Democratic Convention

"Too Good to Be Forgotten," by David Obst. John Wiley & Sons. 274 pages. $24.95.In this baby boomer's explanation of his psychedelic generation, David Obst reports one rollicking adventure after another. By his account, the Vietnam War, Richard M. Nixon and the Chicago Democratic Convention were the only things not to love about the 1960s. Yet the upside was that each provided plenty of material for street protests, which, in those days, were the best kind of party. Without protests, the '60s experience could not be called complete.

CHICAGO -- Hometown girl Hillary Rodham Clinton received a hero's welcome at the Democratic convention on a day when the president's campaign highlighted themes of family and education.Mrs. Clinton, who has been a target of Republican attacks, was introduced to the convention crowd last night by Vice President Al Gore's wife, Tipper.She defended the first lady as "a woman who always maintains her grace, dignity and humor, even while being subjected to unimaginable incivility."As Mrs. Clinton stepped onstage, the convention floor erupted in a thunderous roar and a sea of waving signs reading "Welcome Home Hillary."

IT HAS BEEN 20 YEARS since the last small hint of a presidential contest (between Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan) enlivened a national convention and 36 years since delegates assembled in an aura of uncertainty about who the nominee (John Kennedy or Lyndon Johnson) would be.Now all pretense is at an end. The Republican extravaganza in San Diego is unapologetically controlled, censored, scripted, timed, stage-designed and choreographed for what it is: a TV show for an American audience conditioned and couch-potatoed by the tube.

TONIGHT AT the Democratic convention, they'll wheel out Christopher Reeve for all the world to see. Everyone except Christopher Reeve (and a few other disabled people in the crowd, strategically placed in view of the TV cameras) will stand.Many will weep. And then they'll smile, wiping away tears, as Reeve speaks.It will be an emotional moment, as we once again see Superman in a wheelchair, we hear Superman's determination to some day climb out of that wheelchair and we root for Superman to fly, or at least to walk.

CHICAGO -- Hometown girl Hillary Rodham Clinton received a hero's welcome at the Democratic convention on a day when the president's campaign highlighted themes of family and education.Mrs. Clinton, who has been a target of Republican attacks, was introduced to the convention crowd last night by Tipper Gore, the vice president's wife.She defended the first lady as "a woman who always maintains her grace, dignity and humor, even while being subjected to unimaginable incivility."As Mrs. Clinton stepped onstage, the convention floor erupted in a thunderous roar and a sea of waving signs reading "Welcome Home Hillary."

It's not a teachers' strike this time. The political leaders of Maryland walked out on the school children of Baltimore.Chicago is a toddling town. Those Democrats will get out there and toddle.This is the first time that the model for a Democratic convention is the preceding (yawn) Republican convention.Pravda is gone. It's hard to know what to disbelieve.Pub Date: 8/26/96

CHICAGO -- Casting himself as a bridge to the future and a bulwark against Republican budget cuts, President Clinton claimed the Democratic presidential nomination again last night after the most turbulent day of his re-election campaign."

AS BILL CLINTON continues to upstage his own hand-picked national convention with a Truman-style train ride through the Rust Belt, his destination city of Chicago is awash in traumatic recollections of 1968, the last time Democrats assembled by the shores of Lake Michigan.It was the only time in American history when real blood was shed during the process of nominating a presidential candidate. Clashes between Chicago cops and anti-war protesters became part of the nation's collective memory of Vietnam, much to the exclusion of all else then going on in a troubled world.

CHICAGO -- Vowing that "the best is yet to come," Bill Clinton gained his party's nomination last night for a second term as president.Clinton, the first Democratic president in more than half a century to gain renomination without opposition, made his triumphant entry into the convention city after a four-day railroad jaunt across the Midwest.Saying he did not wish to upstage his own acceptance speech to the convention this evening, Clinton told a welcoming rally at a Chicago college ball field: "Just let's say the best is yet to come, the best days of America, the best days of the Clinton-Gore administration, the best days of our efforts together, to lift up our country and move forward."

SAN DIEGO -- The newly wedded Republican presidential team takes off today for a post-convention honeymoon tour across the country, and plans to campaign together until at least early September.Republican campaign strategists have decided that Bob Dole, the GOP presidential nominee, and his ticket mate Jack Kemp, are complementing each other so well that they will mimic the tactic used by the Democrats in 1992 of making an extended series of joint appearances."They've done about five events together so far, and even though the two men are very different, each of them augments the other," said John Buckley, Dole's communications director.

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Republicans got back to the business of politics last night, shuffling their president out of prime time and beginning the condensed mission of contrasting John McCain with his Democratic opponent. Seeking to wrest control of their convention from Hurricane Gustav, the GOP focused on "country first," a theme that ran from the opening prayer to the closing speech and was written on screens across the Xcel Energy Center. The program focused on reintroducing voters to the presumptive Republican nominee, his family, his military and public service, and his time as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

Several hundred bloggers will cast a much larger shadow at the political conventions the next two weeks than they did four years ago when all the convention bloggers could have fit in an elevator. Whether their presence shakes up all the careful choreography remains to be seen, but the names of many of the blogs indicate this is not your father's political media. They range from the sarcastic to the shameless, from UppityWisconsin to crooksandliars.com to Connecticut's MyLeftNutmeg.com.

DENVER -- The Democratic National Committee announced yesterday that it will hold its 2008 convention in Denver to showcase the party's expansion into the once reliably Republican terrain of the Rocky Mountain West. DNC Chairman Howard Dean said that symbolism is what pushed Denver's bid ahead of its competition, perennial convention candidate New York. "It's fitting that the next president of the United States will be nominated in Denver," Dean said in a conference call. "If we win the West, we will win the presidency."

TO: JOHN KERRY, Republican mole From: Karl Rove, White House political adviser I just wanted to let you know that the game plan is working perfectly. By all logic, the president should be packing boxes for his move back to Crawford by now. He's got a sluggish economy, Iraq is turning into such a disaster that even Republicans accuse the president of "incompetence," and Martha Stewart is going to jail while Osama bin Laden is free as a bird. Given all this, the Democrats had every reason to think they not only could defeat George W. Bush - again!

NEW YORK - I've been going to political conventions - Democrat and Republican - for 32 years, and I've never seen a bigger disconnect between what is actually going on at the convention and the way it is being reported. The networks decided to skip the opening night of the Republican convention. So unless you were one of the fewer than 10 million Americans who tuned into Fox News Channel, CNN, MSNBC or C-SPAN to hear Sen. John McCain or former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, you'd have no idea how powerful a case these two men made for George W. Bush's re-election.

MARYLAND Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele are both wrong about the Democratic Party being racist when it comes to blacks, but let's be clear about why. The Democratic leadership doesn't have the guts to be racist. But it does let selected hatchet men and hit men do its racist dirty work for it. More on that in a bit, but first a recap of the charges Ehrlich and Steele made in an article by Sun reporter David Nitkin yesterday. "I saw a message coming from the Democratic convention," Ehrlich said in the article.

IT WAS A RARE unscripted moment in the otherwise elaborately choreographed Republican convention program, and the thrill was electric. Sen. John McCain, who'd rather not criticize his friend, Democratic challenger John Kerry, directed his fire from the podium instead at filmmaker Michael Moore, whose anti-war polemic Fahrenheit 9/11 has helped Democrats mobilize opposition to President Bush. Lo and behold, Mr. Moore was in the hall. He raised his hand in the shape of an L, for loser, directed either at Mr. McCain or at the hundreds of delegates hissing and booing at him, shouting, "Four more years, four more years."

NEW YORK - Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. called the Democratic Party "racist" in its appeal to blacks yesterday and was seconded by his African-American lieutenant governor, whom the Republicans are showcasing today in a prime-time speech at their national convention. "I saw a message coming out of the Democratic Convention: If you happen to have black skin, you have to believe one way. You have to. Or you are a traitor to your race," Ehrlich said in remarks to the Maryland state delegation at its hotel.

THE OLD ADAGE says "the enemy of my enemy is my friend." But can the friend of my enemy be my friend? As Republicans brace for what may be the most confrontational and possibly violent convention in 36 years - confrontational and violent outside Madison Square Garden, not inside - both parties are contemplating what will happen if anti-Bush protesters create a frightening atmosphere in New York. Americans shy away from political conflict and punish politicians with hard edges and harsh rhetoric.

NEW YORK - One group intends to stage the "World's Largest Unemployment Line," with pink slips stretching from Wall Street to Madison Square Garden. Another plans to frame Ground Zero with bell-ringing activists, intent on shielding the space from what they see as Republican Party exploits. Advocates for abortion rights are expected to rally. So are labor unions. A group of librarians operating as "Radical Reference" will take crowd questions on all things protest-related. And then there is the more direct path to roiling the Republican National Convention advocated by some self-described anarchists and veteran political protesters: Sit-ins at delegate hotels.