July 29, 2004 | BOSTON -- The Democrats are walking a tightrope of anger management. Even the slightest murmur against Bush is depicted by the Republicans as blind rage, irrational raving and left wing. The Kerry campaign has correspondingly tamped down such displays. Bush's name goes unmentioned in major speeches from the podium. The rhetoric operates by inference and indirection; the audience is assumed to carry the story in its head. A few gestures and words are cues to a shared but unstated understanding. Bush is the invisible man at the convention.
John Edwards' acceptance speech for his vice presidential nomination on Wednesday night revealed the difficulties and perils of the balancing act. The surface seemed smooth, glistening and crystalline. Edwards' talent is that of the consummate lawyer making a summation to a jury of ordinary citizens. He rehearses until his long speech flows from him like a natural river. His particular skill in the primary campaign was to fashion a message of traditional Democratic economic and social grievance that manifested as a paean to optimism. Before the convention delegates, Edwards enveloped his tried-and-true "two Americas" speech with a tribute to Kerry's leadership qualities, incorporating them as new elements of brightness.
Edwards' manner is more that of the motivational speaker than the minister. He establishes through his personal autobiography that he is the common person he is addressing, creating a unity between himself and the crowd. His language is anecdotal but utterly unadorned. He makes no literary allusions. Unlike Bill Clinton, another Southerner, he borrows no references from biblical scripture. His talk is without political liturgy of any kind. It is stripped to plainness, a Protestant cross without any figure on it.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/07/29/invisible_bush/index.html
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