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Though Bush-whackers hated the speech, the governor did what he needed to. But where was Mary Cheney's partner?

by Dan Kennedy

PHILADELPHIA -- The bottom, at least from where I was, came about a quarter of the way into George W. Bush's acceptance speech.

I was sitting in the uncrowded theater of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Center, where the Shadow Convention's "rapid-response team" was providing running commentary on Bush's speech as it was projected on a large screen to the side of the stage.

"We will strengthen Social Security and Medicare for the greatest generation and for generations to come," Bush said at one point -- only the closed captioning on the C-SPAN feed somehow garbled "greatest generation" as "great estrogen." For a panel desperate for a yuk, this was like a blessing from above. Someone quipped that a protester must have gotten into the C-SPAN booth. Someone else decided the captioning actually said "great estrogen rectal" (maybe it did, but that's not what I saw as the text went flying by), which in turn led to some bathroom humor, and then a jibe about overreliance on bathroom humor.

Clearly, this was no way for me to analyze Bush's acceptance speech.

So how did I end up here?

Well, deciding where to watch Bush's big moment was not as easy as you might think. The First Union Center was not nearly big enough for this convention. The Phoenix got one pass for two reporters, and even if I had gone, our perch was actually behind the stage, wholly out of view of the podium. But having watched John McCain's and Dick Cheney's speeches on the TV in our hotel room, I felt some obligation to find a crowd with which to watch George W.

On Thursday afternoon, I headed off to the media pavilions -- four huge tents outside the First Union Center, where a goodly share of the 15,000 media people here have spent their week. It is a depressing environment, combining boredom, overwork, and stress, and by Thursday people seemed at the breaking point. Take Washington Post media reporter Howard Kurtz, whom I wanted to visit at least for a moment before camp broke for Los Angeles. Cordial as always, he nevertheless looked like a beaten man: he's been filing three stories a day here, one for the Post and two for its Web site, and has also been doing several live shots every day for CNN. "I've never been so tired in my life," he told me and Brill's Content staff writer Seth Mnookin, who had also dropped by. After we'd exchanged a few pleasantries and Kurtz had had a chance to stretch his legs, he strapped himself back in and started crunching again.

At 3:30 p.m., I ran into former secretary of labor (and possible Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate) Robert Reich, who was here working for Comedy Central. I asked him whether he was thinking of going into comedy full-time; "I've always been a comedian," he responded. As to the burning issue of who's funnier, Republicans or Democrats, he replied, "Republicans are inherently funnier, there's no comparison. All politicians take themselves too seriously. Republicans tend to take themselves even more seriously than Democrats, if that's possible." The video crew was ready now, so he broke away to do an "interview," if it could be called that, with Texas congressman Henry Bonilla, who gamely delivered lines such as "What do you want?" and "Why should I help you? You're a friend of Bill."

I arrived at the Annenberg Center a little before 9 p.m. We were treated to such entertainment as "the Celtic Women," who turned out to be four bagpipe players in full Scottish dress, and an a cappella group consisting of three black men. (Let me pause to take an obligatory cheap shot. From what I could see, there were, at that moment, as many African-Americans on stage as among the left-leaning audience, which at that point numbered maybe 60 or 70 people. So the Shadow Convention had something in common with the Republican National Convention after all.) We were also treated to a demo of a Web site for aspiring presidential candidates, the highlight of which is an on-screen helper, modeled after Microsoft Word's incredibly annoying dancing paperclip -- only this one is a snake with James Carville's head.

The panel members weren't all that funny, but it wasn't their fault. Running commentary on a speech in progress is better done by friends drinking beer in a living room. Eric Alterman, of the Nation, and Ruth Coniff, of the Progressive, got off a couple of good lines, but the professional comedians, Will Durst and Bob Somerby, were pretty lame. Durst's main contribution was to note that he wanted to say "Bullshit!" at the end of every line in Bush's address. And it didn't help that the moderator was original Yippie Paul Krassner, publisher/editor/impresario of the Realist, brought in as a substitute for Harry Shearer, who I guess had had enough and decided to go home; Krassner, who held the clicker, kept turning off the TV by accident, until Durst finally wrestled it away from him. But by then, Bush was nearly done.

At the Annenberg Center, I had come away with the impression that Bush's speech was bad bordering on the embarrassing, although he did seem to pick it up at the end. But it's easy to think that way when you're surrounded by Bush-haters. It wasn't until Friday morning, reading the full text of his speech online, that I realized how effective it had been -- a little clunky, a little hokey, but just what he needed to introduce himself to the millions of people who were tuning in to the presidential campaign for the first time. Did it work? NBC News reported that Bush's lead over Al Gore grew to 47 percent to 36 percent after the speech, up from 44-38 just before the convention, and that the percentage of people who hold a "very positive" view of Bush leapt from 24 percent to 34 percent. So yeah, it did. Of course, Gore will get his own convention bounce; but Bush has held a healthy lead over Gore for months now, and he did nothing this week to blow it. That means Gore will have to do something huge to change the basic dynamic of this race. Picking John Kerry as his running mate isn't going to be it, although Kerry would be a solid choice.

A final note. For all the talk about compassion and tolerance and inclusion this week, there was one significant absence from the convention: the lesbian partner of Mary Cheney, one of Dick and Lynne Cheney's two daughters. It's not clear why she wasn't there; Salon, which has led the pack in reporting on Mary Cheney, put up a piece on Thursday saying that it's not even known whether Cheney's partner is fully out (though USA Today posted her name on its Web site), so maybe that's why she was nowhere to be seen.

But let's face it -- though Bush's rhetoric may be benign and his behind-the-scenes dealings with people respectful and positive, he got where he is today by making a common pact with the Republican Party's most retrograde elements, the Reverend Pat Robertson and the rest of the religious right. This, after all, was a convention where some members of the Texas delegation actually bowed their heads in prayer when Arizona congressman Jim Kolbe, who's gay, spoke on trade issues.

It would have sent a powerful message to the country if Mary Cheney and her partner had joined the crowd on stage after Bush's speech. But it's unlikely that Bush would have the guts to take such a bold step.

Not gonna do that. Wouldn't be prudent.