Sam Clench: Donald Trump’s ‘boring’ and unmemorable speech at the Republican convention

COMMENTARY:

I can hardly believe I’m saying this, but President Donald Trump’s speech to the Republican National Convention yesterday almost made me miss Kimberly Guilfoyle.

At least his speech, the first day of the convention, was memorable.

Sure, Guilfoyle was yelling apocalyptic nonsense in an empty room, but there’s no denying he got his point.

“THEY WANT TO DESTROY THIS COUNTRY AND EVERYTHING WE HAVE FIGHTED AND KEPT LOVED,” he screamed.

It was a show! You couldn’t look away.

For much of Trump’s speech, the challenge was staying awake.

Those are words that I never thought I would read, much less write. Because whatever flaws the president of the United States may have, being boring isn’t usually one of them. The man is a born artist.

And, in theory, all the ingredients were there for a typically captivating show.

Trump spoke to the White House itself as his grandiose backdrop, something no other president has ever done.

Unlike most other speakers at the convention, he had a crowd of admirers in front of him, eager to applaud his every word.

And on paper, the president’s speech included a lot of extraordinarily loud and flashy lines. Let me select a few examples.

“Your vote will decide whether we protect law-abiding Americans or unleash violent anarchists, agitators and criminals who threaten our citizens.”

“This election will decide whether we will defend the American way of life or allow a radical movement to dismantle and destroy it completely.”

“Joe Biden has spent his entire career outsourcing his dreams and the dreams of American workers, offshoring their jobs, opening up his borders and sending his sons and daughters to fight endless foreign wars, wars that never ended.”

“Joe Biden is not a savior of America’s soul. He is the destroyer of America’s jobs and, given the opportunity, he will be the destroyer of American greatness.”

Joe Biden is the destroyer! That is quite incendiary. It’s certainly stronger than all the nonsense Biden said about “dark and light” last week.

And yet, for reasons difficult to place, all of these lines sounded flat when they came out of Trump’s mouth.

Watch enough public appearances of the president and you will realize that, in essence, there are two different versions of him.

First, there is the carefree and libertine Trump who goes off-script and says unpredictable, sometimes crazy things.

This is the type you often see at your political rallies, feeding off the adulation of a raucous crowd. You never know what he will say next.

You could spend 14 minutes describing, in great detail, your glacial journey down a gentle ramp. Maybe she goes off on a tangent about how much she despises sharks. The possibilities are endless.

Then there is the bored Trump, who follows the movements, who reads from his teleprompter in a monotonous and boring tone. Often when you deliver it, you get the impression that you are seeing the speech for the first time.

For most of his 70-minute convention speech, perhaps the most important speech of his political career, we got the second Trump.

He made a disjointed list of his administration’s accomplishments and issued dire warnings about the risks of a Biden presidency. There were all the blatant lies and exaggerations that often inflame his critics.

For example, at one point, Trump claimed that his approach to the coronavirus was “saving as many lives as possible” by “focusing on science, facts and data.”

He made this statement in front of 1,500 people, huddled together like sardines, the vast majority of whom did not have face masks. One day another 40,000 Americans were diagnosed with the virus.

He delivered it in defiance of history, which shows he downplayed the threat of the disease for months and repeatedly contradicted health experts in his own government.

At another point, the president repeated his frequent, obviously false claim that he approved a government program called Veterans Choice, even though it was actually approved in 2014, when Barack Obama was president.

The collective response of his political enemies was not to be outraged, but to shrug. It was as if everyone had been given tranquilizers.

I don’t want to give you the impression that Biden was much better. This time, last week, I wrote that parts of his speech were “concocted to the point of absurdity.”

But it was much more concise, at 25 minutes compared to Trump’s 70.

I think part of the problem was the jarring difference in tone between the president and whoever wrote his speech.

Consider this excerpt. He approached the climax of Trump’s comments.

“Our American ancestors sailed across the dangerous ocean to build a new life on a new continent. They braved freezing winters, crossed raging rivers, scaled rocky peaks, traversed dangerous forests, and worked from dawn to dusk.” , Trump said.

“These pioneers had no money. They had no fame. But they had each other. They loved their families, they loved their country, and they loved their God.

“When the opportunity presented itself, they packed up their Bibles, packed their belongings, got into their covered wagons, and set off west for the next adventure. Ranchers and miners, cowboys and sheriffs, farmers and settlers.

“They advanced beyond the Mississippi to claim a right to the wild frontier. Legends were born. Wyatt Earp, Annie Oakley, Davy Crockett, and Buffalo Bill. Americans built their beautiful houses in the open country. Soon, they had churches and communities then cities and , with time, great centers of industry and commerce “.

Clearly, this was meant to be a lofty, almost poetic piece of oratory, although I doubt that even Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama could have made it work.

More importantly, it was so, so far from the way Donald Trump actually talks.

For a president whose greatest strength must be his authenticity, rhetoric like this is incredibly counterproductive. Break your dive. It’s like Tyrion Lannister suddenly started speaking with a cockney accent.

I must admit that Trump was not the only speaker on the last day of his convention.

His daughter Ivanka offered up her usual pointless trivia. You know, things like, “Washington hasn’t changed Donald Trump. Donald Trump has changed Washington.”

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is always a conspiratorial diversion pack, warned that the left wing of the Democratic Party was “hiding within” Biden’s body, “waiting to execute his pro-criminal and anti-crime policies. police “.

The only indisputably effective message came from Ann Dorn, whose husband David Dorn, a police captain, was killed in June after intervening in a looting.

“I relive the horror in my mind every day,” Dorn said, fighting through tears.

“My hope is that the fact that he relives it with me now will help lift this country out of this nightmare that we are witnessing in our cities and bring about a positive and peaceful change.

“We must heal before we can affect change. But we cannot heal amid devastation and chaos. President Trump knows we need more David in our community, not less.

“We need to unite in peace and remember that every life is precious.”

There is a complicated tension within the Dorn family: David Dorn’s daughters opposed their widow’s appearance at the convention, insisting that their father would never have supported Trump, but his words were undoubtedly heartfelt.

In any case, the most effective contributor to Trump’s re-election campaign may have been his most vociferous opponents.

When the people who attended the president’s speech left the White House grounds, they were accosted by groups of protesters, who booed loudly and shouted profanity-laden abuses.

The scenes were ugly; powerful images. Somehow, the people who hate Trump the most managed to defend his message of “law and order” better than the president himself.