Going to Denver? Watch out for dingbat campaign consultants
(We are honored to have Gloria Feldt joining the Women and Politics ranks! She’ll be cross-posting here from HeartFeldt Politics to add to our convention coverage. Please welcome her!)
No, I’m not in Denver. Been there, done that, got lots of t-shirts, hats, buttons, and memories of spending the days in transit from event to event and watching hordes of people cruising from event to event to see who they might see there and of course to be seen themselves. I plan on keeping tabs on the convention happenings and blog throughout though. And I imagine I’ll have a better seat from my home office. Here’s one good convention website resource with schedules, speakers, events, and up to date electoral information all in one place.
Do you Twitter? I’ve never Twittered before, but I signed up so I can follow Huffington Post bloggers and perhaps post Twitters there, if I can figure out how to say anything in 140 characters or less.
My worst convention memory was in 2004 when I spoke at the Democratic National Convention. Actually, it was mostly a good experience, since it was the first time a Planned Parenthood leader (I was president of the national organization at the time) had been invited to speak at a party convention and I was proud of having built the organization’s political clout. I’d written a great speech going in–smart, humorous, and skewering George W. Bush. Well, some dingbat in John Kerry’s campaign had decided no one could say anything bad about Bush. They censored everyone’s speeches. Then they made us read the approved speech from a teleprompter. Speakers were not allowed to bring paper to the podium, lest we should divert from our script.
Well, you know I couldn’t resist getting one good jibe in at Bush, so while I was at the podium for my three minutes of fame, I inserted a sentence that wasn’t in the script. Holy moly. The teleprompter screen started fluctuating wildly back and forward as the operator presumably tried to find where I was. Or maybe they were trying to flummox me as punishment for going off the reservation. It was pretty amusing really, watching myself afterward moving back onto what I remembered of the prepared script, trying to make it look as seamless as possible while the prompter caught back up with me.
It was amusing, that is, until after the convention when the same dingbats were apparently still advising Kerry not to respond to the Swift Boat attacks. And that’s why he’s not running for his second term right now. Will Obama learn from that? So far, I am worried.
(Cross-posted from Heartfeldt Politics)
Tags: Barack Obama, Candidates, Convention schedule, Delegates, Heartfeldt Politics, John Kerry, RNCC, Swift Boat attacks
This entry was posted on Monday, August 25th, 2008 at 9:20 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
August 25th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Gloria, I wish the Dems would stop prefacing all their comments about John McCain in such glowing, personal terms. That’s another “dingbat” thing that is going to hurt the Dems, I fear.
August 26th, 2008 at 5:07 am
Hi PM-
How true! I love how the British seem to maintain such decorum while verbally shredding their opponents. It’s a fine art. However, here in the U.S., we have one party that tends to be deferential, therefore looking weak, and one that has their teeth bared most of the time.
August 27th, 2008 at 12:20 am
Someone mentioned to me recently that the dissolution of the 527s was high-minded, but terrible for this campaign. With well-equipped surrogates to dismantle opponents on the issues through the 527s the candidates could “stay above the fray.” It seems that the aggressive personal attack is just not Obama’s style. Even his recent negative commercials are humorous (and therefore somewhat cerebral) rather than going for the throat. Where is our “Swift Boating” of McCain? Granted, the man spent six years in a bamboo cage, but other than that he has had a very privileged life and little ability to identify with the plight of the common man and woman in post-Bush America.