GOP CONVENTION PLANNERS TIE UP A CAMPAIGN PACKAGE

A few themes ran through the GOP national convention speeches that could be divined by listening to the C-Span cablecasts.

And, those themes tied in nicely with Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech.

Convention organizers probably coordinated the show, meant to counter the argument against Romney being laid down by ads backing President Obama.

Family (often stemming from immigrant parents or grandparents), tough times, founding of small businesses, near failure and then success flowing from hard work, hiring and keeping employees. Folded into the series of speeches were the political achievements of women and ethnic groups, sometimes represented in the same person.

Romney’s speech closing the convention touched on all those topics. His story, as he told it, echoed the content of the appearances of politicians and entrepreneurs and women and the candidate’s business partners and friends, who summarized their relevant experiences.

Did all this stagecraft intended to tie together the candidate’s story and his campaign strategy reach enough voters to matter? Only the vote counting starting with the polls closing on November 6 will give the answer.

Slimmed down even further, the speakers as a group offered this argument for Romney’s election: Nice people who shine often come from hard-working immigrant families that embrace the American ideal of freedom to pursue happiness, and that their small business success is shared by providing jobs for others.

Speakers encapsulated parts of that campaign argument with lines that could become talking points or bumper stickers. But the beauty of the convention program overall may be lost to those who did not watch enough of the choreography without the interruptions and interpretations of pundits.

Agree or disagree with this political production, it seemed different from the political conventions of old. Voice-over introductions with the name and title of the speaker, short enough presentations to hold attention, and a pace that warded off boredom.

Clint Eastwood’s “surprise” appearance cannot go without comment. The convention could have gone swimmingly without him. Like him or not, his piece had some entertainment value. He did prove, however, a truism of political advertising. Ideas and even exact phrases can be conveyed clearly without using explicit words. He minced no words when he distilled elections, saying that officeholders are employees of the people and if they fail at the job, they can be let go. Conventioneers gave him a fist bump on that.

KILL THE UMPIRE; WELL, NOT REALLY

Well, the Washington Nationals just dropped a four-game series at the Phillies ball yard.  Still in front of Atlanta by five games the morning after; the Nats are still a disappointment.  Sometimes it is difficult to watch on TV when those exceptionally good ballplayers are about to blow one.

Near despair arises (or does it fall?) when Phil Mickelson is on the verge of missing a cut.  Somehow he makes it by a stroke, shows signs of surging on moving day, and then bogeys away his gain and then some on Sunday.

Then there’s Notre Dame: about to take on Navy in Ireland, a game opening the seasons for both teams.  Can a fan, much less a nervous grad, watch?

Obviously, whether the anxious fan can influence the play of the athletes, as he fears, is nonsense. His nerves are completely and geographically separated from those competing for fame and treasure. What kind of fool would even feel, much less admit, trepidation over televised entertainment, sport intended for public consumption and the enrichment of owners and sponsoring institutions and compensation for professionals and future compensation for collegiate stars?  Of course, the fool does watch, even while squirming in his chair or walking up and down in frenzied worry.

Some other fans elsewhere may act the same, but probably fewer than one might suspect.  But millions of non-athletes, some of whom guzzle more beer than at other times, watch with fascination and elevated pulses influenced by heightened desire for victory.  Vicarious victory.

How many fans can face the reality that whether their team or player scores and soars or sinks and stinks changes the fans’ lives by not a single iota?  Well, okay, a lot of life-changing money could be riding on the outcome. Still, rabid fandom has little to do with compulsive gambling.  The overheated fanatic need not have filthy or pristine lucre in play over an important or unimportant game.

Game  \’gam\ n 1a AMUSEMENT, DIVERSION b: FUN, SPORT

So goes the definition of “game” in the Webster’s New Deal Dictionary.

Americans (and maybe to a greater degree soccer fans in other countries) can get pretty emotional about sports.  Those feelings may have been true in earlier times, such as when elders were in high school. As a failed athlete who turned to cheer leading to travel with the school’s teams, this old mind of a would-be athlete recalls plenty of excitement about victory and deep sorrow over defeat. Hoopla has grown in intensity over the years. Expression comes in many more boisterous vulgar ways than when a San Francisco staffer for the Examiner, Ernest Lawrence Thayer, wrote poetically in the paper in 1888 of ill-fated Casey at the Bat.  A clipping of that poem was given to a comedian in a New York theater who used it when some pro ball players were in the audience. So back some 120 years ago, there was proof behind the footlights of amusement, diversion, fun and sport all wrapped together.

So why do fans treat sports as more important than amusement, diversion and fun?

Maybe, to identify themselves with success.  Thus, failure – a loss – is devastating mentally.  My team, my hero, my heroine (women are big fans now, too) is no better than I am.

Most of us fanatics can come back to reality pretty quickly.  Oh sure, it’s only a game. It doesn’t make any different in my life.  But . . .

How many cars will be overturned and burned should the Nat win the Word Series?

(Oh, O! Just jinxed ‘em.)

SPEAK CAREFULLY AND DUCK THE BIG STICK

Consider politicians choosing words in the midst of an interview, especially when being questioned by a local-market Cronkite wannabe. Or even a grizzled officeholder speaking off the cuff. Some mistakes will be made.

Todd Akin, GOP senatorial candidate in Missouri, put his foot in it in a radio interview, speaking of “legitimate rape.” Forget cogent arguments about the substance of the spoken error. No judgment here regarding the right or wrong of his argument. There can be no misunderstanding that he did use the wrong adjective. Let us just look at the consequences of similar misspeaking in the past. No need to list many, for it happens all the time, and – it seems – most often to Republicans. There was George Allen and his calling a planted heckler a name his mother picked up in the Caribbean. There was Dan Quayle and his failure to correct a school flashcard that misspelled potato. Oh, yes, Joe Biden recently spoke of chains in a way that some said was connected to slavery. And President Obama said of entrepreneurs that “they didn’t build that.” The latter two examples seemed to be scripted.

Leave aside that Republicans were more concerned about Akin’s words because Democrats thought the error made it easier for their incumbent to prevail. The point is that the “gotcha” game can impede open discussion of real issues, thus oversimplifying elections and encouraging candidates to adhere slavishly to talking points.

So, can we return to the day of Lincoln-Douglas debates to inform the electorate? Never, it must be supposed, in a time of fast foods and drive-in banking and 10-second sound bites.

Somehow, citizens should hope that they can have – and work for – political and public policy presentations that inform audiences about the true feelings and desires of candidates. Unneeded are bumper sticker length campaigns that appeal to guts rather than to brains. The same goes for TV ads.

Maybe levelheaded citizens that care enough can influence political discourse, guiding it toward beneficial arguments and away from rancor. The republic’s future could depend on such basic intelligence.

AMERICA CAN CHANGE

Class warfare is something like that old cliché about a circular firing squad. Those manning the weapons overlook how they could afford the guns.

What does it matter if the guy who owns the company you work for has a mansion in the town’s best suburb, has vacation houses in Florida and Maine, vacations in Europe and Asia, and gets there in his private jet? It matters because he had to pay, directly or indirectly, the contractor and building materials manufacturer and those who work for them; he had to pay for the fine clothes and luggage he and his family bought for traveling, the car and the driver he used to drive to the airport, the people who built his plane, those who maintain it, and those who pilot it. And he had to invest his profits to keep his company going and growing. The entire list of his spending, which benefits other people in many income classes and walks of life, is probably too long even to be affixed here in endnotes.

Politicians are wont to decry those who possess wealth for paying too little in taxes. They are also wont to ignore economic studies that show the top one percent of income receivers pay more taxes than their numbers might suggest, and the lower half pays very little. Too many of those elected officeholders and candidates for those offices attempt to use the disparity between poor and rich to create envy --- and votes.

Their ignorance – vincible or invincible – defies the normal ambition of people to do better, to get better jobs, to make more money, to live at least little more luxuriously. Such desires are fueled by advertising, which describes even marginally luxury goods in glowing terms. Those consumers who are content with their lot for reasons of moral self-sacrifice still will buy what they need. Envy exists, but as with most sins, it is not an everyday vice for most people.

Suppose that true equality of income (and, ergo, class) existed in this or any other society. Everyone would enjoy a comfortable place to live, have enough tasty and nutritious food, have a nice car, vacation at the beach or in the mountains, luxuriate in the beneficence of government.

Really?

Who would design their houses? Who would build them? Who would imagine new ways of cooling and heating the dwellings? Who would sell them? Who would cut the lawns and landscape them? All of that is done under the current system of economics. But what incentive would there be to learn architecture, engineering, business and the rest if at the end personal income would equal that of the guy next door. Why bother? I don’t have to learn a skill – or use one – because everything will be taken care of.

How would the government actually be able to convert capitalism to the new utopia of equal distribution of wealth and what goes with that “wealth”?

Obviously, that conversion could not happen overnight. Equality in outcome could not happen with new legislation effective at the stroke of midnight on Dec. 31. As the New Year a new economy begins! What would happen to the hovels? What would happen to the mansions? What would happen to mac-and-cheese? What would happen to caviar and those little silver spoons?

No, such a sudden change is impossible, probably even with a bloody revolution. Societal and economic changes can only be made slowly because those affected must adapt.

Slowly, like affordable medical care; the enormity of societal change won’t be felt for years, as gradual tightening flattens freedom. Write and pass commercial legislation that covers thousands of pages so that lawmakers don’t have time to read and to understand, followed by bureaucratic rule-making to enforce that law, and business is stifled, new hires are postponed or abandoned. Reduce the military; spending on bellicose material would decline along with the jobs to supply it. Increase entitlements and citizen dependency spreads. Government grows. Freedom wanes.

Real equality may be impossible, but attempts to make incomes and people equal are real and destructive.

America can change. Will we let it? Will we let the effort continue?

FOLKS VOTING WITH CHICKEN SANDWICHES

A 25-mile pilgrimage to a Chick-fil-a on “appreciation day” of the chief executive of the fast-food chain brought a surprise.

Not the crowd, but the obviously organized preparation for a successful endorsement of traditional marriage espoused by Dan Cathy, the president.

More than a dozen uniformed counter attendants called for lined-up customers to step forward as their stations opened up. At least three managerial employees were directing the crowded lines and helping the customers. Other employees were outside writing drive-through orders as cars in two lines made their way through parked cars in the U-shaped lot. Besides, there was the busy kitchen crew. Cheer was evident everywhere.

This writer and his wife got through the line and obtained their order well within ten minutes. The efficiency of the staff was evident; the time spent was barely more than that usually taken when patronizing a McDonalds at non-rush hours.

A Chick-fil-a manager-type appeared at the table offering to refill drink cups. Michael (his badge read) smiled when asked whether extra help was hired for the day. Similarly, he ducked an inquiry about extra food obtained in anticipation of a larger than normal crowd, and would have been done with that food had business not boomed on Aug. 1. He did allow that the place had been packed all day and described earlier lines of would-be diners and how far they extended.

Told that his current conversationalists were there in support of Cathy, whose words backing one-man/one-woman marriage brought threats to ban new Chick-fil-a stores from several mayors around the country.  Michael said the response at his location was wonderful and joyful. And, he added, it reflected American history.

News reports showed that the crowding seen at the northern Prince William County, Virginia, store was observed elsewhere in the United States. Supporters of same-sex marriage are reported to be planning “kiss-ins” for Chick-fil-a outlets later. Crowd comparisons should prove interesting.