much more powerful. Kerry certainly could have avoided the war if he had wanted to. The contrast between the paths that he and the current President chose clearly favors the Democrats. Now if only Kerry could convince active soldiers and their families that they should support his positions on defense. Hopefully, the campaign is making this a goal of the next few days.

—Scott Winship


Bill Clinton


Jim Wark, a Vietnam Vet (‘68-‘69) from Texas

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Britney Spears and Natalie Portman for Kerry?


There’s hardly a bad seat in the Fleet Center, even if I did feel like I was sitting close enough to touch the hundreds of balloons attached to the ceiling that will drop on Thursday. (Did I just spoil a surprise?) Perhaps I was sitting in the mysterious blogosphere? Anyway, one game I played while lesser-known speakers were at the podium was to try to figure out who was occupying CNN’s set, which was arranged on the convention floor below. To get a sense of the size of the place, here are a few of my guesses as to Larry King’s guests, accompanied by their actual identities as confirmed by the transcript:
    
    My guess: Britney Spears
    Actually: Vanessa Kerry
    
    My guess: Natalie Portman
    Actually: Alexandra Kerry
    
    My guess: Rudy Giuliani
    Actually: ex-Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell (for whom I worked as an intern one summer)
    

—Scott Winship


Cheese head and CNN’s Wolf Blitzer


Protesters outside the Fleet Center

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Maybe that’s why they call it the blogosphere…


Bloggers are getting a lot of attention from the mainstream press this week, but attention and respect are two different things. Inside the Fleet Center, it’s clear that they’re still at the bottom of media pecking order. On day one of the convention, expecting to find rows and rows of double-wide chairs filled with double-wide bloggers, hunched over laptops and chugging Diet Coke (“my fellow nerds and I will retire to our nerdery…”), I ascended the escalators and followed signs for Bloggers Boulevard. I kept ascending. And ascending, and ascending, and ascending. Turns out Bloggers Boulevard is just a clever euphemism for The Nosebleeds.


Delegates from New York


Onlookers

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Impeccable timing


Republican media manipulators effectively have dealt two hits to the Democratic image, just before and during this week’s convention in Boston, where the Johns have gone to “announce” their candidacy.

First came the news, days before the release of the long-awaited September 11 commission report, that Sandy Berger took commission documents that he shouldn’t have. The Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe quickly filed a Freedom of Information Act request that emphasized the lack of timeliness of the revelation; he posed the idea that Mr. Berger’s removal of documents had been known for months but stored up for a more opportune moment to make it public.

Then just yesterday, the Boston Herald reported that Teresa Heinz Kerry had called Ted Kennedy “a perfect bastard” in the mid-1970s. At the time, Mrs. Kerry was Mrs. Heinz, married to her first husband who was a Republican senator. Senator Kennedy’s office says that he and Mrs. Kerry, over the years, had developed a “deep friendship.” A lot can change in nearly three decades.

There’s nothing like trying to manipulate the media and nothing better than a public that can recognize it.

—Vinnee Tong

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Big Brother Turkmenbashi


The latest installment of despotism and insanity has been revealed in a poem: “The New Turkmen Spirit.”

The poem, written by President Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan and presented to his nation, begins with conceit and crescendos to a tone of authoritarian caution. The poem opens with the declaration that “I am the Turkmen spirit, reborn to bring you a golden age,” and includes the unambiguous and ominous warning: “My sight is sharp – I see everything … If you are honest in your deeds, I see this; if you commit wrongdoing, I see that too.” The spirit of Stalin is alive and well, it seems, in President Niyazov.

President Saparmurat Niyazov of Turkmenistan — a Central Asian nation sandwiched in the region between Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, and which sits on the fifth largest reserves of natural gas in the world — is well-known for his hubris and his tyranny. Since he became president of the republic in 1991, President Niyazov has renamed some months of the year after himself, inscribed words from his own book next to verses of the Qur’an on a mosque, and has imprisoned over 40 opposition activists since November of 2002.

Given that Robert Templer, the Central Asia Division Director of the International Crisis Group, warned in March of 2003 that Turkmenistan could “become the next Afghanistan … and … a danger to the rest of the world,” we might do well to keep a wary eye on President Niyazov.

—Mimi Hanaoka

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The killing fields


Beheading, lethal injection, the firing squad, and being beaten to death by sweet-smelling wood (a method of dispatch reserved for royals) have been used variously as methods of execution in Thailand, but the same nagging question persists: Can the death penalty ever be humane?

Until January of 2004, when lethal injection was introduced as the official mode of execution, criminals in Thailand were executed by firing squad (and until the 1930s, they were beheaded). As part of this transition, the director of the Thai prison system sent prison officials to Texas on an educational trip to study the process of lethal injection. Nathee Chitsawang, Director General of Prisons, explained: “It is more humane than when we used the firing squad … With the old method, sometimes they were crying and shouting … and sometimes they did not die immediately, so we had to take them and shoot again.” Nathee Chitsawang’s statement should sustain a tired but crucial aspect of the debate about the death penalty — whether execution can ever be humane.

There are legal, social, and moral arguments made for the death penalty, and there are deeply rooted religious convictions that undergird concepts of just punishment, including the death penalty, in the American and British criminal justice systems. In his 1996 book “God’s Just Vengeance,” Timothy Gorringe dissected Western concepts of penal strategies and asserted that Christian theology has been and continues to be the powerful undercurrent that lies beneath the legal system. The question of the humanity of the death penalty, however, cuts across cultural barriers and the issue of racial inequity in the administration of capital punishment and applies to the issue in all regions.  
  
Amporn Birtling, one of the 883 inmates on death row in Thailand’s Bangkwang prison, will only receive two hours warning before he is executed.  He states: “I have no clue when I will die … they could inject me today or tomorrow.”

While his execution will no doubt be horrific, the waiting process has created a hell unto itself in the prison that is notoriously known as the “Bangkok Hilton.”

—Mimi Hanaoka

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