JUSIPER

 
Conventioneer

Posted by Peter

"Conventioneer" was blogging before there were blogs: At the 2000 conventions, a cabal of fine young reporters commandeered George Magazine’s extraordinarily ill-fated website, and posted semi-regular observations about the proceedings.

Now Conventioneer is back, writing for Boston Magazine, and "he" is good. Amidst yesterday’s mix of name-dropping and descriptions of finger foods, for example, came a biting analysis of Howard Dean’s Tuesday night speech as symptomatic of his Internet-stock campaign:

Dean's stubbornness remains befuddling. The big line in his speech last night -- "I'm Howard Dean, and I'm voting for John Kerry" -- was supposed to suggest that general-election Dean had a new mission, that something had changed. But Dean never talked much about why he was voting for Kerry, and Conventioneer found in the rest of Dean's listless speech the same narcissism that crippled him in the primaries. Beginning last summer, as his feisty anti-war speeches began to resonate with voters, Dean developed an almost tragic obsession with the movement he had galvanized, overshadowing the basis for the movement itself. Dean spent more time talking about changing the Democratic party than actually changing it. It was an exceedingly adolescent message goaded along by campaign manager Joe Trippi, who reveled in the trendiness of the Dean phenomenon more than its ideas or values, creating a pitch to voters that suggested the only reason they should join him was that others had already done so enthusiastically. Crowds eagerly embraced the validation and created a disastrous positive feedback loop: By the time the Iowa Caucuses came, Dean's campaign was about nothing other than itself, and its vast support cratered.

DISCLOSURE: I contributed to Conventioneer in 2000. Unfortunately, the best piece I wrote, about sending Cindy McCain dessert at a Philadelphia restaurant, was killed for being both too salacious and devoid of meaningful content.


2:59 PM |