Like the networks, I’m only sporadically paying attention to the Convention tonight, but I did just tune in to see Teddy Kennedy – He’s doing pretty well, but it just doesn’t have the energy of Clinton’s speech last night.
He’s getting warmed up now – good line: "They believe they can’t win unless the rest of us lose…We reject that shameful view".
Of course, my favorite part was the fact that he was introduced by Robert Caro, author of the best book I have ever read. I even saw him speak last year, and he signed my copy. Yes, it’s a book about municipal government, and yes, I’m just a really big dork (but so were the 300 other people packed into the Union Square Barnes & Noble, including Conan O’Brien, who was sitting directly behind me).
Back to Teddy…quoting a prayer by John Adams that hangs in the White House:
"’I pray heaven to bestow the best of blessings on this house and all that shall hereafter inhabit it.’ May none but the honest and wise ever rule under this roof." In November we will make those words ring true again!"
He’s on a roll now, listing out all of the things this administration makes us fear…including "fear of four more years of dreams denied and promises unfilled and progress rolled back!"
It seems like he’s hitting the crescendo now – this is getting good, so I’m just going to quote:
"The roots of that America are planted deep in New England soil… Across this region, are burial grounds. Many, so humble, you find them without intending to. You’re in a town like Concord, Massachusetts, or Hancock, New Hampshire. You’re visiting the old church there. and behind the chapel you find a small plot. Simple stones bearing simple markers. The markers say ‘War of 1776’. They do not ask for attention, but they command it, all the same. These are the patriots who won our freedom. These are the first Americans who enlisted in a fight for something larger than themselves. For a shared faith in the future. For a nation that was alive in their hearts, but not yet part of their world. They and their fellow patriots won their battle. But the larger battle for freedom and justice and equality and opportunity is our battle too. And it’s never fully won. Each new generation has to take up the cause. Sometimes with weapons in hand. Sometimes armed only with faith and hope, like the marches in Birmingham and Selma, four decades ago. Sometimes the fight is waged in Congress or the Courts. Sometimes on foreign shores like the battle that called one of my brothers to war in the Pacific and another to die in Europe. Now it is our turn to take up the cause. Our struggle is not with some monarch named George who inherited the crown, although it often seems that way [Heh], Our struggle is with the politics of fear and favoritism in our own time, in our own country. Our struggle, like so many others before, is with those who put their own narrow interest ahead of the public interest. We hear echoes of past battles in the quiet whisper of the sweetheart deal, in the hushed promise of a better break for the better connected. We hear them in the cries of the false patriots who bully dissenters into silence and submission. These are familiar fights. We fought and we won them before, and with John Kerry and John Edwards leading us, we will win them again and again and again and make America stronger at home and respected once more in the world.
For centuries kings ruled by what they claimed was divine right. They could not be questioned. They could not be challenged. The people’s fate was not there own. But today because of the surpassing wisdom of our founders, the constant courage of the patriots of the past and the shared sacrifice of generations of Americans who kept the faith, the power of America still rests securely in citizens’ hands. In OUR hands. True to our highest and noblest ideals, we intend to use that power. We will use it wisely and well. We will use it, in the poets’ words ‘My brothers love, to strive to seek to find, and not to yield.’ We will use it to heal, to build, to hope, and to dream again, and in doing so we will truly make our country, once more, America the Beautiful!"
Say what you will about the man, but he can still turn a phrase better than most.
I’m skipping Gephardt, but I might be back for Obama.