Denver dispatches - Erik Tarloff - Monday 25th August

At every political convention I’ve covered, I‘ve begun by promising myself not to write about the miserable hassles involved in securing press credentials. I’ve never succeeded. Sooner or later, my good intentions have given way to sustained whining. In print. This time, though, I’m determined to come as close to a British-style stiff upper lip as is within my power, contenting myself with a simple… Don’t get me started.

This morning, my wife and I went to the convention hall early. She had a rehearsal session scheduled for a little colloquy in which she will be participating this evening, with Sherrod Brown, a rising-star freshman senator from Ohio, and a small number of economic, healthcare, and education experts. The main purpose of the little colloquy was for the participants to say, in a variety of ways, Obama is good and McCain is bad, and the session director kept reminding them that this was their remit. Occasionally, if one or the other of them said Obama is good but neglected to add that McCain also happens to be bad, the director was quick to point out this little lapse. They all quickly got into the groove. But I don’t mention this rehearsal because it was anything to write home about. The thing itself was frankly a yawn (please don’t tell Laura I said so). What I mostly managed to take away from it is: Obama good, McCain bad.

But something interesting happened before the rehearsal began. Laura and I were sitting in the green room, waiting for the other participants to arrive (a sign of how tight the security is here at the hall: The session ended up being delayed more than half an hour because Senator Brown and his wife were being frisked and examined by the police outside the hall; I suppose you never can tell which member of the US Senate is a crazed terrorist in Solon’s clothing), minding our own business, when a rather handsome black woman of a certain age with two very attractive little girls entered the green room. “I don’t know what I’m doing here,” the woman said with a little laugh. “I just follow orders.” And then she introduced herself: “Hi, I’m Marian Robinson.” The name rang a bell, but it was the face that clinched it: she looked absolutely identical to her daughter, Michelle Obama. This was the potential future first mother-in-law, shepherding her two grandchildren around the Denver convention centre. For the record, I saw no sign of any special protection around these three precious entities; they were ushered in by some sort of minder, a pleasant young woman who, believe me, was packing no heat, and they then sat and chatted with us, good-naturedly and unaffectedly. Mrs Robinson herself was as gracious and unprepossessing as can be—we laughed about the absurd anonymity and apparent arbitrariness of convention rules and directives—and the kids were sweet and well behaved.

It’s no doubt naive to judge a candidate by the deportment of his family; we’re electing a president, after all, not some sort of daddy-in-chief. But there is, I believe, an atavistic instinct in all of us that responds to a person’s relatives and close friends as an expression of something vital about him or her. And by that standard, I felt today something had been added to Barack Obama’s lustre. (We were later told that at the beginning of the campaign, the girls had been promised a pet dog when the whole thing is over, win or lose, as a reward for putting up with the rigours of a prolonged election season. Hard to begrudge them, and quite amazing that the girls’ parents didn’t give in and buy the damned dog halfway through the primaries. My wife and I were pansies when it came to things like that.)

Most of the political gossip I’ve been able to glean today continues to concern the putative hostility between not only the Obama and Clinton camps, but the Obamas and the Clintons themselves. This time it’s personal. There’s so much smoke in this regard, there are probably some flames as well. I heard through the grapevine that a compromise was being negotiated almost identical to the one I proposed in yesterday’s post, but I subsequently heard that it might be unravelling, that Hillary is starting to claim her supporters are out of her control, and that if they want to make some sort of spontaneous demonstration on the convention floor, she won’t be able to stop them. I’m a little sceptical about this story; anything of this sort would be terribly self-defeating for her. But the media are doing everything to keep the rumour alive. About a half hour of television coverage this afternoon was devoted to a group of women who had supported Hillary but who are now switching to McCain, and this afternoon, while I was walking to an event in downtown Denver, I saw a march—admittedly something of a ragtag affair—of people chanting loudly, carrying signs saying “Hillary Democrats for McCain!” It’s hard for me even to grasp the cogency of their grievance, beyond the incontestable fact that no one likes to lose.

One more piece of related gossip: Bill Clinton has been asked to speak on Wednesday night, a night devoted to foreign affairs and security issues. Advised by the convention organisers to fit his remarks to that theme, he is said to have refused outright, saying, “I’ll talk about anything I damn well please!” He was told in response—and if this story is true, I’m sure he hasn’t been balked in this manner very often over the last 16 years—“Look, this is Barack’s convention and that’s the way he wants it.” According to my informant, this conflict has yet to be resolved.

Still, I asked a friend today, someone with connections in the McCain camp, whether he thought they were feeling optimistic or pessimistic. He responded that it was his impression they were proud to have kept their heads above water when, a few months earlier, the whole enterprise seemed doomed, but that most of them don’t really expect to win. And, most interestingly, that their candidate doesn’t seem to mind that much.

Erik Tarloff is a novelist and writer, and a former occasional speechwriter to Bill Clinton. Along with James Crabtree, he will be blogging for First Drafts from the Democratic convention in Denver this week