I found at least one speech from the Republican Convention effective and persuasive. Skeptics should be challenged to find at least one speech they find effective and persuasive at the Democratic Convention. Here’s my YouTube playlist from the Democratic Convention and from the Republican Convention.
We need to get back to that sense that we are all Americans, as Abraham Lincoln said in his first inaugural address in March, 1861, just before the Civil War began the next month:
“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
There were several compelling speeches at the RNC, most notably from Annette Albright, a former educator and corrections officer from Mount Airy, NC., now from Charlotte-Mecklenburg. I’d give her speech an A. She criticized an Obama-era policy on school discipline, designed to reduce the number of minority-population suspensions, that Trump reversed. He “put the safety of our kids first,” she said.
Albright dramatized the issue of school discipline. “Some schools are more like prisons than places of learning. That must change,” she declared, noting that she was violently assaulted by a group of students in a public high school.
She doesn’t mention that the Biden administration in 2023 revised both the Trump and Obama policies to take a more “nuanced approach,” Nor does she mention that some Democrats, including KY Gov. Andy Beshear, have supported legislation allowing schools to pull a student from a classroom for the remainder of a school year if they “chronically disrupt the education process for other students,” The Washington Post reported.
Both she and the GOP platform promote “universal school choice.” But what does that mean for students, as the Associated Press asked?
Albright was one of at least nine African American speakers at the Republican convention, and IMHO, the most impressive. See the list of the others.
Like A Country Club Gathering
The 2024 Republican National Convention was a sometimes fascinating, sometimes soporific display of American political cultures and sub-cultures. It at times looked like a country club in a small Southern town — insular, naive, prosperous (despite bemoaning the state of the American economy), narrow-minded, light-weight, but friendly, business-oriented, obsessed with golf, the performance art of professional wrestling, and by no means inherently evil.
Trump supporters are frequently referred to fearfully as a cult, and they may be, but after watching many hours of the convention, they didn’t seem so terrifying. They look like people I know — friends, neighbors, and former classmates.
Most of the generally five-minute speeches I watched were strong on emotion but short on policy specifics, raising more questions than they answered about the party’s agenda once elected. Trump specifically jettisoned the historically lengthy political party platform that seeks to persuade because he said nobody reads them and politicians don’t follow their party platform once elected.
Criticism from Mike Pence, and Others
But in doing so, he opened the Republicans up to severe criticism from constituent groups — pro-lifers, gun-rights, free-marketers — and from leaders like former Vice President Mike Pence, who slammed the platform as “a profound disappointment.”
The real GOP platform may be Project 2025, a far-right agenda organized by the Heritage Foundation to reshape the federal government. Trump has tried unconvincingly to distance himself from it. More on that later.
Americans’ Historic Hunger for Something New
Americans love “new" or the appearance of it, and even believed in and bought the “New Nixon” in 1968, “tanned, rested and ready,” a supposed change from the nasty and venal man of the 1940s, 50s, and early 1960s. Americans also seem to love stories of redemption and even 11th-hour conversions, which are not uncommon for felons awaiting sentencing.
But Trump doesn’t have the discipline to sustain a pose of being a changed man.
Just two weeks after the shooting, he stepped on his message. In Minnesota, he declared, “No, I haven’t changed. Maybe I’ve gotten worse. Because I get angry at the incompetence that I witness every single day.” He returned to toxic masculinity and personal attacks on Kamala Harris, calling her “dumb as a rock.” His surrogates stooped to racism, calling her a “DEI hire.”
The first maybe 30 minutes of Trump’s acceptance speech recounting the assassination attempt was great drama.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Slender Threads / Global Citizens / Public History to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.