During the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions, David Levi Strauss, Aperture magazine contributing editor, noted writer, and current Chair of MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department, School of Visual Arts, shared his unique perspective via daily dispatches on Exposures.

David Levi Strauss turned his critical eye on the country’s political process at an early age, as evidenced by the letter he received when he was 15 from the great Kansas statesman Alf Landon. Levi Strauss had written to him in 1968 complaining that political conventions were outmoded. Click the above to read Landon’s response.

John McCain and Sarah Palin, September 4, 2008. Republican National Convention. Xcel Center, St. Paul, Minnesota. Photo by Jon Winet

David Levi Strauss, Aperture magazine contributing editor, noted writer, and current Chair of MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department, School of Visual Arts, shares his unique perspective via daily dispatches from the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions.

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No Country for Old Men

John McCain returned to form last night, snatching defeat from the jaws of a victorious convention. His speech was remarkably tone-deaf and stale. “Everyone has something to contribute”? Don’t worry, we’ll find you “a new job that won’t go away”? “We’re all God’s children and we’re all Americans”? Karl Rove must be tearing out his ear hairs. His minions had decked the hall for two nights with fresh red meat, and McCain poured warm milk all over it. The only hope left for his part of the Party is for the revenge and resentment agenda to leapfrog over Grandpa’s corpse.

McCain’s speech had “Old & In the Way” written all over it. He veered from platitude to bad attitude like a drunken sailor. When Thompson and Huckabee and Giuliani and Palin recounted McCain’s moving story as a P.O.W., it sounded noble and true. When he told it himself, it sounded like Gramps nattering on about his glory days.

When he was finally finished, his image men projected big flowing red and white flag bars behind him, recalling George C. Scott’s last speech in Patton, in decline, having become a caricature of his former self. Signal the balloon drop.

The youngest Palin daughter did her plucky best, appearing briefly onstage in a brown sack, looking like Joan of Arc, but it was too late. Her mother now looked for all the world like McCain’s third wife, elbowing aside his current fake glamorous billionaire CEO second wife. And McCain’s mother looked lost in a hail of red, white, and blue balloons. C-e-l-e-b-r-a-t-e Good Times, Come On!

It was all very sad. McCain retired early, leaving Sarah Palin behind to sign autographs, contemplating a future that will, God willing, never come.

Filed on Friday, Sept. 5, 2008, after the last night of the Republican Convention in St. Paul.

Xcel stage moments following Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech for her nomination as the GOP”s Vice-Presidential candidate. September 3, 2008. Republican National Convention. Xcel Center, St. Paul, Minnesota. Photo by Jon Winet

David Levi Strauss, Aperture magazine contributing editor, noted writer, and current Chair of MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department, School of Visual Arts, shares his unique perspective via daily dispatches from the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions.

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How to Field Dress a Donkey

So a hockey mom carrying her special needs child walks into a bar, and says to everyone in and outside the joke, “What are you laughing at, asshole? Here’s what I think of your European Ideas.”

Hillary Clinton must be wondering what she did to deserve this. John McCain has, with one deft stroke, made a mockery of her campaign and everything she stands for. You want a woman tough enough to be Commander-in-Chief? Sarah Palin is so tough she doesn’t need to wear pantsuits to wear the pants. She can stand by her man and stand up to the terrorists, while her lily-livered opponent is standing around “worried that someone won’t read them their rights.” And as she marches into history, Palin has picked up the fallen banner of Hillary to use as her own petard.

Unlike Hillary and Joe Biden, she’s “not a member of the permanent political establishment”. . . yet. She’s just been a small-town mayor, which is “sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities,” and a big-state governor. Voters like governors, especially of big states. She sees this as a race between “a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single law or even a reform” and the “only man in this campaign who has ever really fought for you.” The sound of Styrofoam Greek columns falling was deafening.

Even Palin’s youngest daughter is so innately media-savvy that she turned Paul Wolfowitz’s telling rough gesture of licking his hand to smooth out his hair (in Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 9/11) into an endearing image, using hers to straighten out her baby brother Trig’s. Bristol and Levi looked independent, unrepentant, and fierce, like they could eat the whole Washington Press Corps for breakfast, even without the help of brother Track, who’s on his way to Iraq.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden suddenly have a tremendous problem on their hands. Sarah Barracuda is the new fresh face of revenge and resentment politics, and if enough white evangelical blue-collar and middle-class voters buy it again, things are going to get very ugly. It will no longer be about ideas, European or otherwise. Making sense, telling the truth, and being right just won’t cut it anymore. John McCain has, at least for now, turned the tables, back to a Karl Rovian image- and symbol-storm, in a skirt.

Filed on Thursday, Sept. 4, 2008, after the third night of the Republican Convention in St. Paul.

Fred Thompson, September 2, 2008. Republican National Convention. Xcel Center, St. Paul, Minnesota. Photo by Jon Winet

David Levi Strauss, Aperture magazine contributing editor, noted writer, and current Chair of MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department, School of Visual Arts, shares his unique perspective via daily dispatches from the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions.

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The Other Side & Their Friends in the Media

When the Bush/Cheney regime seized power eight years ago, I would not have predicted that they would prove to be so adept at the deployment and control of images to shape public opinion. In fact, they turned out to be better at it than any previous American administration.

Watching the first (delayed) night of the Republican National Convention on TV tonight, I was struck by how different the image rhetoric in St. Paul is from what I saw first-hand in Denver last week. The images projected behind speakers tonight were more subtle and yet more iconic than anything I saw in Denver. Joe Lieberman stood before a clear blue sky broken only by a flag waving from a single pole. The film narrated by Gary Sinise was less mawkish and more moving than any of the Democrats’ films. Only George W. Bush’s visual broadcast from the Oval Office was substandard, and that may very well have been by design. For McCain to win, he must distance himself from the Bush/Cheney image.

The verbal rhetoric of each party is less distinguished and less distinguishable. Like John Kerry, Fred Thompson gave a great speech, much better than anything he did on his own behalf as a candidate. Did he have access to better speechwriters tonight, or does he just perform better in a supporting role? “John McCain knows about hope. [When he was a POW] that was all he knew.” “This is the kind of character that civilizations from the beginning of our history have sought in their leaders.” “Character you can believe in.” “Not because of a teleprompter’s speech designed to appeal to America’s critics abroad.” “The Democrats present a history-making nominee for President; history-making in that he’s the most liberal, most inexperienced nominee ever to run for President.”

The overall message was clearer in St. Paul because it was less complicated. Fred Thompson painted a compelling portrait of the candidate and threw out partisan red meat, and then Joe Lieberman appealed to disaffected conservative Democrats and Independents by saying partisanship isn’t enough. It is strange to see both campaigns running against their respective parties. Both McCain and Obama realize that they cannot win with only traditional party loyalties, that they must extend their reach. And they’re both reaching toward the same undecided voters, from opposite ends of the spectrum.

Filed on Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2008, after the second night of the Republican Convention in St. Paul.

Texas Delegation. September 1, 2008. Republican National Convention. Xcel Center, St. Paul, Minnesota. Photo by Allen Spore

David Levi Strauss, Aperture magazine contributing editor, noted writer, and current Chair of MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department, School of Visual Arts, shares his unique perspective via daily dispatches from the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions.

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The Calm of the Storm

So far the meeting in St. Paul is the Unconvention, and that may be the best thing that possibly could have happened for the Republicans. Bush & Cheney couldn’t make it? Fantastic! The Republican delegates are, after all, the only people left in the world who still think the current Administration is competent (71% of them approve of Bush’s performance). Much better to have Cindy McCain and Laura Bush (decked out in gold and white, respectively) show up only as fundraisers for hurricane relief efforts, although that line about how it’s time to “take off our Republican hats and put on our American hats” begs the question: are the two mutually exclusive?

The reason for the postponement of the convention was succinctly stated by David Brooks: “They couldn’t afford that split-screen image” of party-hearty Republican celebrations juxtaposed with homeless hurricane survivors recalling Bush/Cheney’s criminal neglect during Katrina. It just wouldn’t look right. Some lobbyists couldn’t help themselves tonight, and threw lavish meet-and-greet-and-bribe parties anyway, but they at least tried to lock out the press.

To fully capitalize on their good luck, the Republican ticket should disappear for the next 68 days, perhaps to Wasilla, or South Assetia.

Filed Monday, Sept. 1, 2008, after the first night of the Republican Convention in St. Paul.

September 1, 2008. Republican National Convention. Xcel Center, St. Paul, Minnesota
Photo by Jon Winet

David Levi Strauss, Aperture magazine contributing editor, noted writer, and current Chair of MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department, School of Visual Arts, shares his unique perspective via daily dispatches from the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions. _____________________________________________________________________________________________ A Ship in the Harbor

Who says we can’t afford another big election about small things? Isn’t it the little things that matter most? Like Bristol Palin’s teen pregnancy, and her mother’s little gun? Like John McCain’s age and Barack Obama’s secret Muslim heart? After all, the big things—war, environmental catastrophe, the energy crisis, economic ruin—are too immense to contemplate. So let us turn deftly away, as George W. Bush taught us with 9/11, and the Iraq War, and Hurricane Katrina, and Global Warming. Play some golf, dance a jig, cut some brush in Crawford. What we don’t think about can’t hurt us. Leave it to someone else. One day at a time.

Trivialize women’s rights. Make a cute little button-nosed joke out of the Vice Presidency. Turn the tables on those oh-so-serious Dems, with their sober assessments and dire predictions, and all that downer talk about mutual responsibility. Please. What ever happened to the happy-go-lucky, irresponsible Negro, anyway? Those were the days, remember?

When Blacks and women knew their place and were happy to be there? When the U.S. was the sole super-power and could conduct foreign policy from the air, no matter what Moscow or Bejing or anyone else thought about it? When economic policy consisted of deregulation and privatization and spending the government into bankruptcy? When energy policy consisted of removing all barriers for the oil companies? God created Anwar for us, didn’t he, so we could drill there?

The Democrats’ hand-wringing only encourages the worst tendencies of a Nation of Whiners. It’s Morning in America, my friends. Don’t worry, be happy. Let Sarah and Todd and Bristol and Levi and Cindy and John show you the way, Back to the Future.

Filed Labor Day, Sept. 1, 2008. First day of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

August 28, 2008. Democratic National Convention. Invesco Field, Mile High Stadium, Denver, Colorado. Photo by Allen Spore.

David Levi Strauss, Aperture magazine contributing editor, noted writer, and current Chair of MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department, School of Visual Arts, shares his unique perspective via daily dispatches from the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions.

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Signed, Sealed, Delivered

As we approached Mile High Stadium on the press bus at 3 p.m., we looked out to see tens of thousands of people walking in columns, filling the roads, elevated highways, and bridges, streaming toward the arena. We were told that some of these people started walking five hours ago, to get here on time. Inside, the TV networks were already set up on platforms erected around the stage. Security was relatively light, and our Brooklyn Rail credentials got us all the way inside, onto the field, where we stayed for the entire spectacle.

Over the next six hours the scene inside the stadium gradually changed, but it was clear from the beginning that this gathering was very different from those at the Pepsi Center the previous three nights. Down on the field, politicians and celebrities mixed freely with the press. Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and John Lewis all held court, surrounded by a gaggle of cameras and microphones. Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff were busy interviewing and being interviewed. At one point, it seemed that everybody was interviewing everyone else, except Charlie Rose, who strolled around smiling, taking it all in.

As the stands began to fill up, the most enthusiastic celebrators came down closest to the field and began dancing, waving signs and banners, and chanting. Some groups developed elaborate routines that caught the attention of the photographers and TV people on the field, and the tables turned: the stands became the stage. The mood was buoyant and expectant. Everyone was having a good time.

Up to now, this convention has consisted of roughly 5000 delegates and 20,000 media people. Today, these groups are outnumbered two-to-one by more than 50,000 regular citizens, who are more diverse in age, color, and class, reflecting the demographic shift in the electorate that might just make an Obama presidency possible.

At about 5:30, will.i.am took the stage to do a version of his “Yes We Can” sampling YouTube hit, and the crowd came together. Looking at them, I realized that this was no conventional political party crowd. These were new people, coming into something they had no doubt was their own. They weren’t asking for anything. They were claiming, and were here to celebrate, what was theirs.

I don’t think the Democratic Party, per se, gets this. They are proceeding as if this is just another campaign, and that’s fine with the Obama people. They need the Democrats. But this time, to win, they’re going to need something else.

When the film about Obama’s life began, this capacity crowd of 84,000 fell absolutely silent. Not a sound. And when their candidate appeared on stage, they erupted, causing the stadium to shudder under our feet.

This was not the best speech Obama has given. It wasn’t even the best speech given at this convention. There was little in the speech that he hadn’t said before in the campaign. I think “No Drama Obama” (as his staff calls him) actually took something off of his delivery, in order to keep things real and play against the spectacular setting. After all, this speech was not primarily for the people in the stadium. It was for the record 38 million people at home who tuned in to see it.

But this in no way lessened the effect on the crowd at Mile High Stadium. When Obama spoke of the debacle of the last eight years of American politics and said “We’re better than this,” people knew he meant them. They don’t love him because they think he’s better than them. The love him because he makes them want to be better themselves. And they know that it’s no use blaming Bush/Cheney and Co. for what’s happened to our country. They were just doing what they do. But we need to recognize and mourn what we did and didn’t do to stop them, and we need to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Obama says “Enough!”

Al Gore is right about one thing. The real power in this country is afraid of an Obama presidency, and will do their best to prevent it. The only way to overcome that is through sheer political will, extremely effective communication, and the force of numbers.

Filed Thursday, August 28, 2008, after the final night of the convention at Mile High Stadium.

Joe Biden acceptance speech. August 27, 2008. Democratic National Convention. Pepsi Center, Denver, Colorado. Photo by Jon Winet.

David Levi Strauss, Aperture magazine contributing editor, noted writer, and current Chair of MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department, School of Visual Arts, shares his unique perspective via daily dispatches from the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions.

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The Machine

I’m writing to you from inside a machine for producing words and images. If anything happens here at the Pepsi Center that is not recorded, it is a wasted act, a kind of sin. Everyone here is divided into use-groups, indicated by the colored tags hanging from their necks. Security forces check the tags constantly to insure compliance.

First, there are the Politicians, the stars, the reason we’re all here. Some of them are so important that they don’t even wear tags. Their images are so ubiquitous and recognizable that they transcend the need for secondary identification.

Next comes the Designated Crowd, also called delegates. Their job is to dress extravagantly and react enthusiastically to everything the Politicians do. They must act as if they’re on-camera at all times, even in the most supposedly private of moments, because when you become part of the Designated Crowd, you sacrifice your identity and image to the greater Image.

The Press is here to record and interpret every act and gesture of the Politicians and the Designated Crowd. The Press is divided into Word People and Image People, and in this setting, the Image People have the upper hand. The Press is also divided into the Mainstream Media and the Bloggers. The MSM have whole buildings (called Media Pavilions) dedicated to their every need or want. They have lounges and cafes and bars. And they have degrees of unlimited access. Some of them have such recognizable images that they have themselves become stars: Wolf, Anderson, Katie, Cokie, Matt. One sees them on the Floor, perfect and motionless, until the cameras roll and they spring to life.

The lowest caste of all is the Bloggers. They are image-less drones, crammed into crowded warrens in tents, outbuildings, and basements, plugged into their pitiful terminals, eating scraps falling from above. They exist at the outer edges of the Machine for Producing Words & Images, closest to the Unwashed, the Irrelevant.

Tonight, the Machine moves.

Filed on Thursday, August 28, 2008, after the third night of the DNC.

August 26, 2008. Hillary Clinton speech. 2008 Democratic National Convention. Pepsi Center, Denver, Colorado. Photo by Jon Winet

David Levi Strauss, Aperture magazine contributing editor, noted writer, and current Chair of MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department, School of Visual Arts, shares his unique perspective via daily dispatches from the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
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The Fallen

The principle drama of the conventions is the relation between the press (now, the MSM) and the politicians. This entire spectacle is built for and caters to the media and the media cannot get enough of it. This year Wolf Blitzer and CNN have set themselves up in the middle of everything, right down on the floor rather than suspended above it. CNN pundits James Carville, et al. wear black Madonna headpiece mics so that they can hear themselves and each other above the din. They look like astronauts in New Guinea.

After eight years of Bush/Cheney-style bunker mentality and press blackout, the conventions are orgies of access, and the MSM is bleary-eyed and gooey with the surfeit.

Last night, the stage belonged to the Clintons, and they showed (if anyone remained unconvinced) how masterful they are at this kind of stagecraft. Chelsea introduced her mother with a film that almost managed to make Hillary look hip, and Hillary gave the best televised speech of her life, artfully intercut with close-ups of weeping women delegates and extreme close-ups and reaction shots of Bill Clinton (often even in splitscreen) laughing, loving, earnestly rapt, and tearful. The words said “Vote for Obama,” but the images said “Look you now upon the President and First Gentleman who could and should have been, and weep.”
Filed on Wednesday, August 27, 2008, after the second night of the convention.

August 25, 2008. Democratic National Convention. Pepsi Center, Denver, Colorado.
Photo by Jon Winet

David Levi Strauss, Aperture magazine contributing editor, noted writer, and current Chair of MFA Art Criticism and Writing Department, School of Visual Arts, shares his unique perspective via daily dispatches from the 2008 Democratic National Convention.

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Isn’t She Lovely?

For a mere voter, it was frustrating to watch the overdetermined and utterly predictable Spectacle that is the party’s nominating convention lumber to life tonight in Denver. Our excitement at Barack Obama’s rise, from his incandescent keynote speech at this convention four years ago, to his unlikely early victories and impossible triumph in the primary, led us to believe that something, everything, had changed, and that perhaps even this hapless ritual might be transformed into a better version of itself. But it was not to be, at least not yet. Just as the opening ceremonies of the Bejing Olympics went all North Korea on us despite extraordinary individual feats, the first night of the Democratic National Convention insisted on Ken Burns without realizing that it had everything it needed in Malia and Sasha Obama.

Something felt wrong from the beginning; not just the self-conscious mawkishness, but something deeper, lurking under the deadend of identity politics. It was as if the worst tendencies of 1980s had come out to make one last attempt to stifle the future. Race vs. gender. And the hall was haunted by other spectres of past failures: Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, Howard Dean. I’m sure we’ll see Al Gore soon. There is something inside American liberalism that forgives too much and gives up too soon. A compensatory, defensive liberalism that refuses to win. Is the Obama campaign a real political movement, or just another empty promise? Having gotten our attention, will Obama Democrats, like their predecessors over the last 30 years, find a way to lose?

This time, the stakes are just too high. Barack and Michelle Obama realize this. They are real leaders, not empty vessels that must be filled up with platitudes, and tonight showed that the Democratic establishment hasn’t yet figured that out. Watching Michelle Obama give that speech was like watching a great miler run through tapioca. I think she came through anyway, but why put your best through that?

If American voters again decide that they want someone in the White House who appeals to their worst selves, who they can feel “comfortable” with, the Obamas will lose. But if they agree with Michelle Obama that “the world as it is just won’t do,” then this spectacle is just a distraction. In his speech at the convention in 2004, Barack Obama invoked “the true genius of America” without irony or cant. If that genius survives, it needs to rise now, and push aside the party faithful. “We are the ones we have been waiting for.”

Filed Monday, August 25, 2008, after the first night of the Democratic National Convention.