Parties’ Conventions Hit The Spot

I have an embarrassing admission about these political conventions: I loved them. I found them engrossing, instructive, delightful - even, at moments, inspiring.

True, I’m something of a sucker for pageantry. Being on site in Philadelphia - sometimes in the huge, churning hall itself - I felt with more immediacy the power of the GOP’s gathering. But you get much the same charge from watching on TV: The contagious energy. The outrageous headgear. The roll calls, with those disarmingly ordinary Americans savoring their seconds in the sunshine, pouring on the effusive self-celebrations, state by state.

The fact is, I was stirred. By Colin Powell’s powerful, brave and clear-eyed message. With his straightforward talk about people still left behind, Powell forced the convention past its handsome exterior to confront for a few moments the difficult, deeper challenges of fairness and justice.

I was stirred, too, by Laura Bush, with her lovely, warm smile and her courage and composure before that huge hall and national television audience. Indeed, I was struck throughout these conventions by the performances of women. Certainly, by the public officials like the Democrats’ Alexis Herman and the Republicans’ Condoleezza Rice, with their cool sagacity. And by the historic display of Democratic women senators.

But I was moved as well by the women who came to the stage as wives and daughters. Not only the prospective first ladies. Also Caroline Kennedy, her very face summoning the power her parents had over this nation. And Karenna Gore Schiff, whose tour-de-force seconding speech was delivered with all the warmth her dad so painfully seeks to project. Seeing these women, their strength and genuineness so richly displayed, made you believe that - just possibly - a much greater role for women in national politics can’t, after all, be as drearily far off as it so often seems.

Indeed, this is a political season for that sort of belief - that American politics has a role for everyone. There was Joe Lieberman, himself so evidently, openly moved at breaking the Jewish barrier - in the city where Jack Kennedy 40 years ago brought down the Catholic barrier. And only eight years after JFK’s nomination, two Catholics - his brother and Gene McCarthy - sought the presidency with their faith hardly mentioned. So quickly can the once-impossible become ordinary.

Indeed, to watch these conventions was to find strength in the hope that we are seeing a revival of faith in one another, a resurgence of engagement, a recommitment to purpose, all driven with the new energy that comes with a widening of the circle. There was Robert Menendez, the first Hispanic to gain a leadership position in Congress, addressing the Democrats in both English and Spanish. There were Max Cleland and Bob Kerrey, senators now, but veterans of tragic Vietnam War experiences, reminding us of the unfathomable sacrifices of military service.

And there was John McCain, calling national greatness “a quest without end, the object beyond the horizon.” That horizon, he said, becomes more distant with age for each of us. Yet, “I have such faith in you, my fellow Americans. And I am haunted by the vision of what will be.”

There were powerful contrasts: The Texas Republicans bowing their heads in protest when a gay congressman addressed them (his topic not gay rights but trade), while the Texas delegation in L.A. waved anti-hate crime signs as a speaker exhorted the crowd on behalf of equal rights for gays and lesbians.

There were also dull patches aplenty, and failed efforts, stiff speeches and forced attempts at downhominess. But then there were moments that blew away all complacency. As when John Lewis, the Georgia Democrat who was beaten bloody on a bridge in Selma, Ala., introduced Hadassah Lieberman, the child of Holocaust survivors.

“Only in America,” as Joe Lieberman put it. “Only in America,” as Colin Powell had said before him.

Oh, the commentators sneered about the warm bath of Bill Clinton’s self-adulation, belly-ached about overorchestration and did their level best to kick up dust. Did Hillary and Tipper avoid each other on that stage in Monroe, Mich.? Did George W. Bush send John McCain back to Washington prematurely? But it was all yada-yada - silliness around the edges.

Watching these conventions, if you allowed yourself to, you could work up a curiosity and enthusiasm for the election to come, a yearning for something better, a hope that greater accomplishments do await us. In other words, if you ask me, they worked.