Scrapbook
Scrapbook LET’S RATE THE CONVENTION! It is with great pride and humility that we at THEWEEKLY STANDARD present the first set of convention awards. In honor of the spirit of San Diego, we are...
...So there were no morning workouts, but the larger irony was that the reporters had nothing to work out every morning...
...Finally, the aide relented, handed the book to Huffington’s assistant, and left...
...Proposition One is indisputable...
...HOTEL SPIN Reporters are deluged at conventions by press releases, faxes, speech texts, free copies of newspapers and magazines, and other forms of printed detritus meant to elevate the profile of a pol, a news organ, or a political party...
...The era of big drinking is over...
...Tuesday night, Sidney Blumenthal of the New Yorker— the most notorious Clinton suck-up in the American media, bar none—sat having a drink in the bar in the Marriott lobby with a number of fellow liberal scribes, including Jeff Greenfield, Hendrik Hertzberg, Garry Wills, Jacob Weisberg, and Michael Tomasky...
...But the suburbanite working mothers at whom the anecdote was aimed must have been puzzled...
...Yes,” Tafel said...
...The only speakers who didn’t face the lights were the various clerics who opened the show each day—which may explain why the invocations tended to ramble...
...Some fun facts were: Room Service was sending out orders at a rate of one every 2.7 minutes...
...To her great credit, Mrs...
...Mawyer paused and said, “It’s not the size that matters, Rich...
...It was a painful adjustment, as the country’s finest political reporters wondered how they would manage to exercise their First Amendment rights without their morning workout on the Butt Buster...
...Mawyer responded by listing gays in the military, multiculturalism, condom-dispensing, and a number of other measures...
...We know, further, that Rollins hasn’t returned any of the money he made from the Huffingtons to the Huffingtons, despite his great disgust with them and his pleasure at his own client’s defeat...
...Is there no limit to the lengths to which PR agents will go...
...No longer...
...Others could not really disagree...
...When deputy campaign manager Rick Davis learned of the situation, he did what any loyal campaign staffer would do: He yanked the credentials from the neck of any Dole campaign staffer standing nearby and passed them to the Dole clan...
...Please send your resum...
...Maybe one of the medals was for Silly Walks...
...Please give it to my assistant Terrell...
...Meanwhile, as the group huddled 15 feet from the lobby of the most crowded hotel in America, a stream of passersby approached to find out what was going on...
...By the time the third light brightened, the speaker had ten seconds to shut up...
...Without their handlers,” chuckled one convention choreographer, “they don’t know WABC in Pittsburgh from Lesley Stahl...
...To make as certain as possible that the message coming from the podium was the one that ended up on television, convention planners did their best to deny floor passes to political handlers...
...The second went off when 20 seconds remained...
...Tafel acknowledged that the Log Cabin Republicans backed some, but not all, of the items...
...Two words: Beach volleyball...
...We know she is intending to sue Rollins for libel...
...the most frequently asked question by the media was “Where’s the lobby...
...And the winner is Nancy Reagan, whose understated speech was moving and didn’t make you feel a little sick for having been touched by it...
...The other big media party, sponsored by chi-chi George magazine, was even more hopeless...
...Pretty women dressed in black sashayed coyly around the host, editor-in-chief John Kennedy, and third-tier movie star Billy Baldwin caused some rubber-necking...
...We also know that Ed Rollins got $1 million for his new book in part because he decided to attack Arianna Huffington—even though he worked for her husband’s senatorial campaign in 1994 and collected a great deal of money from it...
...According to Brokaw, Molinari was changing the diapers of her telegenic infant Susan Ruby Paxon the other day when the baby “had an accident” on the Paxon family word processor, on which Mom was supposedly “working on her speech...
...We can understand why: After all, Newt Gingrich’s “beach volleyball” opening was not in the prepared text...
...After that, the microphone was set to go dead—the electronic-age version of the old vaudeville hook...
...ED VS...
...No,” the aide replied, “Ed insisted I give this to you personally...
...A little beer, a little wine, champagne, some sweet punch with a thimbleful of tequila, and a poorly attended promotional booth sponsored by Stolichnaya—but none of the gutbarrel bourbon and bathtub gin craved by the inkstained, sozzled hacks of the past...
...It seemed no one in the Dole campaign had bothered to obtain credentials for them...
...A partial list of nominees and winners: For Worst Speech: Two standouts here among many mediocrities and minor embarrassments: Newt Gingrich and James A. Baker III...
...Watts, who was genial everywhere he went and gave a remarkably powerful and inspiring speech...
...Nor was ad libbing encouraged...
...to: Jennifer Felten, THE WEEKLY STANDARD, 1150 17th Street, NW, Suite 505, Washington, DC 20036...
...In fact, a few of us laughed aloud at the sound...
...Getting ripped was the fun part...
...Proposition Two is false...
...We know this...
...The first light was timed to go off when a speaker was 30 seconds from the end of his time...
...And again the earmark of the nineties press corps: a little beer, a little wine, lots of soda pop...
...The next day, Blumenthal ran into occasional dinner partner and Gingrich press secretary Tony Blankley...
...TEN-FOOT POLES Martin Mawyer, president of the Christian Action Network, found himself arguing on his adversaries’ turf Tuesday when he debated Rich Tafel, president of the Log Cabin Republicans, on “The Role of Homosexuals in the Republican Party...
...But not much...
...Best Rhetoric: The nominees are John McCain and Mark Helprin . . . um, we mean Bob Dole...
...At a CNN party on the night before the convention, Rollins’s 22-year-old assistant aggressively approached Mrs...
...BEACH VOLLEYBALL, PART 2 When a bunch of Olympic athletes hit the podium on Wednesday, their medals swinging around their necks, the band struck up a familiar march that seemed to be making a mockery of their appearance...
...Before Blumenthal could order another drink, maybe 10 Secret Service agents showed up and escorted him into the hallway, where they spent 45 minutes asking him pointed questions and waited for a computer background check to go through...
...Runner-up: Ford’s “As we gather here this week, our Republican hearts and minds are in hospitable San Diego—and our FBI files are in the White House...
...To find out, contact Gordon Lambourne at the San Diego Marriott...
...Why would anyone change a baby on top of a word processor...
...Mawyer exclaimed, turning to Tafel...
...She did...
...She immediately called the Secret Service and reported that a man had threatened to kill Bob Dole...
...For Best Speech: Nancy Reagan, J.C...
...Because the march that introduced them doubled as the theme song for Monty Python’s Flying Circus...
...The San Diego Zoo setting was darkly exotic, though serving mystery-meat burgers next to empty animal cages was a disconcerting touch...
...Best Vote: James Ball, of Lake Charles, La., a chemist at an oil refinery and a Gramm delegate who cast a first-round ballot for Robert Bork because “the American people need to be reminded that one of the reasons we vote for a president is to appoint judges to the bench...
...It’s an anecdote only a focus group could love, seemingly targeted to the relevant demographic cohorts...
...Well, I appreciate that,” Arianna calmly returned service, “but I wouldn’t know where to put it at the moment...
...I wanted to bring his name up because I hope he’ll be renominated...
...Blumenthal must have uttered his delightful remark in a loud voice, because a woman at the bar, a Buchanan alternate from Alaska, overheard him...
...The nation’s press corps has changed...
...If it happens again, consoled Blankley, I’ll be your character witness...
...Even Norman Mailer wasn’t imbibing...
...Like every other speaker at the convention, Molinari faced three lights as she stood at the podium...
...WE HAVE A JOB OPENING THE WEEKLY STANDARD has a full-time position available for a staff assistant/receptionist...
...H. remained cool...
...The ideal candidate would be organized, hard-working, and energetic...
...LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE SECRET SERVICE...
...Ed really wanted you to have this personally,” the aide said...
...KEYNOTE POOP SCOOP Leading up to Susan Molinari’s keynote speech, NBC’s Tom Brokaw let drop one of those colorful little anecdotes that campaigns love to feed willing anchorfolk...
...It tells us 1) that Molinari is a working mom, and 2) that Molinari wrote her own speech...
...It’s some of the best food I’ve had all week,” she told a hotel official...
...That was the point...
...Worst Soundbite: James A. Baker III, for “So when people say Bill Clinton has been around and is wise in the ways of the world, they’re sure not talking about his foreign policy...
...The job is administrative, and the responsibilities include phones, mail, back issues, correspondence, and other general administrative duties...
...Biggest Jerk of the Convention: Pete Wilson, who made trouble on the platform, threatened a floor fight, then spent hours on television talking about the five minutes’ time he was denied on the podium because of the trouble he had caused—and then got to introduce Liddy Dole...
...That’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen,” said one onlooker...
...Rudi’s Bake Shop served over 9,800 cups of coffee...
...We have a big one...
...Watts, Colin Powell, Elizabeth Dole, John McCain...
...So, no doubt, would the Clintons...
...And that’s just in the White House...
...I really don’t have my hands free,” she said...
...Judge Bork, in the finest tradition of jurisprudence, didn’t legislate from the bench...
...And the Treacly goes to Newt Gingrich...
...When reporters woke up in the morning and staggered to their doors for the (complimentary) copies of USA Today and the San Diego Union-Tribune, they found another piece of paper: “Fun Facts” from the “San Diego Marriott Hotel & Marina...
...In honor of the spirit of San Diego, we are calling our awards the Treaclys...
...Terrell will take it...
...What we have is a convertible Dodge...
...So you admit that you have an agenda...
...ARIANNA Ed Rollins doesn’t like Arianna Huffington...
...Best Red Meat: Kay Bailey Hutchison, for “America, it’s time to wake up to President Clinton and his high-taxing, free-spending, promise-breaking, Social Security-taxing, health-care-socializing, drug-coddling, power-grabbing, business-busting, lawsuit-loving, U.N.-following, FBI-abusing, IRS-increasing, $200-haircutting, gas-taxing, over-regulating, bureaucracy-trusting, class-baiting, privacy-violating, values-crushing, Medicare-forsaking, property-rights-taking, job-destroying friends...
...But no bar...
...Huffington bearing a copy of Rollins’s book, Bare Knuckles and Back Rooms...
...Best Guy of the Convention: J.C...
...ONE BIG HAPPY DOLE FAMILY When 15 or so close relatives of Bob Dole’s appeared outside the convention center Monday morning, they were denied entrance by the ubiquitous security guards...
...The paralyzing press hangover seems to be a thing of the past...
...and Christie Todd Whitman made an impromptu stop at the hotel’s employee cafeteria for lunch...
...A pro-choice governor looking to air his views at an impromptu press conference on the convention floor couldn’t find a national audience because his handler wasn’t there to direct the right film crew to him...
...She had no choice...
...GOOD PARTIES, BAD PARTIES Time was, a conscientious reporter could travel to a convention, study the proceedings, interview the delegates, calibrate their controversies, absorb the party’s message, filter it through to a waiting nation, and get ripped...
...But was this outrageous behavior really necessary...
...LIGHTS OUT The first promise Susan Molinari made in her keynote address Tuesday night was to keep the speech short...
...Mawyer’s difficulties arose when a questioner asked what Mawyer meant by the term “homosexual agenda...
...Or fax us at (202) 293-4901...
...And the winner is John McCain, who briefly reminded the convention what honor, duty, and country mean—and whom nobody actually listened to because we were all still recovering from Elizabeth Dole...
...Blumenthal, slipping into his occasional role as Republican strategist, turned to Tomasky and observed that if Bob Dole really wanted to help his party retake the White House, he would drop dead at the convention and pass the mantle to Jack Kemp...
...It was,” says Blumenthal, “an X-Files moment...
...But the Marriott Corporation took the concept of “spin” to new heights in San Diego...
...The convention’s opening gala for the press, generously sponsored by the Copley newspaper chain, featured towering heaps of sumptuous food, fabulous fireworks, loud music, and—no open bars...
...These are the sweatylooking assistants who set up interviews for the politicians they work for...
...Here is the chief complaint about accommodations among the hacks in San Diego: Owing to security concerns, the gym at the media hotel, the Marriott, was closed...
...Not that there were any hard feelings when it was over...
...I’m not going to touch that one,” Tafel replied, as the largely gay audience dissolved into laughter...
...the convention staff controlled the TelePrompTer...
...To Arianna, with love from Ed,” read the inscription...
...An inscribed copy...
...Best Soundbite: Gerald Ford, for “What we have in the White House is neither a Ford nor a Lincoln...
Vol. 1 • August 1996 • No. 48
