Fun times in Cleveland
Did you watch the Republican National Convention in Cleveland this week, or were you too busy playing Pokemon Go?
These four nights had everything one could hope for in a great television mini-series – drama, intrigue, comedy and plenty of pathos – oh, and lots of Donald J. Trump!
Big stars? Nope. Who needs a big star when Chachi from “Happy Days” is available?
Apparently Scott Baio was just as shocked to be invited as the rest of us were to see him, telling CNN’s Dana Bash that he had bumped into the Republican nominee last week at Trump Tower in New York, hung out with him for “I don’t know, like two or three minutes,” and walked away with an invite.
Something tells me that’s not how Secretary Hillary Clinton will be picking speakers.
Republican political icons? Few of those were found in Cleveland, either, unless you count former Sen. Bob Dole’s wave from a wheelchair and maybe Newt Gingrich.
Noticeably absent were all members of the Bush family, including the GOP’s only two living former presidents, recent presidential nominees Mitt Romney and John McCain, as well as many other party stalwarts.
Vanquished opponents rallying around the nominee? Well, out of the 16 other competitors, less than half attended.
Rick Perry made an appearance, reminding people he’s still alive and introducing Marcus Luttrell, the Navy Seal profiled in the film “Lone Survivor.” Mike Huckabee was there, and Sen. Marco Rubio literally phoned in his begrudging endorsement.
Ben Carson’s incoherent rambler was balanced by Chris Christie’s gleeful prosecution of Hillary Clinton, which ended in chants of “Lock her up!”
Notably missing was Ohio Gov. John Kasich, the man who led the effort to bring his party’s convention to his important swing state. Kasich said that his conscience wouldn’t allow him to attend or endorse, and true to his word he never set foot in Quicken Loans Arena.
Will his absence push the citizens of very purple Ohio away from Trump?
Speaking of endorsements that never happened, runner-up Ted Cruz accepted Trump’s invitation to speak, and it was going quite well until he admonished the GOP faithful to “vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket” without endorsing Trump.
Sen. Cruz did what he’s always done – bet on Ted Cruz – yet even the Texas delegation joined in booing him mercilessly off the stage.
On the positive side, the Trump kids all did a nice job – I mean that sincerely, they actually did – and in the process, demonstrated exactly what a small army of nannies, elite boarding schools and the Ivy League can do for a person.
Too bad Ivanka isn’t the Trump in the race.
Unfortunately, the Trump heirs were all overshadowed by Melania Trump, their father’s third wife and the first Slovenian lingerie model in a position to become first lady.
In the midst of her opening night remarks on Monday, an unemployed journalist from California recognized several wordfor-word passages stolen from Michele Obama’s 2008 Democratic Convention speech.
When he shared his
astonishment via Twitter, the news quickly spread and almost instantly, sideby-side comparisons of the speeches and snarky memes began to light up social media.
In classic Trumpian “there’s nothing to see here” style, campaign surrogates spent two full days insisting that if the liberal media and “Crooked Hillary” weren’t making an issue out of it no one would care, or as RNC spokesman Sean Spicer put it: “After all, these are only words.”
Ridiculously, Spicer then compared the structure of another line to something uttered by Twilight Sparkle in My Little Pony, though I don’t think he meant to imply that Melania also cribbed from a cartoon.
I guess the good news is that Republicans don’t seem to mind that their potential first lady is all over the Internet in her undies or less, which means they’ve come a very long way since ripping Harvard-trained lawyer Michelle Obama for wearing a sleeveless top.
Late on Wednesday, a speechwriter no one in the media had ever heard of released a statement claiming responsibility. This released the pressure a bit, but also contradicted Melania’s pre-convention claims that she’d written the speech herself.
Out of curiosity, I asked one of my daughter’s professors at Chapman University what would happen if she had turned in a paper with the same cribbed passages, and the upshot is that she’d end up before a plagiarism panel and most likely be expelled.
So let’s make this a teachable moment, parents.
When Trump’s big moment finally came, he stretched 45 minutes of content into 75 – the longest acceptance speech in decades – attempting to repair four days and nights of epic disaster with the sheer force of his personality.
Trump stuck to the teleprompter – hey, it isn’t easy reading a script that, as with Melania, I suspect, someone else crafted – and painted a relentlessly dark picture of America and the world.
It was stilted, long on rhetoric and remarkably short on details, but when has that ever slowed him down?
Trump made several attempts to reach beyond his base, but it will take more than one speech to sway doubters and undecided voters to his side; it requires sustained effort and discipline, something Trump hasn’t mastered as a politician.
Some Americans will surely be inspired by his words, yet many others will be outright terrified.
Perhaps the most ironic moment of the night came as he walked off the stage to the Rolling Stones classic “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” which is the exact opposite of what his speech claimed.
Democrats hope that for Donald Trump, Mick’s lyrics will prove prophetic on Nov. 8.
Next week in Philadelphia, Hillary Clinton gets a chance to counter Trump’s stiff attempt to position himself as America’s grand savior and patron saint. After that, it’s a 100-day dash to the finish line.
That’s how we play the game, folks. Or there’s always Pokemon Go.