The Convention Blog

First, we can’t upload photos from here because the internet connection available just isn’t good enough. I have a bunch of pictures but no way to upload them. Maybe friday. The weather has turned into what one would expect from Minnesota. It is now quite cool here instead of the 95 degrees and heat that prevailed earlier in the week. Today is the last scheduled day that we have here. The students head for home mostly on friday but I don’t go until saturday because faculty have to stay until a time friday that was well after the last flight for the East Coast had left and we are still far enough east that there is no redeye from here to there.

The other thirty percent references those Americans who respond in polls that they have a favorable opinion of the President and/or his job performance. Last week it didn’t seem that there was anyone who had anything nice to say about the current administration, this week it seems there isn’t anyone who doesn’t have nice things to say. Bush spoke via videolink on tuesday night and gave both a valedictory, as well as a ringing endorsement of John McCain. The entire second night of the convention was intended to give McCain conservative/reformer credentials and to testify to his particular character. In many ways it was a repeat of the 2004 Convention because the themes seemed to be 1) McCain was  a person of quality as measured by his adoption of a Bangledeshi child and his war experiences, 2) McCain was a reformer in the tradition of TR or the Conservative Heritage Brand, Ronald Reagan, and 3) that McCain was right on the issues as Republicans were. Two things jumped out about both nights of the Republican Convention and they are 1) the McCain people clearly don’t want to talk about who exactly was running the country for 6 out of the last 8 years. I agree that the current Democratic Congress has not been the most productive or energetic ever but the fact remains that they did not hold the majority throughout most of the Bush years and the fact remains that Bush was president for eight years and is pretty unpopular in a lot of the swing states that will decide the election, as well as in the country as a whole.  This is a marketing problem for the McCain people to overcome and they are giving it their best shot by trying to reposition the Republican brand away from what it was during the Bush years and more toward a reform/TR type thing. They are also trying to run down the value of the Obama brand by raising doubts about Barack Obama’s experience and highlighting the experiences found on their ticket.

I thought it laughable that the McCain people got hacked off at Campbell Brown the other night for refusing to take their vague answers about Palin’s executive experience because they were the ones who made the claim. They shouldn’t get so snippy that they refuse to talk to a journalist who has the audacity to question their claims. This will not serve them well during the coming weeks with the media but it might rally the faithful to support their ticket without asking too many questions. On the other hand, I still think the old adage about not getting into a fight with people who buy ink by the truckload is well worth remembering here, especially for McCain, whom a lot of people on the left argue has been as much the candidate of the Washington press core as he has anything else. 2) The second thing that jumps out is that, just like the Obama campaign, the McCain folks haven’t gotten too much into the nuts and bolts of policy, they have just discussed it in the more emotive terms that will resonate favorably with the electorate.

The security situation around the Xcel Center on tuesday night could best have been described as difficult. The cops were clearly having a difficult time and at times did not seem in control of the situation. I exited the hall at one point to give credentials to two of our students and could hear some human noises but more interesting a regular BOOM, BOOM, BOOM as the cops shot tear gas and flashbangs at protesters. By the time we left Xcel, the security around the buses consisted of troops not police officers and, when we came back on wednesday, it was a lot tighter and there were a lot more security people than there had been the night before.