Conventional Wisdom

I watched some of the Republican National Convention. It isn't easy to do, you know. First, you had to find it. It's only broadcast on the major networks at 10 PM but PBS and CSPAN broadcast it live. Foxnews aired it but with commentary. I don't need pundits explaining what I heard, I can figure it out on my own. I also don't need people making it more, or less, of it than what I think of it.

I recall the first party convention I ever saw was the 1952 Republican Convention where they nominated Eisenhower. Most of you weren't alive when Eisenhower was president. Quite a guy. He was not rated highly by many but he had a fairly clean 8 years, the only blip being the Francis Gary Powers fiasco. Powers was a pilot of a high altitude spy plane (a U-2) that was shot down over the Soviet Union, over Russia. A bit embarrassing. Especially for the generals who thought the Soviets didn't have the technology to shoot it down. Oops. He also had an important hand in getting us involved in Vietnam's troubles. He's the one who committed us to helping the south against the north. It was JFK who escalated the number of military advisers we were sending and let them go into the field rather than just oversee the training, and Lyndon Johnson who escalated it into the war that divided the country. And then Nixon campaigned on the promise to bring it to an end with his "secret plan".

My brother, as I recall, liked not Ike but Adlai (Stevenson) who was the Democrat's nominee. My brother was only 7 and I was only 5. The odd thing is that I do not recall if we watched the Democratic Party's National Convention in that year. In 1964, I supported Johnson and my brother supported Goldwater.  We are on opposite sides again this year.

Like all conventions, there were a lot of speeches at this year's Republican Convention. Only some were interesting. Most were the usual "pump up the base" exercises. Few were remarkable.  Few are ever remarkable. And speeches make me sleepy anyway so I tend to nod off. I cannot recall any memorable lines. Others will do that.


[added] Marco Rubio's speech was excellent... except for a fumble on one line. Very impressive. Romney's speech I would give an 8 out of 10.

I will watch as much of the Democratic National Convention next week. I expect that to be just about as memorable.

The conventions aren't for us anyway, they're designed to pump up the party faithful and kick off the Real Campaign. But we know the campaign actually started the day after the last presidential election, don't we?