George and Dick’s most excellent adventure

City sidewalks, busy sidewalks, all crowded right there,
Pro-tes-tors, marching through the city.
See the police, on every corner,
All loaded to bear, listen on every street and you’ll hear.

Cheney/Bush, Cheney/Bush,
Cheney/Bush, Cheney/Bush!
Its convention time, in the city.
Hear them sing, Hear them sing.
Will Truncheons ring, truncheons ring!
Its convention time, in New York

Yes indeed, it used to be the greatest show on earth at Madison Square Gardens, was the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey circus, but not anymore. With George and Dick coming to town, the greatest show is unfolding on our television sets as America plays out its political differences in the Garden and out in the streets.

The news anchors are all primed and fluffed, ready to take to their studios high above the convention floor as the Republicans gather to nominate George and Dick to the party ticket and off to tackle the forces of the Liberal left, exemplified by the Swift Boat kid John Kerry.

Monday begins the really big show, in the city that never sleeps, but Sunday set the tone for what’s ahead. A march through the streets of Manhattan attracted between 100,000 and 400,000 participants (depending on which side you take your fact checking from) representing all stripes of American society. With Rev. Jesse Jackson in the front along with new Liberal media kingpin Michael Moore, the vociferous throng marched, chanted, sang and protested anything and everything Bush.

The march was steeped with some powerful imagery, none more so than flag draped coffins carried through the streets to symbolize dead servicemen from Iraq. Needless to say, the march received a heavy amount of media coverage as it wound its way around central New York.

Largely peaceful, the marchers snaked there away around a 40 block area before arriving at Central Park, a locale they had been apparently banned from. As they parked themselves in the Park, police did little to dissuade them, a small victory for the marchers over the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg.

Organizers have not tipped their hand as to their next move, but more protest marches are most likely on the agenda as the Republicans work their way to the Thursday night nomination and speeches.

The Republicans gather in New York buoyed by polls that show the President is starting to make a bit of a comeback in the numbers, his opponent John Kerry never really received a convention bounce and has remained one or two points ahead of the Bush/Cheney ticket ever since. Republicans are hoping that by Friday the Bush/Cheney message will drown out the chorus of condemnation currently echoing around the canyons of Manhattan.

The strategy of the Republicans is to portray Bush and Cheney as leaders in a time of crisis. Cheney hit on that point Sunday in a public appearance at Ellis Island, which is located directly across from where the World Trade Centre towers once stood.

Expect to hear no mention of the Swift boat material over the next four days, Bush hoping to distance himself from the controversial aspects of that issue, not to mention avoiding the controversial aspects of his own Vietnam era participation. Like a scab that hasn’t yet healed, the Vietnam years still haunt the US political process. As people pick at the edges of it, the painful times of the sixties and seventies begin to come to the surface again.

While the Republicans began to prepare their trip to New York, the Democrats have tried to turn the attention of the people onto the economy of late. A rather successful approach has been in the Democratic television ads aired in the last week or so, which have been focusing on a battered American economy which has been a largely unreported story with the war going on. The television commercial which features a recitation of declining economic indicators, suggesting the same old record, is a fairly powerful project that highlights just how much many Americans have suffered in the Bush/Cheney years. So far though, the factual nature of those ads and others has not had any real effect on the race.

As George and Dick prepare to make their pilgrimage to the RNC Big Top, the media superstars are pulling out all the stops. Peter, Dan, Tom, the CNN crews, the cheerleaders of Fox, the sober professionals at PBS, all are preparing themselves for comprehensive coverage. One little gem that Canadians will unfortunately not be privy to, will be a debate between the Fox News pit bull Bill O'Reilly and the quite cerebral Bono of U2 (who appears to be a convention junkie judging by his frequent appearances at these polfests)

Some of the networks are dedicating more attention to the proceedings than others. The major commercial networks don’t expect to spend as much time as past years following the minor details of convention life. Much like their coverage at the Democratic convention in July, they’ll follow the key speakers in Schwarzenegger and McCain. And of course when Rudy Giuliani takes to the stage for his address, Republicans will hail him as America’s mayor. Listen with careful attention to his speech and more carefully to the reaction to it, expect a wave of adulation as he wraps up his performance, Giuliani is still very much the hero from 9/11 and more than one Republican has suggested that a Bush/Giuliani ticket would be an unstoppable force in November. Combine the love for Rudy with a scathing indictment of all things Dick in Rolling Stone and somebody had best keep an eye on the current Veep when Rudy is talking!

While the big media players prepare their multi million dollar performers and polish up their studios, our relatively new public forum will get its beta test in New York. Like Boston, Bloggers will be in attendance at the convention, with the growing pains out of the way from Boston and a little less attention on the Bloggers themselves; we may see how our little method of communication will fare in a structured control fest such as the RNC convention.

While we won’t forsake the works of Pete, Tom, Dan and Larry et al. We look forward to a Post by Post description of all things political, both indoors and out, over the next four days.