The Obamas’ Party

The Obamas’ Party

After Ann Romney spoke in Tampa last week, much of the next day’s conversation revolved around whether the convention organizers had made a big mistake by having her precede Chris Christie to the lectern. Her speech was praised to the skies, his was criticized for being self-serving and self-absorbed – and by leaving the last word to the New Jersey governor, critics argued, the convention swept the spotlight off her husband and undercut the power of her pitch.

Michelle Obama faced no such competition last night. Her speech was even more impressive than Mrs. Romney’s effort, and the evening was designed to showcase her and her alone. Nobody spoke after the First Lady, and the “keynote” speaker who preceded her, Julián Castro, the mayor of San Antonio, was perfectly charming and perfectly forgettable: A minor league talent with some major league potential rather than a Democratic version of Chris Christie.

Indeed, it’s hard to find many Democratic versions of Christie in the lineup of speakers for this week. The Republican convention seemed drawn up to highlight the party’s deep bench and many rising stars. The primetime speakers were mostly figures who could well be competing to lead their party in 2016, 2020 or beyond: Christie, Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio and Susana Martinez, among others.

This week’s featured Democratic speakers, on the other hand, include a first-term mayor in Castro and a Senate candidate, Elizabeth Warren, who appears to be on the way to squandering her chance at reclaiming Ted Kennedy’s old seat. The party’s most plausible 2016 contenders will be conspicuously missing from the dais: Bill Clinton will speak, but his wife will not; Joe Biden will speak, but Andrew Cuomo will come and go in silence. In their absence, the convention’s primetime lineup seems designed to leave the impression that the Democratic Party has a past and a present, but not much of a future.

This is not necessarily a bad thing for the Obama campaign. The Republican convention showcased the party’s emerging leaders in part because there were limits to how full-throatedly its attendees were willing to celebrate the nominee himself. Speakers like Christie and Ryan labored to transfer some of their own credibility as conservative reformers to a nominee whose record still inspires little conservative enthusiasm. Speakers like Rubio and Martinez pitched themselves as leaders who could broaden the party’s appeal in future campaigns, rather than just following the Romney strategy of trying to eke out 51 percent. The result was a convention that felt entirely sincere in its criticism of the incumbent president, but somewhat half-hearted about the candidate it put forward to replace him.

There is no such half-heartededness in Charlotte. Democrats no longer swoon for their nominee in quite the way they did in 2008, but they still love him in a way that few Republicans love Mitt Romney. When Ann Romney spoke last week, she had the difficult job of trying to manufacture enthusiasm for her husband. When Michelle Obama spoke last night, the enthusiasm was already there: All she had to do was reach out to harness it. Times are tough and the road to re-election hard, but this is now the Obamas’ Democratic Party as much as the Republicans were Ronald Reagan’s party in the 1980s.

How much this passion for the president helps Democrats woo independent voters is an open question. Certainly the party’s message on policy, like the Republican message last week, seems aimed much more at base mobilization than at seizing any kind of center.

But after watching the first lady’s address, it does seem like an Obama-centric pageant may make for more effective prime-time propaganda than the somewhat fractured Republican presentation last week. To the extent that conventions are now mostly just three-night advertisements for the party’s nominee, the Democrats are off to a reasonably impressive start.

Even today, though, conventions are still a little more illuminating than that. The absence of Democratic rising stars in Charlotte isn’t just a clever propagandist’s move, designed to keep the spotlight on the president and only on the president. It also reflects certain hard realities for liberals.

Their party has had an extremely difficult time since its 2008 landslide. Their leaders haven’t figured out what liberalism should stand for in an age of budget cuts and fiscal cliffs. Their president is running for re-election on an agenda that’s longer on criticisms of the Republicans than on positive promises of what his party wants to do next. And even if a dynastic figure like Cuomo or Hillary emerges as their champion four years from now, this election season isn’t laying the groundwork for what that campaign would look like.

While the enthusiasm for the Obamas in Charlotte is unfeigned, there is a hint of anxiety behind it – an anxiety that was mostly absent among Republicans last week.

In Tampa, there was a palpable sense among the delegates that though Mitt Romney might not be all they could hope for in a nominee, their party’s future was looking unexpectedly bright.

Among Democrats, it’s the opposite: They’re all-in for President Obama in part because they’re afraid of waking up the morning after a November defeat with no real idea of where to turn for leadership, or where their party goes from there.