Day one - Ann Richard's speech at Democratic National Convention - column

National Review, Sept 2, 1988 by William F. Buckley, Jr

DAY ONE

TO SWING with a convention requires that you submit yourself to the beckonings of surrealism, even as you are required to do when visiting a hypnotist. "You do believe, Josephine, that you are entering another world, that your arms are weightless, that your body is floating among the clouds..." "Yes, Doctor." Thus at the Democratic convention on opening night we hear John Chancellor saying things like, "Many of these Jackson delegates feel very strongly about Palestinian rights." If you can believe that, you are ready to visit your local hypnotist.

Now, say what you will about the virtues of positive as distinguished from negative campaigning, Ms. Ann Richards of Texas certainly proved the case for the negative, at which she was superb. When taking the positive line against the Republicans, she sounded like a political jukebox programmed by a cliche factory. When she talked about George Bush, she did so in splendid derogatory style. There's something about an accent, just a little bit foreign, that goes with the sarcastic mode. Ms. Richards was well aware of this when she began by twanging that she was going to instruct the audience in what a "real Texas accent" sounded like. SCORE ONE: George Bush is not a real Texan. By the way, Texans are a little bit that way about Texan breeding. I say this as a son of a Texan never entirely forgiven for having left the state. Not many people decline to think of Ronald Reagan as a Californian. Well, he was about the same age when he traveled to California from Illinois as Bush was when he traveled to Texas from Connecticut.

But the lady was on a roll, and no crowd ever adored Bette Midler more than this one adored Ann Richards. The country must say no to George Bush, "now that he's after a job that he can't get appointed to." SCORE TWO: A nice crack, and it was not evident anywhere that the Jackson delegates took offense, though their candidate was asking for a job notwithstanding that he had never been elected or appointed to any job ever.

And then Ms. Richards suggested that George Bush's discovery of the anti-drug cause and of others were eye-openers for him. "Poor George. He can't help it. He was born with a silver foot in his mouth." SCORE THREE: You hit a Republican because he was born in affluence: a political birthmark difficult to recover from unless the Republican absolves himself from this delinquency by becoming a Democrat or a socialist. One recalls the elections in 1958, in which three scions of great wealth were running for office in the state of New York--Nelson Rockefeller pushing the Republicans to the left, Averell Harriman pushing the Democrats to the left, and Corliss Lamont pushing the Communists to the left. They had taken care of the silver-spoon problem.

AH, BUT THEN the lady became serious, and it was as if Jean-Pierre Rampal had put down his flute and picked up a bass drum. Examine the flatness of "for eight straight years, George Bush hasn't displayed the slightest interest in anything we care about." A statement so empty as to evaporate. The Vice President is in office primarily to support and help to popularize the policies of a President, in this case a President--twice voted for by the citizens of Texas--who has addressed problems varying from freedom of the seas in the persian Gulf, to school prayer. If it is true that Bush has not addressed problems that concern Ms. Richards, then the inquiring mind wonders just what problems Ms. Richards is obsessed by.

The speaker all but said--in some cases did suggest--that the Republicans plan to repeal research into AIDS, to banish the farmers (to whom the Reagan Administration has been paying $25 billion a year), to extinguish local manufacturing by encouraging a "flood" of imports, to end public education, repeal Social Security, and what? Reinstitute the colonial tradition of the scarlet letter for the adulteress?

One had the feeling--I for the first time--that maybe there is no way George Bush can lose this election. Bette Midler at Atlanta got a lot of laughs and a lot of applause, and convinced the thoughtful viewer that she had nothing, but nothing, to say.