Chaos & Disorder

My heart goes out to the people in Denver.

If the 2008 Democrat National Convention is anything like its 2004 counterpart, the Mile High City will be sunk. As one who bore witness to the new Boston Massacre, I wouldn’t wish such an experience on my worst enemy.

There was no real reason for the 2004 DNC to be held in Boston; yes, it was a reliably blue city in a reliably blue state, but the convention could have been held in a city that could actually function in spite of the event, not shut down because of it. Boston was rendered null and void during the last week of July 2004; the damage done to the city was fundamentally unnecessary.

Who benefited from the four-day shindig at the TD Banknorth Garden (then known as the FleetCenter)? Certainly not John Kerry; his acceptance speech was essentially the high-water mark of his Presidential bid. Certainly not the Democrat Party, whose image was damaged by the presence of Michael Moore and Al Sharpton at the event.

The ’04 convention was a dull, stuffy affair, something that could only be enjoyed by the most partisan of Democrats. What was really so impressive about the event? At the time, people raved about Barack Obama’s keynote address, but his speech really wasn’t all that: today, his unity-themed speech comes across as, shall we say, happy horsepoop.

Watching the convention on television, one couldn’t help noticing how stale and tired the party seemed. Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Jimmy Carter all came across as washed-up retreads reveling in past glories. They seemed to lack confidence about Kerry’s chances for victory; looking back, who could blame them?

Kerry embarrassed himself at the outset of his speech, with his declaration that he was “reporting for duty.” As a whole, his speech wasn’t bad; he made a clear, if not compelling, case for replacing President Bush as the leader of the free world. Kerry did come across as Presidential in the speech; of course, he never came across as Presidential again during the remaining months of his campaign.

The convention was as much of a waste as Kerry’s Presidential bid. Restaurants and other businesses were forced to either shut down or close early due to the severe traffic and security restrictions; a pizzeria owner named Mark Pasquale became something of a folk hero to Bay State Republicans after he placed a large banner in front of his restaurant condemning the convention and endorsing Bush. Boston was also disrupted by a series of antiwar protests from folks who would have never said one word denouncing the war if a Democrat President had launched it.

One didn’t have to be a Republican to wonder why Boston had to put up with this nonsense. Why was Mayor Thomas Menino so obsessed with bringing the convention here? Did he think the event would clean up Boston’s national image thirty years after the anti-busing riots? If so, his effort failed: in other parts of the country, most people still think of Boston as the place where Ted Landsmark was attacked with the American flag.

Other than Boston’s conservative-leaning talk radio hosts—whose shows became citadels of complaint from Bay Staters whose lives had been affected by the event--it’s hard to see who benefited from the DNC circus.  Menino’s national reputation was not improved. Massachusetts still came across to the rest of the country as a hard-left region whose voters continually re-elected senators and representatives of questionable character. Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, had a season in the sun, but that season came to a bitter, harsh end.

Say what you will about how President Bush has operated in his second term, but those of us who remembered how Boston was turned upside down by the DNC convention were happy as hell when Bush defeated Kerry to commence that second go-round. After what Kerry and his Democrat cohorts had done to the city’s economy and quality of life during that unpleasant week in July, his defeat came as a most satisfying payback. For Massachusetts Republicans—who regarded Kerry was a politician whose intelligence and skill were offset by his arrogance and dogmatic liberalism—his failure to replace Bush as the country’s CEO was doubly satisfying. We couldn’t help laughing at those who drove around with Kerry-Edwards bumper stickers on their cars, and noting the irony of Bush doing to Kerry what Kerry had done to Boston.

Four years later, both Bush and Kerry have been discredited—Bush by numerous second-term mistakes, and Kerry by such embarrassments as his 2006 “botched joke” about ignorant soldiers in Iraq. Bush will leave public office next year—and perhaps Kerry as well, if his Republican Senate opponent can pull of a miracle. Miracles have happened in Boston before; after all, it was a miracle that Boston survived Kerry’s convention.