The political conventions for 2020 began last night. I’ve been watching these events longer than I have been paying attention to the Olympics. I first paid attention to the Olympics in 1956, but do not remember seeing them on TV. I remember watching the 1952 conventions of both parties which originated in Chicago. I think that I was watching in 1952 because my parents had just purchased our first television, a 17 inch RCA that was nestled into a beautiful mahogany cabinet. We could receive only one station, channel 4, WKY in Oklahoma City. In that era if you were a child with a new TV, you would watch everything on it, including the test pattern which would occur at the sign on and the sign off each day.
WKY-TV was the first television station in Oklahoma, and it began broadcasting on the NBC network in 1949. If you live in Oklahoma and think that channel 4 is KFOR, you are right. WKY-TV became KTVY in 1975, and then became KFOR in 1990.
What I remember most about the 1952 convention was the commentary coming from my father. He was still a hereditary Democrat, although he was not a big fan of President Truman whom he would refer to as “the haberdasher.” Indeed, Truman had sold men’s clothes early in his life. When his business went bankrupt, he entered politics as a member of the Kansas City Democratic machine led by Tom Pendergast. Truman holds the distinction of being the last president who did not graduate from college. I think Dad thought he was crude and violated the norms of his office because he would occasionally use profanity in public although he was a Southern Baptist. Our current president likes to use superlatives to describe himself and his accomplishments. He definitely has greatly surpassed all other presidents in the department of “violating the norms of high office,” but I think that he got Dad’s vote.
The fact that Dad may have voted for Trump before he died must be some sort of comment on how our culture has changed in the last 70 years. I think that my parents split their vote in 1952. My mother looked at Ike and saw a war hero and a man of character since not many people knew of his wartime liaison with Kay Summersby. At that time, the private lives of leaders were indeed private, but what was public often created disdain even though now it is often not a concern. I remember Mom saying that she could not vote for Stevenson because he was divorced. By 1956, and forever afterwards, I am pretty sure that both of my parents pulled the lever for the Republican presidential candidate.
By 1956, I was caught up in the drama of the conventions. I remember two things about that convention. First, for months before the Republican Convention, which was held in San Francisco’s Cow Palace, there were frequent announcements from NBC about the cable that was being laid to enable a live broadcast of the events from the West Coast. Second, from the 1956 Democratic Convention held in Chicago, I remember seeing a young John Kennedy who was briefly considered as a candidate for Vice President. As an eleven year old, I was impressed by him and was disappointed when a very boring Senator Estes Kefauver was the final choice for VP to run with Stevenson in a second hopeless attempt to beat the Eisenhower/Nixon ticket. Unlike today, those conventions did not have outcomes that were predetermined by presidential primaries.
Robert Caro’s fourth volume in his series on the life of Lyndon Johnson, The Passage of Power, begins with an amazingly detailed description of the brokering at the 1960 Democratic Convention which resulted in the election of John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. I think that the 1960 Democratic Convention was the beginning of the end for “old time” political conventions, although every convention since then has remained remarkable in its own way. Perhaps you would disagree, and say that the inflection point was the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention that occurred while riots were occurring outside its doors. Now, we will have the totally choreographed virtual convention, and after one night, I must say that I liked it.
We have a host, Eva Longoria Baston, who brings the skill of an actress to the job of the moderator of a well produced and tight presentation that was a resounding denouncement of the president, while contrasting the capability and empathy of Joe Biden. The message was delivered by politicians from both sides of the aisle as well as by “ordinary” people who found the president to lack the character, managerial skill, leadership capabilities, intellectual breadth, or the empathy required for the job. The most effective statement from an “ordinary person” came from the woman who said that her father’s decision to vote for Trump cost him his life. Perhaps the most startling condemnations from politicians came from John Kasich, former Republican candidate for president, longtime Congressman, and former governor of Ohio, and from Christine Todd Whitman, a lifelong Republican who is a former governor of New Jersey and Administrator of the EPA. If you want to see last night’s highlights from the amazing rendition of the National Anthem by voices from all fifty states (pictured in today’s header) through to the profound words of Michelle Obama, the Washington Post has offered a great four minute highlight reel that you ought to watch.
Bernie Sanders was one of the two headliners of the evening. He spoke just before the keynote address of Michelle Obama, who has all of the rhetorical skill, and maybe more, of her eloquent husband. Sanders delivered an endorsement that was a condemnation of the president, an endorsement of Joe Biden as an honorable man of experience and integrity, and a warning to the progressive wing of the party that if they did not set their differences aside the future of the nation, the health of the environment, and lives of people around the world would be severely compromised if the president were elected for four more years. If that sounds over the top, listen to his speech.
After the broadcast was over, I heard pundits on NPR, CNN, and CBC say that Michelle Obama’s speech was one of the best political speeches delivered anywhere, anytime, by anyone. If you missed it. Click here either to see and hear the speech, or read the transcript.
Here are some highlights:
I am one of a handful of people living today who have seen firsthand the immense weight and awesome power of the presidency. And let me once again tell you this: the job is hard. It requires clear-headed judgment, a mastery of complex and competing issues, a devotion to facts and history, a moral compass, and an ability to listen—and an abiding belief that each of the 330,000,000 lives in this country has meaning and worth…
When my husband left office…
Four years later, the state of this nation is very different. More than 150,000 people have died, and our economy is in shambles because of a virus that this president downplayed for too long. It has left millions of people jobless. Too many have lost their health care; too many are struggling to take care of basic necessities like food and rent; too many communities have been left in the lurch to grapple with whether and how to open our schools safely. Internationally, we’ve turned our back, not just on agreements forged by my husband, but on alliances championed by presidents like Reagan and Eisenhower.
And here at home, as George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and a never-ending list of innocent people of color continue to be murdered, stating the simple fact that a Black life matters is still met with derision from the nation’s highest office.
She gives a full picture of the president’s failures, but her focus was on his lack of character and empathy.
Because whenever we look to this White House for some leadership or consolation or any semblance of steadiness, what we get instead is chaos, division, and a total and utter lack of empathy.
Empathy: that’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately. The ability to walk in someone else’s shoes; the recognition that someone else’s experience has value, too. Most of us practice this without a second thought. If we see someone suffering or struggling, we don’t stand in judgment. We reach out because, “There, but for the grace of God, go I.” It is not a hard concept to grasp. It’s what we teach our children…right now, kids in this country are seeing what happens when we stop requiring empathy of one another. They’re looking around wondering if we’ve been lying to them this whole time about who we are and what we truly value.
She returns to her “When they go low, we go high” rhetoric of 2016 and says that it is still appropriate.
But let’s be clear: going high does not mean putting on a smile and saying nice things when confronted by viciousness and cruelty. Going high means taking the harder path. It means scraping and clawing our way to that mountain top. Going high means standing fierce against hatred while remembering that we are one nation under God, and if we want to survive, we’ve got to find a way to live together and work together across our differences.
And going high means unlocking the shackles of lies and mistrust with the only thing that can truly set us free: the cold hard truth.
She finishes by describing her confidence in Biden, and by emphasizing the importance of overcoming the barriers to voting that are developing. She echoes the concern of Sanders and the other previous speakers of the evening who see this election as critical to the future of the country.
This is who we still are: compassionate, resilient, decent people whose fortunes are bound up with one another. And it is well past time for our leaders to once again reflect our truth.
So, it is up to us to add our voices and our votes to the course of history, echoing heroes like John Lewis who said, “When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something.” That is the truest form of empathy: not just feeling, but doing; not just for ourselves or our kids, but for everyone, for all our kids.
There was not much about healthcare during last night’s program unless you consider the multiple references to the sacrifices of essential healthcare professionals and other workers, to the president’s incompetent management of the pandemic, and to the frequent inference that to recover and become better, we must overcome the social and economic inequities that the pandemic has revealed. The heavily debated technical issues of better healthcare that characterized the Democratic Primary Debates were not mentioned. There was no discussion of how to achieve universal access. I think that it is a foregone conclusion in the minds of most voters that healthcare is a settled issue with Democrats who will demand that everyone has access to care by some methodology to be determined after the election. If the Democrats win, we will continue toward universal coverage. If President Trump wins, forget it. You and I know that underneath access to care there are the other issues of assured quality and equity. Why debate that with an opposing candidate who is devoid of empathy and who has been actively undermining all attempts to improve the lives of the less fortunate and underserved among us who have borne a heavier load during the pandemic?
In years past the strategic mantra has been, “It’s the economy, stupid.” That’s still true, but now the economy is hard to dissect away from the pandemic, and the discussion of what we need to do to give everyone the care they need in a way that will improve the health of the nation for a sustainable proportion of our collective resources will be subtext to the greater issue of how to get President Trump out of office so that we can begin to get over the pandemic and repair the economy. That realization makes the character and the competence of the president the dominant issue. What you hear with passion is that America as we have experienced it, even with all its imperfections and unfulfilled dreams, will be further from its objectives, and literally unrecognizable after four more years of this president. That sounds like hyperbole and an over the top political assertion. But, based on the experience of the last six months, can you imagine how this president can turn it all around even with the miraculously quick development of a vaccine? And, if things do turn for the better for some, do you have any confidence that the outcome will be better for all? And, if it’s not better for all, will it remain better for some for long? If there is any lesson that the pandemic is offering, it is that we are all connected in vital ways that cannot be ignored. Our president does not understand that reality, and therefore is a danger now, and he will become more dangerous if he remains in office.
This week there will be more from the Democrats, and next week we will see and hear from the Republicans who will tell us why the Democrats can’t be trusted, and that President Trump is the only one who can “Keep America Great.” We must remember that the future of our health and healthcare is at stake in the discussion even if the technical proposals for its revitalization are never discussed directly. November 3rd is only 11 weeks, or if you prefer, 77 days away. I can assure you there will be many surprises and challenges in the interim.
