Tag: convention

It may not pass muster with the latest news in National Enquirer or Huffington Post of what (or whom) Kim Kardashian is doing, but we think this shot of Ruby Wharton, wife of Memphis Mayor A C Wharton and a civic force in her own right, sitting in the lap of Democratic activist John Freeman aboard a rickshaw in Charlotte, N.C., is pretty hot.

Freeman, who has been an aide to several Memphis political figures, including congressman Harold Ford Jr., and another Memphis guest at the Democratic Convention, political operative David Upton, tied in with Ford one day in Charlotte. Ford, who now lives and works on Wall Street and does regular commentary for MSNBC, met the Memphis duo for drinks at the Ritz-Carlton, located near the Time Warner Cable arena.

The former congressman, who did daily stints on the Morning Joe program, still has some magnetism with both media and political types, and the trio found themselves being joined by the likes of interview host Charlie Rose, Senator John Kerry, and David Gregory of NBC. At one point Gregory launched into a spot-on impersonation of NBC icon Tom Brokaw — with improvised lines, in the longtime commentator’s distinctive baritone brogue, like “I was down at the Carolina Festival with James Taylor, doing some wack crack” — when Brokaw happened by.

“Hi, guys,” he said, effectively ending the show.

(“Or was it me that had the ‘crack’ line,” wondered Upton, who said, well after relating the tale, that he had been vying with Gregory for best-Brokaw honors. Aw, c’mon. Just be glad you were there, David.)

Most undesirable Convention City feature, Tampa: Though temperatures in Charlotte during the Democratic Convention were on again/off again steamy, there was no “off” switch at all at the previous week’s Republican Convention in Tampa Bay. Daily temperatures in the 100-degree range coupled with the thick humidity that came from proximity to Hurricane Isaac, and visitors standing in the long lines waiting for entry to the Tampa Bay Times Forum were treated to extended ad hoc saunas. People getting out of their air-conditioned cars would find their glasses fogging over instantly.

Most undesirable Convention City feature, Charlotte: Though Charlotte’s traffic arteries proved convenient — specifically Interstates 85 and 77 and Tryon St., a long, Poplar Avenue-like thoroughfare that connects important parts of the city — Charlotte also has adopted extra-long wait times for its traffic lights, with red lights lasting for interminable minutes.

Most unexpected sleep-in: Lawyer David Kustoff of Memphis, the workaholic former U.S. Attorney whose self-discipline is legendary, who famously restricts himself to one meal a day and habitually sleeps three or four hours a night by design, caught some extra winks and missed a delegation breakfast at the GOP convention in Tampa.

(Or seemed to. For the record, Kustoff says he was up early every morning and attended every delegation breakfast.)

Most expected sleep-in: Longtime activist Upton, whose more relaxed attitude toward discipline is also legendary, who restricts himself to no more than two meals at a sitting and sleeps however many hours a night that a 3 a.m. bedtime will permit, missed a breakfast at the Democratic convention in Charlotte at which his name was called as winner of a floor-credential raffle. No matter, artful dodger Upton, who has his ways, managed to finagle his own.

Nudge to the opposition from a political figure at Tampa: “I believe in getting results. As governor, I couldn’t have got much done if I hadn’t worked with Speaker McWherter and Speaker Wilder.” U.S Senator Lamar Alexander, referring to then state House speaker, later governor, Ned McWherter, and longtime Senate speaker and lieutenant governor John Wilder, both Democrats.

Nudge to the opposition from a political figure at Charlotte: We have to be bipartisan. We have to thank Mitt Romney for passing Romneycare in Massachusetts, which was the basis for Obamacare. Thank you, Mitt Romney!” — 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen.

General Points of Comparison: At both the Republican Convention in Tampa and the Democratic Convention in Charlotte there was an odd inverse relationship between the mood of the convention at large and that of the Tennessee delegation. This reflected the relative political situations of both parties.

At the GOP conclave, the Tennesseans present were basking in their almost complete domination of affairs in the home state, where every major political agency and office is in Republican hands.

In Tampa, the Tennessee delegation would include Governor Bill Haslam, U.S. Senators Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, most of the seven Republican members of the U.S. House, and numerous legislative figures, including state House Speaker Beth Harwell of Nashville and Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey of Blountville, the Senate Speaker.

Given the decimation in Tennessee political ranks caused by the disastrous 2010 elections, followed by GOP-administered redistricting, Cohen and 5th District Congressman Jim Cooper were the ranking political figures in the Tennessee delegation. (Neither had arrived in Charlotte by Monday of convention week, leaving it to ex-4th District Congressman Lincoln Davis, a 2010 casualty, to make the welcoming speech to the delegation. Mayor Karl Dean of Nashville was on hand early; Mayors Wharton of Memphis and Madeline Rogero of Knoxville would come later.

Looking for a silver lining of some sort, state Democratic Party chairman Chip Forrester at one point directed attendees at a delegation breakfast to look around them and observe “the most diverse delegation in Tennessee history,” divided roughly half and half by gender, including roughly 25 African-Americans, four Hispanics, one Asian, and a generous number of gay and lesbian attendees, including transgender activist Marisa Richmond.

Saving Grace: In the absence of a galaxy of political stars, a shining light for the Tennessee delegation at this week’s Democratic National Convention was movie star Ashley Judd, who perked things up at the Tennesseans’ breakfast on Tuesday morning with an upbeat forecast for success in the presidential election. Judd turned up again on Wednesday night when it came time for Tennessee’s votes to be cast. Judd did the honor, flanked by 9th District congressman Steve Cohen and state party chairman Chip Forrester, both beaming to the gills.

A backstory had it that at some earlier point a photographer of some quasi-official sort had asked Cohen
to move away from his position of proximity to Judd in the delegation to make way for a shot of Judd and Memphis Mayor Wharton. That didn’t sit well with Cohen, who is famous for his ability to make aisle connections with presidents on their way to and from the podium on the occasion of State of the Union addresses, once making a widely televised appeal to George W. Bush to sign a baseball cap which Cohen subsequently auctioned off on behalf of a charity. The congressman would stand his ground in the Time Warner Cable arena, telling the photographer that he wasn’t moving until he was ready to leave the arena.

Like everybody else in the Tennessee delegation, Cohen was charmed and uplifted by Judd’s presence.
He had only one objection: In her remarks to the delegation Tuesday she had made it clear that she was happy to root for “UT and Vanderbilt, except when they play Kentucky,” the state of her birth. Cohen pointed out in his own remarks to the delegation on Thursday morning that Judd had omitted the Big Blue, the University of Memphis, “the best basketball team in the state.”

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — For all the talk in the punditocracy that bad news was coming to President Obama Friday in the form of a poor monthly jobs report —only 96,000 jobs added against expectations of at least 130,000 — the Democratic National Convention just concluded has to be counted a success.

Ironically, that success was accomplished in the manner of the proverbial tree falling in the forest with no ears to hear it, inasmuch as the four holdover national networks — NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox — opted this year to broadcast only an hour each evening of proceedings, a practice they also followed for last week’s Republican National Convention.

The result in Charlotte was that some of the better, more energized moments — like a barn-burning opening-night speech from former Ohio governor Ted Strickland or another rouser delivered early on Thursday night by former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm — went unobserved by any but the most dedicated of C-SPAN and online political junkies.

In general, each night, from the first well-organized event ‘til the last, contained more informational content and general firepower than had been customary even during the small window of ‘50s and ‘60s televised conventions, when everything was shown gavel-to-gavel to a rapt national audience. Those years, of course, were the last in which real contests took place at conventions, generating the kind of drama doled out these days by ersatz national “reality” shows.

That’s one irony of the 2012 DNC. Another is that the star of the show, President Barack Obama, embodiment of the Promised Land to which the whole three-day trek across national consciousness had been leading, turned out to be something less than the sum of the parts which had preceded him.

It is doubtful that anyone would reckon the President’s speech as possessing the power, eloquence, factual reach, and sheer charisma of the monumental 50-minute address by former president Bill Clinton on Wednesday night. That speech, which set out to buttress Obama’s case for reelection and to debunk virtually every claim and accusation made by the opposition Republicans concerning this year’s set of issues, was a genuine marvel. Who could remember ever hearing a speech containing so much wonky data — and one longer than a month’s worth of Baptist sermons —coming off with such humor, panache, and persuasiveness?

Then there was the righteously intense and perfectly modulated oratory of the oft-underrated Vice President Joe Biden immediately preceding the President on Thursday night.

Talk about “Fired Up and Ready to Go!”

That phrase, a holdover from Obama’s victorious 2008 campaign, became a crowd chant several times during the 2012 convention, and the fact of its being reprised underscored one of the weaknesses of the President’s situation as he faces the nation’s verdict on his reelection.

Too much of what he has to vend this year is a repetition of his foot-in-the-door sales pitch from four years ago.

Yes, the President has accomplishments, all of them dutifully noted by speaker after speaker at the Democratic convention.

He tracked down Osama bin Laden and avenged the outrage of 9/11. He has, in ways that don’t get sufficient attention, simultaneously removed American troops from harm’s way, both in Iraq and in Afghanistan, while stepping up the prosecution of other kinds of military and paramilitary efforts — drones, anyone? — against America’s enemies abroad.

His stimulus efforts, though much scorned by Republican orators, are generally credited by serious economists with having stemmed the tide of incipient depression and prevented an absolute economic collapse.

He can lay claim to having saved and revivified an American automobile industry whose obituaries were already beng written by means of targeted loans and mandated restructuring.

He has protected and expanded women’s rights, veterans’ benefits, and scientific research. He has protected Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare (one of Clinton’s profound services to the President was his takedown of the GOP claim that Obama had ‘cut” Medicare, a claim disingenuously made by those, notably Republican vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan, who would dismantle the vintage health program established during Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and now a national staple, depended on by seniors of every political persuasion.

Rather famously, Obama has also secured the passage of the Affordable Health Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) which, clearly, will survive only in the event of his reelection. For all of its defects, the plan is a means toward guaranteeing a high level of health coverage — not quite universal but getting there.

On the social landscape, Obama has done what he could to shore up women’s health rights, and he took the fateful and perhaps inevitable step of officially countenancing same-sex marriage as a right and something to be thought of in terms of the equality and liberty guaranteed by the Constitution.

He has expanded efforts in both the technological and environmental spheres.

All this — and more — was attested to by speakers and presentations at the DNC.

Where Obama has not succeeded — either in his first term or in his somewhat muted Thursday night acceptance speech, which largely recapitulated the talking points made by every speaker who preceded him —is in rekindling the very sense of national rebirth that was spoken to by his 2008 slogan of Hope and Change.

He can make the claim that he has delivered on both parts of that slogan, but, if so, he has done so in a way that has yet to influence the job rate or the economic bottom line much. He can blame Republican congressional intransigence, and there is no doubting that such a thing existed and blunted many of his good intentions, including the 2012 Jobs Act which died a-borning.

But how much of that blunting was made possible by the President’s inexperience at administration and his failure to find the leadership means to accomplish his goals? In his last two volumes on the career of Lyndon Johnson, Robert Caro has made it clear that implacable opposition and what would appear to be insuperable odds can be overcome if a political leader is resourceful enough.

Besides being merely and mainly a reminder of talking points made by others earlier, the President’s acceptance address was less a summoning of the nation to answer a vision, no new version of which was articulated by him, than a brief against what damage the Republicans might do if given new license, a plea to voters to prefer him to a worse alternative.

“On every issue, the choice you face won’t be just between two candidates or two parties,” Obama told the nation “It will be a choice between two different paths for America. …a choice between a strategy that reverses …progress, or one that builds on it.”

Clinton perhaps said it better in summing up the GOP’s implicit appeal this year: ““We left him a total mess. He hasn’t cleaned it up fast enough. So fire him and put us back in.”

Clinton made many parts of Obama’s case better. Arguably, so did Biden. And so did Michelle Obama, for that matter. All of them injected more emotional content into their speeches than did the President with his “in conclusion” debater’s remarks.

There was nothing wrong with what he said. But what he said lacked the force and inspirational spirit of his great orations of 2004 and 2008. “Yes, we can,” he said then. And maybe he still can. But he has to prove it against the obstacles of a still intractable economy and an opponent, Mitt Romney, who may not be quite the pushover Democrats optimistically want to believe.

“This is our moment,” Obama intoned grandly in 2008. He’ll have to work hard to keep that verb from going past tense.

————-

Meanwhile, other opinions of the President’s performance are certainly possible. Here is the close of his speech Thursday as seen from a place in the rafters of the Time Warner Cable building by my son, Justin Baker of Atlanta, who was simultaneously seeing his first convention and making his maiden effort with a video-cam.

This version has a few truncated frames, but it preserves the passion and emotion of the occasion, enough of it to substantiate more upbeat views of the President’s performance and the reaction to it.

Excerpts from former President Clinton’s nomination address at the DNC:

Ostensibly, I’m here at the Democratic National Convention to help my father, Flyer columnist Jackson Baker, by throwing in a word or two here and there, shooting some low-rent video, and taking a few photographs, some of which have ended up like this:

Hey, I never said I was Annie Leibovitz; I’m a software development manager on vacation from Atlanta to hang out with my dad.

In the absence of dazzling video or still photographs in this post, allow me to share my thoughts on the state of the Tennessee Democratic Party as viewed through the prism of a disoriented IT manager from Georgia.

The scene: Wednesday morning at the Oasis Shriners’ headquarters building in suburban Charlotte. The Tennessee Democratic delegation has rented meeting space here for the week. My dad and I amble into a sparsely appointed, gymnasium-like room as the group is finishing their breakfast. I scoop up the last of the hashbrowns from a serving platter, and I listen to Steve Cohen at the dais as he applauds the diversity of this year’s state delegation. I’m pleased that he gets in a few Memphis Tigers basketball hurrahs toward the end of his address.

As I go for a second cup of coffee, a delegation official runs through some of the logistics of the day’s schedule of events. What sticks out to me in particular are his comments about the placement of the Tennessee delegation on the floor of the arena. It’s probably not a surprise that Tennessee, certainly out of reach for Obama in November, is placed far in the back on the arena floor, stage right. The official reminds the group to watch out for those pesky New Yorkers, as they’ve been muscling their way into the Tennesseans’ assigned seating. There’s not much you can do about it, he says, what with their sheer numbers and legendary resolve.

As breakfast wraps up, a partition is pulled away from a back wall, revealing the swankier furnishings of the Ohio delegation’s meeting room next door. Throughout breakfast I can’t help but notice their robust cheers bleeding through, at times almost drowning out the proceedings in the Tennessee room. Perhaps this video, the most passable of my videos so far, captures the contrast better than I can express it in writing:

Such is the state of affairs for a Democratic delegation with two — count ’em, two — elected officials at the federal level. Less muscular than New York. More restrained than Ohio.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — There are all kinds of obvious reasons why national political conventions do not draw huge television audiences on mainstream television anymore — the proliferating number of other TV-watching options, especially on cable; the growth of social media for real political junkies; and much else in the technical realm, along with the fact that these quadrennial spectaculars long ago surrendered their original claim to viewership, a sense of drama based on legitimate suspense.

They are just coronations now, all their results pre-arranged, everything to be said and done scripted to fit a talking-points line, the sum total of which is redundancy writ large. As an example, now that the Democratic Party has toed up and decided to officially endorse same-sex marriage, every speaker on the Time Warner Cable Arena stage on opening night of the Democratic National Convention was outfitted with some basic variant of the phrase “whom they love,” as in “The Democratic Party believes that people should be judged by what they do, not by whom they love.”

The committee-vetted phrase and its variants are liable to become as ubiquitous this election year as “a woman’s right to choose” was in 1992, the year that Democratic nominees Bill Clinton and Al Gore (both recent converts to the pro-choice position) made a point of articulating the party’s freshly entrenched consensus on abortion. (In the vice-presidential debate that year, Gore taunted Dan Quayle to join him in proclaiming such rhetoric. “Just say it, Dan: ‘a women’s right to choose.’” I wondered at the time how Gore would have reacted if Quayle had summoned enough mischief to ask, “Choose what, Al?”)

Despite all the predictability of convention rhetoric, despite what would seem a near-certain guarantee of tedium, despite the dramatic audience fall-off since the days of contested conventions, despite the common-sensical decision by the networks to forgo all but an hour a night for a maximum of three nights for these affairs, there are still occasions when the public is cheated by not having full access to around-the-clock, gavel-to-gavel coverage in the old style.

Such a night was Tuesday, the DNC’s opening day, opened by a call to order from Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the DNC chair, and ending with an address by First Lady Michelle Obama. Even in the scrappy years smash-mouth contests at conventions, first days were rarely much to write home (not text, not tweet). But Tuesday at the DNC was well worth an extended look.

Among other things, useful videos about Jimmy Carter and the Kennedy family were shown to delegates in the late afternoon and early evening. History buffs, even diehard Republicans, might have enjoyed those. And as evening deepened, the fare became ever richer. (As my son Justin, in the arena watching with me, observed, the fact that Newark Mayor Cory Booker, a media-certified cutting-edger, was relegated to an early spot raised expectations about what was to come.)

One of the ways Democrats attempt to distinguish themselves from Republicans is by calling attention to what they see as a greater diversity.( Tennessee Democratic chairman Chip Forrister asked the members and guests on hand at Tuesday’s delegation breakfast to look around the room and see for themselves “the most diverse delegation in Tennessee history,” one that, in fact, was still predominantly white, though there was a liberal proportion of African Americans, along with a balance of genders and one certifiable transgendered person.)

So the dais on Tuesday night would include blacks, whites, Hispanics and various other ethnicities, women’s rights advocates, spokespersons for same-sex equality, laborites, farmers, big-city mayors, owners of small businesses, what-have-you.

Who would have thought that a former governor from Ohio named Ted Strickland would ignite fireworks. Yet Strickland, a kind of Gerald Ford lookalike with the same high-pitched voice, went out of the mold and delivered an old-fashioned Fourth of July partisan stemwinder. There were laughlines like “Mitt Romney never saw the point of building something when he could profit from tearing it down. If Mitt was Santa Claus, he’d fire the reindeer and outsource the elves” and passionate avowals like “President Barack Obama stood up for us, and now by God we will stand up for him,” and Strickland had the crowd buzzing.

After him came effective presentations from the likes of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel, the fiery former Chief of Staff for Obama; Massachusetts governor Duval Patrick; and Lily Ledbetter, the homespun worker lady who inspired the bill, pushed hard by the President, which mandated equal pay for equal work.

There were emotionally powerful presentations by a family whose lovely little daughter will require several rounds of open-heart surgery, a necessary ordeal made feasible by the Affordable Health Care Act (aka “Obamacare”) which GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney is sworn to repeal, despite its close resemblance to the plan Romney sponsored as a one-term governor of Massachusetts.

(At the Tennessee delegation’s lunch on Wednesday morning, 9th District congressman Steve Cohen made a point of thanking Romney for his having supplied such helpful guidance and drew appreciative laughter. It was a serious point, though, and Cohen made note even of Richard Nixon’s relative liberalism within a Republican Party that in more recent times had stretched hard line conservatism to its limits.)

The keynote speech belonged to a fetchingly wry Julian Castro, mayor of San Antonio, who was introduced by his twin brother Joaquin, himself a political personage as a current candidate for Congress.

But the spotlight finally settled on Michelle Obama, and she delivered a version of herself that, in terms of likeability, was at least the equal of that which was achieved in Tampa last week by Ann Romney, and came off as somewhat more earthy and accessible.

There was talking-point stuff, to be sure: “Barack knows the American Dream because he’s lived it…and he wants everyone in this country to have that same opportunity, no matter who we are, or where we’re from, or what we look like, or who we love.”

But there were also authentically homey touches like this: “You see, even though back then Barack was a Senator and a presidential candidate…to me, he was still the guy who’d picked me up for our dates in a car that was so rusted out, I could actually see the pavement going by through a hole in the passenger side door…he was the guy whose proudest possession was a coffee table he’d found in a dumpster, and whose only pair of decent shoes was half a size too small.”

And, after a litany such remembered moments, Michelle Obama made it sound authentic when she said her husband’s definition of success was not about how much money you made but how much you could contribute to society.

Ultimately the First Lady replicated Ann Romney’s feat of making her man — often, like Romney, characterized as somewhat remote personally — seem deserving of affection as well as respect.

On the bill for Wednesday night was a widely anticipated appearance by former president Bill Clinton, someone who has never been characterized, by friend or foe alike, as remote. It loomed as a big-ticket affair, almost as big as the climactic one on Thursday, when Barack Obama will deliver his acceptance address.

Bad news, though, for some of the throngs on hand in Charlotte: The President’s address, originally scheduled for the relatively spacious Bank of America stadium, has been moved indoors to the much smaller Time Warner arena to accommodate weather concerns. Ad hoc credentials will be at a premium, and somebody’s parade is going to get rained on.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. —Mayor A C Wharton was scheduled to receive special honors at the Democratic National Convention here on Tuesday, the official opening day of the 2012 DNC. Wharton will receive the Susan Burgess Memorial Award from the board of directors of the Democratic Municipal Officials. The award is given annually to “an outstanding Democratic Municipal Official committed to improving public education.”

Wharton’s award ceremony was to be held Tuesday afternoon at the E-2 Emeril’s Eatery in Charlotte. The mayor was also expected to appear, along with Memphis congressman Steve Cohen of Tennessee’s 9th District, at a morning breakfast of the Tennessee delegation to the DNC.

The award to Wharton was announced this week by Barbara Moore, executive director of rhe DMO, whose board includes Memphis city councilman Myron Lowery.

Moore describes the background of the award thusly:

The Susan Burgess Memorial award was established in 2011 to honor the late Susan Burgess who served proudly as Chair of “the mighty DMO” and as Mayor Pro-Tem of the Charlotte zCity Council. Mayor Chris Coleman (St. Paul, MN) received the 2011 Award.

Burgess, a Democrat and at-large member of the Charlotte City Council, was first elected to City Council in 1999. In November, voters returned her to City Council for a fifth term. She was also the most popular candidate in the 2009 city election, receiving more votes (59,862) than winning mayoral candidate Anthony Foxx (55,265).

Burgess was a past president of the North Carolina League of Municipalities and Women in Municipal Government. She represented North Carolina on the Democratic National Committee and was on the board of trustees for the National Housing Conference.

Much has been made of Clint Eastwood’s bizarre speech wherein the Dirty Harry star spoke at length to an invisible President Obama in what appeared to be an empty chair. It’s hard to deny that Eastwood’s risky choice begged for immediate parody, but the man’s a world cinema scholar and anybody who loves Yojimbo as much as he does can rant at my furniture any day of the week.

Rather than piling on and mocking Eastwood, a conservative who’s expressed some genuinely compassionate, libertarian views, but whose onscreen persona is seldom far away from the “angry white men” South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham said the Republican party needed to stir up, I’d like to offer a possible explanation. Perhaps Eastwood was simply referencing the great Jimmy Stewart who starred in both the populist political yarn Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and Harvey, the beloved story of a man and his giant invisible rabbit.

Probably not, but I’d swear I saw a large-eared shadow following Eastwood off stage.

TAMPA BAY, FL — After Taylor Hicks, the nearly forgotten 2005 American Idol winner had channeled “Take It to the Streets,’, after movie icon Clint Eastwood took his strange, mumbling turn at the podium, after Marco Rubio, the boyish Florida Senator who had lost out to others as vice-presidential prospect and convention keynoter, got to make the key introduction, Mitt Romney was finally on stage alone Thursday night to make the case for himself as President of the United States.

Members of the Tennessee delegation to this 2012 Republican National Convention had been told at breakfast by noted GOP pollster/consultant Whitt Ayres that Romney needed above all to present his plan to rehab the ailing American economy. Senator Lamar Alexander had told members of the state’s press corps the same thing at a briefing later on. And numerous pundits had been hitting that note all day on national television.

So what was the plan?

It came eventually, but first Romney would do his variations on the basic Republican talking point of 2012 — that President Obama was a nice, well-intentioned man but had failed at national leadership and that something else needed to be done. It was the same point that Eastwood, in a whispery, almost indistinct voice, had made by saying, “When somebody does not do the job, we’ve got to let them go.”

 Rubio’s way of saying it, in his introduction of Romney, had been, “President Obama is not a bad person.’ He’s a good husband, a good father, and, thanks to lots of practice, a good golfer. Our problem is that he’s a bad president.”

And Romney himself would say, “He hasn’t led America in the right direction. He took command without the basic experience most Americans have.” I.e., he’d never had a real job.

The former one-term Massachusetts governor contrasted that with his own career — most of it spent in the worlds of business and finance. He reviewed his upbringing as the son of George Romney, a former governor himself, of Michigan, and the hugely successful head of American Motors in the ‘50s. The late senior Romney had earlier been seen in a warm-up video — a crusty, gravel-voiced up-from-nothing sort in contrast to Mitt Romney’s own smooth, refined, but almost affectless being.

“I wanted to be a car man myself,” Mitt Romney explained, but he had finally realized, he said, that he had to prove himself on his own terms. That turned out to be mainly at Bain Capital, the successes of which — Staples and Sports Authority among them — Romney boasted in an account that skirted the issue of whether he had been, as Democrats maintained, a “vulture capitalist” who had shut down as many businesses as he had rejuvenated.

The point was, he had made a success, both at Bain and in heading up a rescue mission of the 2002 Winter Olympics at Salt Lake City, experiences which would guide him in his plan to rejuvenate America.

So what was his plan?

Before getting to it, he touched some of the other bases — his life as a family man, able to be moved like Moms and Dads everywhere at waking up to find their children having crept in overnight to sleep on the bedroom floor; and his service to church (though he kept that the particulars of his heterodox Mormon faith out of the account).

As Ayres, Alexander, and the host of TV pundits had also said, Romney needed to make a personal connection to the electorate. They had suggested he should articulate the problem to be solved as precisely as possible.

This he did: “What is needed in our country today is not complicated or profound. What America needs is jobs. Lots of jobs.” Romney promised to create “12 million new jobs.”

So what was his plan?

Here it came, in five points:

First, he would make America “energy-independent” by letting the nation avail itself of its untapped natural resources. (The crowd dutifully whooped.)

Second, he would “give our fellow citizens the schools they need,” making sure that “every parent should have a choice.” (More whoops.)

Third, he would “make trade work for America” by engaging in new trade agreements. (A little too abstract to get the same level of whoops, but still appreciated with applause.)

Fourth, “to assure every entrepreneur and every job creator,” he would “cut the deficit and put America on track to a balanced budget.” (Unlike Greece, he said, in a near non-sequitur, but he was back on the whoopee train.)

Fifth, he would simplify a number of bureaucratic matters and, in particular, “rein in the skyrocketing cost of health care by”…wait for it…” repealing and replacing Obamacare!” (A veritable crescendo of whoops.)

That was the plan.

Romney then segued through such other desiderata as better schools and a return to “the bipartisan foreign policy of Truman and Reagan.” He defined that latter by contrasting it to what he said was Obama’s failure to deal with Iran and his throwing Israel “under the bus.” He also had some harsh words for the President’s offer of “flexibility” for Russia’s President Putin.

He ended on that relatively strident note, coupling a promise to “unleash an economy that will put America back to work” with another to create “a nation so strong that no other nation would ever dare to test it.”

Inside the arena the crowd was now whooping so loud that it drowned out the tag end of his peroration. He was done, and soon there was vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan out there besides him. And then their wives. And children and grandchildren. And balloons. And confetti.

Missing was the ritual assembly onstage of as many ranking political figures as could be gathered together to represent the entire spectrum of the party in convention. This was a reminder of sorts that the Republican spectrum in our time has contracted a good deal — to a kind of litmus-test conservatism that permits of few variations, and certainly none that could go by the name of “moderate.”

Did Romney succeed in doing what his advisers and the pundits said he had to do — make the case for himself and for a plan that would reassure Americans looking uneasily at both him and President Obama in what was shaping up to be a 50-50 election?

That there were dissenters regarding Mitt Romney’s pretensios to leadership materialized quite concretely Thursday night at the very start of the freshly minted Republican nominee’s address. Several protesters who began screaming objections were physically ejected, their yells obscured by audience applause for Romney and choruses of “U.S.A., U.S.A.” a ritual chant heard earlier Thursday eveing when former U.S. Olympic athletes were introduced on stage.

One thing is clear: The GOP base’s misgivings about Romney himself that were glaringly obvious at the beginning of the current political season — most of the doubts having to do with the winning candidate’s well-known chameleon ways — had been put in abeyance. Romney seemed to have resolved that problem with his selection as his running mate of Ryan the Ayn Rand true believer.

The larger jury, of the whole nation, is out but will reflect on what it has seen and heard in Tampa Bay before reporting a final verdict in November. And meanwhile it will take more testimony next week in Charlotte from the President and his surrogates.

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Rick Santorum addressed the Tennessee Republican Delegation on topics as diverse as barbecue, the French Reign of Terror, and beating Barack Obama.

Visiting politicians have to eat in Tampa Bay. So do the natives:

Chris Davis of our team has made the most of his opportunity to make new friends.

• JB