New Rochelle Mayor Noam Bramson is still in Charlotte for the DNC and was still displaying his trademark jaded snark about the whole thing.
As he settled into his seat with the New York delegation, situated as far from the podium as you can get (according to CNN), Noam grumbled:
“as a purely visual experience, the Convention was not much different from watching at home.”
He grumbled more about having to hold up signs, on cue, for the different speeches:
“we all hoisted them (campaign signs) on cue — thus discharging the primary duty of a modern-day Convention delegate: television prop.”
He grumbled about the inherent phoniness of modern conventions:
“the trappings of this or any other Convention can easily be characterized as superficial.”
What the heck man? For a guy who has devoted his life to elective office and now finds himself at the center of the political universe for an entire week, you think the guy would be grinning from ear to ear like a kid in a candy shop.
To quote Frank Capra, “youth is wasted on the wrong people”.
If he did not like that, I wonder how Noam, as a Jewish Democrat feels about the party platform that removed the word “God” and took out the part about recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel? If you missed, the Democrats, requiring a 2/3rd voice vote, failed — three times — to get support for a motion to add Jerusalem back into the party platform. The convention chairman ignored the rather obvious split in the party and simply declared the motion passed.
It took three attempts to pass the language regarding Jerusalem and a subjective decision by the convention chairman, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, to decide the change had the required support of two-thirds of the delegates. To many listeners, the voice vote seemed at least evenly divided.
You can decide for yourself:
In making the case for Obama and against Romney, Noam asked a question that a majority of the country has already answered as a reason not to vote for Obama: “Why would we ever go back to a plan of action that is a proven failure?”
U.F.F.A. 273 Members might be interested in Noam’s concerns for Ohio firefighters and contrast that with how New Rochelle firefighters have been treated under his administration:
“…a firefighter from Cincinnati who affirmed the value of public service.”
Noam has definitely perked up after Michelle’s Obama’s speech at the DNC Convention which he called “one of the great Convention performances in modern history”. Really? First, with no disrespect to her she was not a candidate or elected official so however wonderful the speech, it’s not quite the same as speeches by actual or prospective presidential candidates. Even if we just consider speeches at Democratic Conventions, has Noam forgotten about JFK’s “New Frontier” speech in 1960 or Mario Cuomo’s “Tale of Two Cities” speech in 1984 or Barack Obama’s “United States of America” speech in 2004? I could probably name a dozen speeches that were better. As for Republican speeches, that’s easy. It was not even as good as Sarah Palin’s speech in 2008 (love her or hate her she was a rock star on that night in Minnesota).
Regardless, there is simply no better convention speech than Ted Kennedy’s “Dream That Never Died” speech in 1980. I do not share his politics but it is speech that will likely never be surpassed. You can never go wrong quoting Tennyson and the finish was epic.
A lot of Noam’s post is a critique of the speeches and overall presentation. Here is on solid ground. I do not agree with Noam on much but he does know what he is talking about when reviewing political theater, stagecraft and speechifying.
In any case, it sounds like he was a lot happier at the end of the night then before the prime time speeches began. Maybe he will get out and party a bit and start to have some fun.