BLOOMINGTON, MN — Several kickoff events that should have
formed the preamble to a week-long celebration went ahead as scheduled on
Sunday, but the thousands of attendees gathered here for the 2008 Republican
National Convention suddenly faced the prospect that their quadrennial showcase
could be washed out, quite literally, by dire events elsewhere.
The Mississippi River has its source in the Minneapolis-St.
Paul area, and way down at the other end of it, 1300 miles away, a
Katrina-sized storm was blowing nobody any good – with one possible exception
(q.v., below). Hurricane Gustav had already caused the evacuation of New
Orleans, a city facing a second and potentially final ruin, and the rest of the
Gulf area was on notice of catastrophe, as well.
The situation has left the RNC’s big party on hold, with
the normal Monday keynote events already suspended amid a very real threat that
the convention, previously expected to draw 45,000 visitors and the attention
of political junkies everywhere, could suffer a de facto cancellation, something
that goes beyond comprehension.
After the suspension of Monday’s opening-day events was
announced, party chairman Rick Davis offered this cold consolation: ‘At
some point between Monday and Thursday evening, we will convene once again to
complete the activities needed to qualify Senator McCain and Governor Palin for
the ballot in all 50 states. Beyond that, all we can say is that we will monitor
what is happening and make decisions about other convention business as details
become available.”
With worst-case scenarios
playing in everybody’s head, the Republicans gathered here had a chance to make
such merry as they could. Sunday night saw several hundred of them witnessing a
made-to-order Hollywood-style movie sending up one of the GOP’s bête noires, filmmaker Michael
Moore.
As the picture, entitled
American Carol and scheduled for release in October, was about to get its
screening at the Minneapolis Convention Center auditorium, I happened to find
myself sitting next to a wiry, youngish man named Keith Appell, proprietor of
something called CRC Public Relations. Appell’s company had at one time been
called Creative Response Concept, a name which aptly characterized its function
as a self-defense group of the political right.
“We decided to go with CRC,
though, now that we’re an all-purpose P.R. company,” Appell explained.
All-purpose or not, CRC Public
Relations was very much in the business of pushing the new movie, which, as
Appell explained, was about how one Michael Malone, a Michael Moore clone played
by the actor Kevin Hartley (brother of the late Chris, and a near-ringer for Moore), “starts out anti-American and turns out
pro-American.” The story frame parallels Dickens’ A Christmas Carol,
wherein the Moore/Malone character, who makes documentaries with names like
Die, American Pig and is campaigning to abolish the July 4th
national holiday, is transported by Kelsey Grammer as General George S. Patton
across time and space (his own and that of history at large) until he sees the
light.
Besides Grammer, some other name
actors in the movie are James Woods, Leslie Nielsen, and Jon Voigt (the latter
all dolled up as George Washington). Oh, and Paris Hilton does a cameo.
As the picture developed,
Appell’s description of the anti-American/pro-American transformation was an
accurate capsule, if you accept the premise that anything associated with
liberal politicians is “anti-American” (one pejorative example being a Jimmy
Carter impressionist telling a crowd, “Higher taxes are good for you”) and that
Islamophobia per se, among other credos of the right, is ipso facto pro-American.
The movie does feature some
decent slapstick (in a retro sequence, a banjo-playing Hitler, Mussolini, and
Tojo rock out a song medley while Neville Chamberlain shines their shoes) and a
good joke or two (“These Mexicans will do the jobs that the Taliban won’t do,”
laments a jihadist about one slave-labor operation.)
As for the film’s political
content, the crowd seemed to eat it up. Two hours worth of an alternate reality
might have been the closest thing to ecstasy some of them have realized for a
while.
The pampering of the delegates
and other attendees turned really high-class after that as the party moved
through a set of doors into the cavernous CivicFest area, roughly the size of a
Super WalMart, where a lavish feed was set out on what looked to be two score
serving tables.
Now this was a treat for
anybody, regardless of ideology. Some of the dishes were: carved roast whole
steamship beef, tataki salmon platter, duck spring rolls, scallops skewer,
filled profiteroes, asparagus canapé, wild mushroom tarts….Multiply all that
about thirty times, and you get the idea. A true feast.
Surrounding the tables in the
large hall were any number of historical exhibits imported for the occasion – a
model of Air Force One, with people queued up to go inside and check out the
cabin, intricate scale models of the Oval Offices maintained by every president
since Taft, a false front representing the White House, and artifacts galore.
The latter included period
portraits of the founding fathers, impressive panel exhibits of Americana, and
apparently genuine documents covering the span to date of the nation’s history.
Republican activists from all
over were dressed up in guides’ uniforms and were unfailingly helpful. One, a
young woman from California, pointed out, “We have a lot of things on loan from
the Smithsonian, and over there is the Treaty of Paris.” Stuff you don’t see
every day. The Treaty of Paris?
A good time was had by all, but
as news was disseminated of Gustav’s progress across the gulf and of John
McCain’s response to it, doubt began to spread about whether this 2008
convention would be a true convention at all. The pending Monday-night
appearances of President Bush and Vice President Cheney were canceled, and
delegates were put on notice that convention schedules would be contracted
and/or eliminated in tandem with the ravages wrought by the hurricane.
A party-pooper, to be sure, but
soon the gathered Republicans were grasping an emerging point. Their
nominee-to-be, McCain, was pledged to be in the danger zone along with his
vice-presidential choice, Governor Sarah Palin of Alaska, organizing responses
and relief efforts as long as the emergency existed, even if it meant he never
made it to Minneapolis-St. Paul at all.
McCain was, in effect, serving
as an acting president of sorts, consulting with FEMA and with Homeland Security
director Michael Chertoff and engaging in conversations with the governors of
the affected states, who just happened to be Republicans themselves.
Give the Arizona senator full
credit for acting in good faith and for rolling up his sleeves in a good cause.
But it could hardly be denied that this ill wind had blown his way an
opportunity neither he nor anyone else could have foreseen earlier. And a
rhetorical question that many had been asking at the end of last week – how can
you follow or hope to top an act like that of Obama at Invesco Field? – had
found a possible real-world answer.
