Garance Franke-Ruta

The Republican presidential candidate joined the former president in New York to extol the power of free trade and private investment to defang radicalism abroad.

NEW YORK -- It was definitely one of the stranger moments in Campaign 2012. Bill Clinton, the man who more than any other helped turn the presidential contest away from Mitt Romney, welcomed him on the stage Tuesday morning at the Sheraton New York Hotel for his annual Clinton Global Initiative conference, where Romney was the featured morning speaker.

Was it going to be a set-up? And if so, for whom? Was Romney going to make a dig at President Obama at the conference hosted by the Big Dog himself? Or would Clinton deftly use the appearance to create a contrast between the former governor and the president, as well as media anticipation for his own moment on the stage with Romney? In many ways, it seemed a natural audience for Romney -- the wealthy former corporate leader, come to talk to a community of his own -- and the appearance drew so many members of the New York and national press the ballroom reached capacity and spilled out into overflow press rooms.

In the end, it turned out not to be that awkward. The wizened, lean, former president, a few inches shorter than Romney, warmly welcomed the robust former Massachusetts governor, barely a year his junior, thanking him for his support for the nonprofit City Year program, a public-private partnership that began in Boston and which the Clinton Administration used in the early 1990s as a model for the national AmeriCorps youth service program.

Calling Clinton's introduction "very touching," Romney quipped: "If there's one thing we've learned in this election season, by the way, it is that a few words from Bill Clinton can do a man a lot of good."

The audience laughed appreciatively.

"All I gotta do now is wait a couple of days for that bounce to happen," Romney continued. "... One of the best things that can happen to any cause, to any people, is to have Bill Clinton as its advocate."

Romney's remarks hit three major points. The main one, and most obvious reason for his appearance, was a discussion of how to do public-private aid ventures in the third world through something he called "Prosperity Pacts." It sounded in many ways like Romney's prescription for the U.S. economy -- free enterprise and free markets and private investment would all lead to job creation overseas, he said, strengthening developing nations. Along with humanitarian aid and the pursuit of strategic diplomatic and military interests, it was the major justification for U.S. foreign assistance, Romney said.

The heart of his remarks was a paean to the power of work to defang fanaticism, especially in the Middle East, where, he said, youth unemployment was a major problem:

Work has to be at the heart of our efforts to help people build economies that can create jobs, young and old alike. Work builds self-esteem. It transforms minds from fantasy and fanaticism to reality and grounding. Work does not long tolerate corruption nor will it quietly endure the brazen theft by government of the product of hard-working men and women. To foster work and enterprise in the Middle East and other developing countries I will initiate something I will call Prosperity Pacts, working with the private sector the program will identify the barriers to investment and trade and entrepreneurship and entrepreneurialism in developing nations. And, in exchange for removing those barriers and opening their markets to U.S. investment and trade, developing nations will receive U.S. assistance packages focused on developing the institutions of liberty, the rule of law, and property rights ....

The aim of a much larger share of our aid must be the promotion of work, and the fostering of free enterprise. Nothing we can do as a nation will change lives and nations more effectively and permanently than sharing the insight that lies at the foundation of America's own economy, and that is that free people pursuing happiness in their own ways, build a strong and prosperous nation.

Romney also found time to zing Obama on his handling of the tumult in the Middle East, saying that America has found itself "at the mercy of events rather than shaping events."

"A lot of Americans, including myself, are ... troubled by developments in the Middle East," he said, listing four examples: "Syria has witnessed the killing of tens of thousands of people. The president of Egypt is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Our ambassador to Libya was assassinated in a terrorist attack. Iran is moving towards nuclear-weapons capability."

The administration had hesitated to call the attack a terrorist one.

And Romney appeared to be walking away from an analysis of the causes of difference between nations that had been a part of his stump speech since at least 2007. That take got him into trouble during a visit to Israel this summer, when he attributed Israel's economic strength when compared to Palestinian Authority-governed areas to its culture, offending some Palestinian leaders. Romney's new version of his historic riff also excised references to authors Jared Diamond and David Landes, whom Romney had been citing for years as the source of his thinking on the comparative wealth of nations; Diamond objected to Romney's interpretation of his work in August, writing in a New York Times piece that Romney "misrepresented my views." Said Romney in New York:

When I was in business, I traveled to a number of other countries. I was often struck by the vast difference in wealth among nations that were sometimes neighbors. Some of that was of course due to geography. Rich nations often had natural resources like mineral deposits or access to waterways for transportation. But in some case, all that seemed to separate a rich country from a more poor one was a faint line on the map. Countries that were physically right next door to each other were in some cases economically worlds apart. You can think of North Korea and South Korea. I became convinced that the critical difference between these countries wasn't geography. I noticed that the most successful countries shared something in common: They were the freest. They protected the rights of individuals. They enforced the rule of law. They encouraged trade and enterprise. They understood that economic freedom is the only force in history that has consistently lifted people out of poverty, and kept people out of poverty.

Wrapping his remarks, Romney took a swipe at Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who'd appeared at the United Nations just across town on Monday and raised hackles by saying that Israel would be "eliminated" in the long run because it lacked the regional roots in the Middle East that Iran has.

"We should not forget, we cannot forget, that not far from here a voice of unspeakable evil and hatred has spoken out, threatening Israel and the entire civilized world," Romney said. "But we come together knowing that the bitterness of hate is no match for the strength of love."

And with that, and a bit of boilerplate, Romney concluded.

Clinton shook Romney's hand. The governor left the stage. Clinton turned back to the podium, saying to the audience flatly, "Thank you, governor." He looked down at the podium and shuffled his notes.

Obama's post-convention bounce showed what could happen if the national campaigns addressed the entire nation as a matter of course.

Detail from "The Apotheosis of Washington," U.S. Capitol rotunda (GreatSeal.com)

One of the less outrage-generating turns of phrase in Mitt Romney's secretly recorded May remarks in Boca Raton involved his campaign's state-by-state strategy.

"Florida will be one of those states that is the key state," he told the assembled big-dollar donors at the fundraiser. "And so all the money will get spent in 10 states, and this is one of them."

It's a remark that's gotten almost no attention, because it fits so perfectly with the conventional wisdom of this election cycle: Only nine or 10 key swing states matter. "The 2012 election is likely to go down in history as the one in which the most money was spent reaching the fewest people," the New York Times' Jeremy Peters aptly summarized the campaigns' approach in June, discussing their effort "to reach just 1.4 million registered voters" in nine states.

But as anyone with any sense of American media today knows, this is not how culture and opinion get created in a massive, populous, and networked country. Sure, if you want to sell regional futon ads, you go to your local community paper or alternative weekly. But if you want to promote a major cultural happening, you make damn sure thought leaders in the major creative capitals of the country buy in to what is going on.

The American people may be separated by geography, but they're not nearly as isolated from each others' opinions as they were even a dozen years ago. They have Facebook friends across the country, even the world. Social sharing and online video sites mean that nothing stays isolated for long, and the distinctive worldviews of specific micro-communities can crash against wildly different ones with shocking rapidity. That's what happened when a group of mysterious filmmakers in California put together an anti-Muslim flim clip -- which went on to roil the Middle East once it was translated and shared online in Egypt and elsewhere. Negative local news stories become national and even international ones with a speed and power that have upended the old rules of politics. This has been going on a while now.

The opinion-creation complex goes the other way, too. Many of those who read newspapers read the Washington Post and the New York Times online rather than their faded regional publications; the vast majority of online news audiences for these major publications lives outside the traditional geographic boundaries of the papers. "The Washington Post circulates in print only around Washington, D.C., but way over 90 percent -- I think over 95 percent of our Internet audience is outside Washington, D.C.," Washington Post Company CEO Donald Graham told a technology conference in July.

Obama can move his base from Washington, the Pew Forum on Religious Life found in August. While there was little evidence that the president was able to change public opinion around the country by coming out for gay marriage, there was a strong suggestion in the polling data that he was able to move Democrats since announcing his newly "evolved" position in May:

Obama's announcement may have rallied the Democratic base -- particularly liberal Democrats -- to the issue. Democrats supported gay marriage by a 59% to 31% margin in April -- that stands at 65% to 29% today. Most of this shift has come among liberal Democrats, 83% of whom now support gay marriage, up from 73% earlier this year. Attitudes have not shifted among any other segment of the public following Obama's announcement ....

Similarly, the well-programmed three-day Democratic National Convention in Charlotte earlier this month seems to have taken care of the Democrats' problem with its base, successfully firing up the rank-and-file. Nate Silver reported that polls since the convention show a decline in the enthusiasm gap between the parties. As the Daily Caller described a Fox News poll showing the same:

Asked in August how important it was that the candidate they supported won the election, 64 percent of Romney supporters called it extremely important, compared to just 54 percent of Obama supporters. Thirty-seven percent of Obama supporters called it "very important," as did 28 percent of Romney supporters. Ads by Google

But in the days following the convention -- Fox News polled from Sept. 9 through Sept. 11 -- 62 percent of Obama supporters said it was "extremely important" that the president be re-elected. The percentage of Romney supporters saying his victory was "extremely important" didn't budge.

The latest numbers suggest that Obama supporters were excited enough by the Democratic convention to help close the enthusiasm gap that has existed for several months.

It sounds obvious to say it, but Obama's blue-state base can be reached through blue-state communications channels. His base is the people who live in cities and who live in cultural communities that talk to each other, Chicago to New York to Charlotte to Miami to Los Angeles. And its enthusiasm can be infectious, transforming the narrative of the contest. If Obama can call his one-time supporters off the sidelines in blue states, and get them donating and chattering and creating free media and signing up to volunteer at near 2008 levels, he can change perceptions of his candidacy in purple states -- and even red ones. Romney could benefit as well from targeting blue voters in blue states -- because if he can get some of them on his side, he can use their cultural power to woo that central, centrist 5 to 10 percent he needs to win and which has continued to elude him.

But it means recognizing that we are not a conservative America and a liberal America, but a United States of America. Obama knew that in 2004. He knew it in 2008.

But this year, somehow, neither side of the aisle seems to remember.

At Harvard Law School, the first black editor of the law review struggled with what he called "frustrating" arguments about language.

PBS's "Frontline" news show is previewing a series on Barack Obama and Mitt Romney online right now, and as part of that posting what they're calling "'The Artifacts of Character,' a series of rarely seen objects that elucidate key moments and experiences in the candidates' lives." One fascinating entry is a 1994 speech by the then-young attorney Obama on the importance of community organizing. The whole thing is worth a read, but this passage -- about political correctness and editing -- in particular will seem familiar to anyone who has worked at a university publication in the past 20 years:

I know that at Harvard, one of the most frustrating things about student life at Harvard was, I guess, what's called political correctness in the media. Now political correctness, I tend not to -- I tend not to be that sympathetic to people who cry about political correctness and complain about, you know, the liberals and the minorities who are giving conservatives a hard time. You know, I think that there's nothing wrong with giving somebody a hard time if they're being insensitive to other people's feelings, if they're being rude, if they're telling racist jokes, if they're telling sexist jokes. I don't think that there is anything wrong with telling them where they're wrong.

But I do think that what's happened in a place like Harvard and maybe happens less so here, is that young people tend to jump with both feet on a whole lot of symbolic issues. I remember when I was organizing at Harvard, when I was the manager of the Law Review at Harvard, I had a young black woman come in to me and complain vehemently about the fact that the word "black" was not capitalized in an article. Whereas she felt that "black" should be capitalized because that would show more respect for the black community.

And then, you know, a white editor came in. He started complaining, "Why should black be capitalized when white is not capitalized?" Now this seems like a ridiculous argument, but this is the kind of thing that a lot of students, groups, a lot of well-meaning idealists spend their time on. I think there are a lot of academics that spend their time on it. I'm not sure that's really useful. I think it's a matter of symbols and not substance. And I think it indicates our willingness to try to, instead of making the sacrifices that are required to really bring about changes, I think it's an indication of our sense of powerlessness, that we just complain about things, that we pick at small issues, instead of taking on and really engaging the major issues that face our country right now.

When people can speak and assemble as they choose, anything can happen -- in our country, and in others.

So let me get this straight: A washed up softcore porn director and an Egyptian Coptic Christian emigre on probation for financial crimes after becoming a federal informant put together a movie trailer in California that gets translated into Arabic, sparking a firestorm of anti-Western protests in more than a dozen nations and leading to the death of a U.S. Ambassador and two former Navy Seals, as well as widespread assaults on U.S. embassies, all the while the election to be the most powerful man in the world hangs in the balance. And the film is initially blamed on the Jews.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

The big questions that remain: Who put up the money for the movie? And how does the U.S. get out of this mess?

Updated 3:53 p.m.

If you weren't following this story closely as it developed over the past day and woke to news of the murder of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya and a group of swirling charges around the U.S. response to September 11 protests against the U.S. Embassy in Cairo and the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, here's who said what and when (all times are Eastern Standard):

7/1/12. Self-described California real-estate developer and self-described Israeli Jew Sam Bacile releases a 13-minute trailer for "The Real Life of Muhammad," an amateurishly produced anti-Islam movie allegedly made with donations from 100 Jews. (Serious questions have been raised about details of Bacile's identity as he has described it to reporters, as well as whether there is any full length film at all.)

9/9/12. The Grand Mufti of Egypt, Ali Gomaa, condemns the film, word of which has reached Cairo, pointing a finger at "the actions undertaken by some extremist Copts who made a film offensive to the Prophet." Coptic Christians are the largest religious minority in Egypt, and American Coptic activist Morris Sadek was involved in promoting the film, which shows Christians being attacked by Muslims. "The attack on religious sanctities does not fall under this freedom," he said of freedom of speech, according to reports in English-language Arab media outlets.

9/10/12. Florida Rev. Terry Jones releases a YouTube announcing he'll screen Bacile's anti-Islam trailer as part of turning the anniversary of the terrorist attacks on America into "International Judge Mohammad 'Mo' Day."

In June, Jones hanged Obama in effigy at his Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, leading to a Secret Service investigation. He's best known for his threat to burn Korans to mark the Sept. 11 anniversary, which sparked protests in Afghanistan in 2010 and led Gen. David Petraeus to warn ABC News that Jones's plan could "endanger troops and it could endanger the overall effort here," and then burning a Koran in 2011, leading to riots in Afghanistan.

5:53 a.m., 9/11/12. Shortly before noon local time, @USEmbassyCairo tweets: "Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy," according to a screenshot captured by @NYCSouthpaw.

6:11 a.m., 9/11/12. @USEmbassyCairo tweets: "US Embassy condemns religious incitement" with a link to a statement, according to another @NYCSouthpaw screenshot. The statement "U.S. Embassy Condemns Religious Incitement" was posted on the Embassy of the United States Cairo, Egypt website in response to Egyptian media accounts of the film, though without a specific time-stamp:

The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims -- as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions. Today, the 11th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States, Americans are honoring our patriots and those who serve our nation as the fitting response to the enemies of democracy. Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy. We firmly reject the actions by those who abuse the universal right of free speech to hurt the religious beliefs of others.

Selected sentences from the statement were also tweeted out by embassy staff.

11 a.m. 9/11/12. At 5 p.m. local time in Cairo, demonstrators begin to assemble outside the U.S. Embassy. According to an Egyptian newspaper, "Roughly 2000 Salafist activists answered a call on Tuesday by Wesam Abdel-Wareth, a Salafist leader and president of Egypt's Hekma television channel, to protest 'Muhammad's Trial' - a US-made film which, critics say, insults Islam's Prophet Mohammed - at 5pm in front of the US embassy in Cairo." (h/t Matt Vasilogambros) According to the New York Times:

In Cairo, thousands of unarmed protesters had gathered outside the American embassy during the day. By nightfall, some had climbed over the wall around the embassy compound and destroyed a flag hanging inside. The vandals replaced it with a black flag favored by ultraconservatives and militants and labeled with the most basic Islamic profession of faith: "There is no god but God, and Muhammad is his prophet." Embassy guards fired guns into the air, but a large contingent of Egyptian riot police officers on hand to protect the embassy evidently did not use their weapons against the crowd, and the protest continued, largely without violence, into the night.

4:47 p.m., 9/11/12. @USEmbassyCairo tweets: "As Spokesperson Nuland said, protestors breached our wall and took down flag. Thanks for your concern and kind wishes."

5:58-59 p.m., 9/11/12. @USEmbassyCairo tweets in three parts: "1) Thank you for your thoughts and prayers. 2) Of course we condemn breaches of our compound, we're the ones actually living through this. 3) Sorry, but neither breaches of our compound or angry messages will dissuade us from defending freedom of speech AND criticizing bigotry."

6 p.m., 9/11/12. Stand Up America Now begins a livestream of Jones' anti-Muslim presentation online.

6:30 p.m., 9/11/12. @USEmbassyCairo tweets: "This morning's condemnation (issued before protests began) still stands. As does condemnation of unjustified breach of the Embassy." This tweet is later deleted.

7:51 p.m., 9/11/12. Reuters, citing Libyan government sources, reports "An American staff member of the U.S. consulate in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi has died following fierce clashes at the compound."

10:09 p.m., 9/11/12. The Romney campaign releases a statement "embargoed until midnight tonight" from Mitt Romney condemning the administration and the attacks: "I'm outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It's disgraceful that the Obama Administration's first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks." The U.S. Embassy statement from Cairo was issued before the attack in Libya.

10:10 p.m. 9/11/12 Politico cites an unnamed administration official saying, "The statement by Embassy Cairo was not cleared by Washington and does not reflect the views of the United States government."

10:25 p.m., 9/11/12.The Romney campaign lifts the embargo on its statement, which now comes on a day historically seen as a time to refrain from the most pointed forms of political combat, in honor of those who died.

10:38-39 p.m., 9/11/12. @StateDept tweets: " #SecClinton: I condemn in the strongest terms the attack on our mission in Benghazi today. http://state.gov #Libya" and "#SecClinton: We have confirmed one @StateDept officer was killed in #Libya. We are heartbroken by this terrible loss." Hillary Clinton issues a statement, saying, "I condemn in the strongest terms the attack on our mission in Benghazi today. As we work to secure our personnel and facilities, we have confirmed that one of our State Department officers was killed. We are heartbroken by this terrible loss. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and those who have suffered in this attack." She adds: "Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind."

11:51 p.m., 9/11/12. BuzzFeed reports that the U.S. Embassy in Cairo has deleted its earlier tweets of the statement that remains on the embassy website.

12:01 am, 9/12/12.: The chairman of the Republican National Committee waits until one minute after the end of the anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks, then tweets:

Obama sympathizes with attackers in Egypt.Sad and pathetic.

— Reince Priebus (@Reince) September 12, 2012

12:09 a.m., 9/12/12. Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt emails reporters a response to Romney's statement: "We are shocked that, at a time when the United States of America is confronting the tragic death of one of our diplomatic officers in Libya, Governor Romney would choose to launch a political attack."

7:21 a.m., 9/12/12. President Obama condemns the attacks in Libya, confirming that the U.S. ambassador was slain:

I strongly condemn the outrageous attack on our diplomatic facility in Benghazi, which took the lives of four Americans, including Ambassador Chris Stevens. Right now, the American people have the families of those we lost in our thoughts and prayers. They exemplified America's commitment to freedom, justice, and partnership with nations and people around the globe, and stand in stark contrast to those who callously took their lives.

I have directed my Administration to provide all necessary resources to support the security of our personnel in Libya, and to increase security at our diplomatic posts around the globe. While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants.

On a personal note, Chris was a courageous and exemplary representative of the United States. Throughout the Libyan revolution, he selflessly served our country and the Libyan people at our mission in Benghazi. As Ambassador in Tripoli, he has supported Libya's transition to democracy. His legacy will endure wherever human beings reach for liberty and justice. I am profoundly grateful for his service to my Administration, and deeply saddened by this loss.

The brave Americans we lost represent the extraordinary service and sacrifices that our civilians make every day around the globe. As we stand united with their families, let us now redouble our own efforts to carry their work forward.

9:57-10:05 a.m., 9/12/12. Saying "our hearts break" over each State Department loss, Hillary Clinton said in remarks at the department, "We condemn in the strongest terms this senseless act of violence." "Because of this tragedy we have new heroes to honor and more friends to mourn," she said, later asking the question that will be on many minds today: "How could this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we helped save from destruction?" It was, she said, "confounding." But we must be "clear-eyed in our grief," she said: "This was an attack by a small and savage group, not the people or government of Libya." Defending the American traditions of religious tolerance and free speech, she added: "Let me be clear: There is no justification for this. None." Full Clinton statement.

10:16, 9/12/12. Mitt Romney speaks from Jacksonville, Florida, calling the attacks in Libya "outrageous and disgusting" but doubling down on his criticism of the Obama administration for the U.S. Embassy to Egypt statement, saying it "sent mixed messages to the world." "I think it's a terrible course for America to stand in apology for our values," Romney said. Full Romney remarks.

9/12/12. Obama speaks from Washington, D.C., with Secretary Clinton by his side. "The United States condemns in the strongest terms this outrageous and shocking attack," Obama said. "We're working with the government of Libya to secure our diplomats. I've also directed my administration to increase our security at diplomatic posts around the world. And make no mistake, we will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the killers who attacked our people." He affirmed that, "Since our founding, the United States has been a nation that respects all faiths. We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others." And he echoed Clinton's remarks, saying, "There is absolutely no justification for this type of senseless violence. None."

Full Obama statement.

As Twitter exploded last night with talk about this extraordinary New York Times Op-Ed detailing how "The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001," The Washington Post's Dan Eggen tweeted at TNR's Alec MacGillis a reminder of Rudy Giuliani's #headdesking statement on Jan. 8, 2010: "We had no domestic attacks under Bush. We've had one under Obama."

That got me thinking about the old Rudy G., in his "America's Mayor" incarnation, when his steady leadership of a grieving, rattled city made him a hero to New Yorkers -- and the nation. I was too busy working on 9/11 -- standing around at the edge of Lafayette Square in D.C. with a bunch of evacuated White House staffers and members of the press, waiting for something to happen, then running down rumors of attack sites within the city while smoke rose in the distance from the Pentagon hit -- to see Giuliani's news conferences or much television that day. And in that pre-YouTube era, what you missed on live TV was pretty much gone unless someone replayed it. But his earliest remarks are all on YouTube now, and show his extraordinary steadiness on that day. Worth a watch if you have the time.

9:50 a.m., Sept. 11, 2001:

2:38 p.m.

Full afternoon news conference, part 1:

Part 2:

10 p.m.

There are some people who have personalities that make them shine during tough times, but who are too tough for softer ones. New York was lucky it had one of them at the helm when it needed it most.

The president's solid but not wildly uplifting speech in Charlotte provided a glimpse into how he's changed since he took office.

CHARLOTTE -- Barack Obama will never be that man again. Whoever he was in 2008, and 2004, Barack Obama will never have his easy swagger and rambunctiously playful enthusiasm. "I recognize that times have changed since I first spoke to this convention," Obama told the thickly-packed crowd at the Time Warner Arena. "The times have changed -- and so have I."

That is the truth at the core of his oddly flat convention speech, and at the center of his technically skilled but strangely bloodless reelection campaign. Whoever Obama was when he was elected president has been seared away by two active wars, the more free-ranging fight against al-Qaeda, the worst economic crash since the Great Depression, and the endless grinding fights with Washington Republicans -- and even, I am sure, activists in his own party.

"I'm no longer just a candidate. I'm the president," the president said in the later half of his speech, to enormous applause. "And that means I know what it means to send young Americans into battle, for I have held in my arms the mothers and fathers of those who didn't return. I've shared the pain of families who've lost their homes, and the frustration of workers who've lost their jobs. If the critics are right that I've made all my decisions based on polls, then I must not be very good at reading them. And while I'm proud of what we've achieved together, I'm far more mindful of my own failings, knowing exactly what Lincoln meant when he said, 'I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I had no place else to go.'"

It was, perhaps, the most personal passage in speech otherwise heavy on policy promises and talk of past accomplishments and the long road ahead. It was a substantive speech, but so substantive it at times seemed like the sort of thing he could give before an audience of interested experts at the Brookings Institution, rather than something designed to motivate voters to the polls (even as it explicitly asked for their vote).

"As I stand here tonight, I have never been more hopeful about America," Obama said. "Not because I think I have all the answers. Not because I'm naïve about the magnitude of our challenges. I'm hopeful because of you."

But he didn't sound hopeful. He sounded worn out, maybe a little sad, keenly aware of all that was undone, singed by the clamorous voices of an America in need and the devastating toll of two wars on troops whose injuries he, as commander-in-chief, can too clearly see. Rather than the bearer of hopes, he sounded like a man looking for reasons to hope.

"I think about the young sailor I met at Walter Reed hospital, still recovering from a grenade attack that would cause him to have his leg amputated above the knee. Six months ago, we would watch him walk into a White House dinner honoring those who served in Iraq, tall and 20 pounds heavier, dashing in his uniform, with a big grin on his face; sturdy on his new leg. And I remember how a few months after that I would watch him on a bicycle, racing with his fellow wounded warriors on a sparkling spring day, inspiring other heroes who had just begun the hard path he had traveled," Obama said.

"He gives me hope. He gives me hope."

Obama rode into office as an anti-war president. But tonight, on stage, he was very much a war president.

And if anything came through in his remarks, it is that he is also a war-weary one. The civilian head of the U.S. military, Obama has had a window into all the death and destruction we hear measured out -- and much that we will never know of.

"In a world of new threats and new challenges, you can choose leadership that has been tested and proven," Obama said, in the passage in his speech that first saw a glint of energy. "Four years ago, I promised to end the war in Iraq. We did. I promised to refocus on the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11. And we have. We've blunted the Taliban's momentum in Afghanistan, and in 2014, our longest war will be over. A new tower rises above the New York skyline, al-Qaeda is on the path to defeat, and Osama bin Laden is dead."

Think about what he's seen since the heady days of "Yes We Can" that is packed into that one paragraph.

"We have a choice," the president added later. "My opponent and his running mate are new to foreign policy, but from all that we've seen and heard, they want to take us back to an era of blustering and blundering that cost America so dearly."

It was in the foreign-policy section of the speech that he seemed most to come alive, beginning to riff from his prepared remarks and seemingly enjoying tweaking his opponent.

"You don't call Russia our number one enemy -- and not al-Qaeda -- unless you're still stuck in a Cold War mind warp. You might not be ready for diplomacy with Beijing if you can't visit the Olympics without insulting our closest ally. My opponent said it was 'tragic' to end the war in Iraq, and he won't tell us how he'll end the war in Afghanistan. Well I have, and I will," said Obama.

"And while my opponent would spend more money on military hardware that our Joint Chiefs don't even want, I'll use the money we're no longer spending on war to pay down our debt and put more people back to work -- rebuilding roads and bridges; and schools and runways. After two wars that have cost us thousands of lives and over a trillion dollars, it's time to do some nation-building right here at home."

If it was a familiar argument -- the 2003-2004 Democratic primary presidential contest talking about nation-building beginning at home quite a bit -- it is in part because we have been embroiled in war now for so very long.

On the final night of a well-orchestrated, but far from flawless, nominating convention, Obama did not bring the noise. He brought himself. Not a candidate, but a president -- for good and for ill.

The Massachusetts Senate candidate answers Republicans' refrain of success with a plea for fairness.

CHARLOTTE -- Is there anything people will remember about Wednesday night at the 2012 DNC other than Bill Clinton's 48-minute stem-winder repudiating the Republican economic record of the past three decades and the Romney-Ryan campaign's attacks on Barack Obama, while revealing to all concerned that he is the referee in the American political system that Democrats have been dying for the media to become?

Maybe not. But before Clinton came out, Massachusetts' Democratic candidate for Senate Elizabeth Warren spoke. She was the one of only two speakers during the pre-Clinton heart of the evening to put some fire into the crowd, following a parade of mid-Atlantic elected officials who proved their region to be home to some of the most moderated and low-key voices in the contemporary Democratic Party; several overmatched Big Box business leaders who tried gamely to get a rise from the crowd; a group of "real people" who spoke with a typical mix of passion and awkwardness; and birth-control funding advocate Sandra Fluke.

But speak Warren did, a mix of grandmotherly concern and rounded Oklahoma vowels on a night whose broad themes appeared to be the white-working class and women voters.

"People feel like the system is rigged against them. And here's the painful part: they're right. The system is rigged," she said. "Look around. Oil companies guzzle down billions in subsidies. Billionaires pay lower tax rates than their secretaries. Wall Street CEOs -- the same ones who wrecked our economy and destroyed millions of jobs -- still strut around Congress, no shame, demanding favors, and acting like we should thank them. Anyone here have a problem with that? Well I do."

Proving the advantage of having your party's convention come second, she responded directly to the theme of success laid out again and again in Tampa.

"These folks don't resent that someone else makes more money. We're Americans. We celebrate success," she said. However, she continued in her folksy way: "We just don't want the game to be rigged."

And she echoed what's clearly a theme of this convention as much as the invocation of "forward": the idea that this race is about who we are in America, and that our very identity is at stake in it.

Thanks to progressives, "We started to take children out of factories and put them in schools. We began to give meaning to the words 'consumer protection' by making our food and medicine safe. And we gave the little guys a better chance to compete by preventing the big guys from rigging the markets. We turned adversity into progress because that's what we do."

It was a speech that worked well on a night that, before Bill Clinton, was a bit of a snooze. But it turns out that Clinton isn't just a tough act to follow -- he's a tough act to share any part of an evening with, so thoroughly does he dominate the stage.

First Lady Michelle Obama delicately eviscerated the Romney family in a thunderously well-received convention speech.

CHARLOTTE -- Combining the star wattage of a wildly popular first lady, the skills of a now-seasoned political pro, and the carefully curated stories of real people, Michelle Obama on Tuesday knocked it out of the park during her Democratic National Convention speech.

Those who are fans of the first lady will doubtless spend the next few days dissecting her patterned silk Tracy Reese frock, or her very high pink heels, or how she made them feel.

But the first lady is no Barbie doll.

What she is is a Harvard Law School-educated attorney playing dress up in America's most old-fashioned White House position. She took the stage on the exceedingly well-programmed opening night of a political convention designed to reelect her husband -- and used the opportunity to deliver a series of devastating contrasts with the Romney family and policy agenda, cloaked in the bromides of wifely love.

Her description of her youth seemed a calculated effort to paint a contrast with the young Romney family Ann Romney sketched out last week.

You see, even though back then Barack was a Senator and a presidential candidate ... to me, he was still the guy who'd picked me up for our dates in a car that was so rusted out, I could actually see the pavement going by through a hole in the passenger side door ... he was the guy whose proudest possession was a coffee table he'd found in a dumpster, and whose only pair of decent shoes was half a size too small.

But when Barack started telling me about his family -- that's when I knew I had found a kindred spirit, someone whose values and upbringing were so much like mine.

Her discussion of her father working vigorously to put her through college despite his multiple sclerosis seemed a subtle but clear reminder that Ann Romney took up horseback riding as therapy for hers:

My father was a pump operator at the city water plant, and he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis when my brother and I were young.

And even as a kid, I knew there were plenty of days when he was in pain ... I knew there were plenty of mornings when it was a struggle for him to simply get out of bed.

But every morning, I watched my father wake up with a smile, grab his walker, prop himself up against the bathroom sink, and slowly shave and button his uniform.

Her comments about the values her parents taught her were greeted by the audience as a direct jab to the Romney-Ryan distortions of the Obama Administration's welfare and entitlement policies, which have been described by some as "factual shortcuts."

We learned about honesty and integrity -- that the truth matters ... that you don't take shortcuts or play by your own set of rules ... and success doesn't count unless you earn it fair and square.

And her repeated refrain "that's who we are" seemed a distinct effort to undermine the argument that Mitt Romney can be trusted with the presidency, because of what his shifting positions reveal about his character:

Those are the values Barack and I -- and so many of you -- are trying to pass on to our own children.

That's who we are.

And standing before you four years ago, I knew that I didn't want any of that to change if Barack became president.

Well, today, after so many struggles and triumphs and moments that have tested my husband in ways I never could have imagined, I have seen firsthand that being president doesn't change who you are -- it reveals who you are.

Tonight, Michelle Obama reminded that she hasn't just been growing vegetables in the White House garden -- she's been sharpening her political skills, too.

Headline courtesy of @gettingsome.

He beat Mitt Romney in a head-to-head contest. Democrats take heart from the late senator's words.

CHARLOTTE -- There's no enthusiasm gap at this Democratic convention when it comes to the cheering sections on the floor. In a pretty effective warm-up act on the opening night of the convention in North Carolina, the party aired a tribute to late Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy that really got the crowd going when it featured clips of Kennedy ripping into one Mitt Romney during a 1994 debate when Romney was challenging Kennedy for a U.S. Senate seat from Massachusetts. The Romney-Kennedy section starts 1:44 minutes in.

"I believe abortion should be safe and legal in this country," says Romney in the clip.

Kennedy's get the crowd going response: "I am pro-choice. My opponent is multiple choice."

Away from the political spotlight, voters and nonvoters eke out livings along the still-depressed I-4 corridor in Florida. Can anyone win their hearts?

LAKELAND, FLA. -- When Mitt Romney went to the airport here the morning after his convention speech, he asked Republicans to find Obama voters and try to persuade them to switch their votes.

But in talking to shoppers in this impoverished suburban community and others along the politically significant I-4 corridor later in the day, it was clear why both campaigns so far have pursued a base-turnout strategy instead of one to broaden their reach: Neither has successfully made a compelling case for being able to fix the economic problems that have devastated communities like those in this part of Florida.

That joint failure has made more narrowly targeted appeals based on specific beliefs, cultural identity, and race and ethnicity stand out more.

Rebecca Simmons, 34, a part-time certified nursing assistant, was shopping at Walmart just outside of central Lakeland Friday afternoon. Obama was the only person she's ever voted for, she said, and she had no plans to vote for him again.

The economy "sucks," she said bluntly. "People at my work are actually crying when they go home because they can't pay their bills." She and her husband and 17-year-old son -- who has been held back so many times he's just now starting 10th grade, making her worry he'll never finish because "ain't no kid want to be in high school and be 21" -- are "barely holding on."

Obama promised change, but all she's seen in the past few years economically is that "it's getting worse."

"I don't feel like it matters who is up in there," she said, waving her hand in disgust at the idea of Washington.

Florida's unemployment rate in July was 8.8 percent -- down from 9.4 percent as recently as February -- but that substantially underestimates the extent of its problems. Local politicians have tried to put a game face on the state's economy. "Our state is doing extremely well," Republican Governor Rick Scott boasted recently. "We still have 800,000 people out of work, but we're changing it. Tourism is way up, jobs are up, housing prices are staying stable. If you want to buy a house, now is the time."

The overly positive talk has been going on for a while. In 2010, Lakeland ranked number five in the nation in suburban poverty, according to a report from the Brookings Institution, and even though Florida officials predicted that would improve quickly, not much has changed since.

According to the U.S. Census, per capita income in Polk County, which contains Lakeland, was $21,881 in 2010, and 15.2 percent of the population - which is 80 percent white - lived below the federal poverty line.

"We're not even voting, because there's so many crooks now in politics," an older man missing his front teeth waved me off when I approached him to chat about the economy outside the Lakeland Walmart.

Eighty-four-year old Nathaniel Horton was more forthcoming. He'd already voted early and for Obama. "I don't like no Republican," he said, based on his experiences growing up black in the deep South. But Obama "could lose" this time, he said, thanks to the economy. "It's bad. People ain't got no jobs, can't work," said his wife Nancy Horton.

Outside the Hobby Lobby, retired nurse Lizander Izsak, 64, a Jewish former McCain supporter and Canadian immigrant who recently became a citizen but has not registered to vote, said she'd go with Obama this fall if she could get on the rolls in time. In 2008, "I didn't think he was knowledgeable enough. He didn't have enough behind him," she said. "Now I think Romney is in the same position."

The local economy is "terrible," she said. "It's not better" than four years ago. "I think the housing market is coming back," she said, "but a lot of people are losing their jobs, being foreclosed on" still. The malls have emptied out as businesses in them failed, and at least three restaurants in her community shut down. The Hobby Lobby where she bought artificial flowers was relatively new, a sign of life in a big space that had gone vacant, she explained. Her son, who lives in Maryland, hasn't had a raise in three years but she tells him, "Don't complain, you've got benefits."

At 27, Lakeland's Christopher Gunter, an unemployed "disabled American" and father of two, said he was looking forward to voting for the first time but still "trying to figure out what campaign is with who." He'd tried to watch the final night of the Republican National Convention on television, but by the time Romney came on the channel his wife "had done changed it." He'd absorbed the messages from the political ads, though, saying as far as he could make out Romney shipped jobs overseas and Obama was "more for the middle class." "I think in politics the truth should always be known," he said, elaborating that he meant "whether they're in politics to benefit for their own or to benefit for all of us."

"I'm for the person for the middle class," he said. Meanwhile the debate over Medicare was confusing, because he was having trouble sorting out if cutting Medicare to pay for Obamacare was worth it because "I don't know what Obamacare is about."

Further down the I-4 corridor in Kissimmee in Osceola County, where Obama held a 35,000-person rally with Bill Clinton in the waning days of the 2008 race before winning the state outright, things were no better. "His big platform was change and the things that have changed have not benefited the middle class," said Sharon Lanier, 63, the owner of an antiques shop in the historic downtown area for the past 19 years. In her 40 years running businesses downtown, "the worst three-and-a-half years in that 40" were the most recent ones. "We don't have air [conditioning] on and the reason we don't have air on is because it's too expensive," she said. "We don't have air at home, either." Several fans ran in corners of her Lanier's Historic Downtown Marketplace, barely making a dent in the warm, humid August air that hung thickly inside the store.

A Republican, she is planning to vote for Romney in hopes he can get the banks lending again to small business owners. "When we try to borrow money as entrepreneurial, self-employed people, they won't lend us money," she said. "We're on our own and we know that," she added later. Meanwhile, "there are so many people on welfare and subsidized."

"Obama has had a chance and he has not impressed me," she added.

Donald Corley, 52, had come into the shop from nearby Narcoossee, Fla., with his brother to show him a picture he liked but wasn't going to purchase, because he doesn't buy things. Unemployed for three years - "it's embarrassing" he said - he lives on the $75 he gets from doing lawn care one day a week, after losing the $20/hour jobs he had doing "commercial doors and door hardware" when both firms he worked for went under during the crash. He manages on that pittance by never going out, and because he owns his house free and clear and two of his three adult daughters live with him. The youngest works two jobs and pays the electric bill. "I don't have any debt. I don't have any credit cards. I don't even have a bank account right now," he said. And if he can live like this, he thinks America needs to get its debt under control, too.

"My problem is government is too big," he said. That, and all the toll roads in Florida. "How come they can't build new public roads" or widen the existing freeways, he asked.

A McCain voter in 2008, he says he plans to vote for Romney this fall because he liked what he had to say about being pro-life as the first part of America's commitment to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

In short, until someone can make a believable economy argument that doesn't just sound like another empty promise, the voters here seem likely to remain up for grabs, reachable through their identity groups -- small business owner, social conservative, African American -- and motivated to the polls by other issues as much as by the one big thing that's affecting all their lives.

All week long they tried to humanize the somewhat formal GOP nominee. But it's the party they really need to work on.

TAMPA -- The final night of the heavily scripted Republican National Convention provided a series of surprises as novice speakers during the early portion of the evening outshone the political and Hollywood stars brought on to introduce Mitt Romney during prime time. It was an uneven evening that stutter-stepped its way toward the former Massachusetts governor's acceptance speech, each powerfully resonant or emotionally uplifting segment immediately undermined by turns to negativity and boos or protests in the convention hall.

It was a program intended to provide America with a more personal view of Mitt Romney, his Mormon faith, his large family, and his good works as a man and businessman. And it did that quite successfully, as Grant Bennett, a former assistant to Romney when he served as a Mormon bishop in Massachusetts, and Pam Finlayson, a friend of the Romneys from their Massachusetts church whom he helped through a difficult time with a premature daughter, spoke to Romney's personal commitment to his co-religionists.

Their prim, plain, formal manners and subdued but deeply felt endorsements of Romney's character did perhaps more than anything else all week to give insight into a lifelong source of strength and values for Romney, as well as the operations of a faith community largely unfamiliar to most Americans. And the speeches also, critically, showed him as a man capable of not just relating to but having deep friendships with people from different walks of life, after a week that relentlessly drove home the message that he is a successful elite, surrounded by other people of achievement.

The daily emphasis on Romney's success, and the insistence that we value it, was intended as a counter to the drumbeat of attacks by the Obama campaign on Romney's business record, but by convention's end it had the odd effect of making him seem even more out of touch. The positive view of the message was that the Republican Party does not believe that the economy is a zero-sum game or that the wealth of one diminishes others, but instead wants to build a nation that rewards entrepreneurship and dogged individual determination. But the downside of the parade of governors and senators and businessmen and even Olympians talking about the value of success and achievement was that it painted Romney's GOP as the party of people who are better than you, and possibly unaware of how unusual their lives are, since it it not given to everyone to be that extraordinary. Government must work for ordinary people of modest ambition and education, too, after all. And no matter how we enjoy tales of movement in America, of immigrants and people of color and the children of driven but not well-situated parents who thanks to their love made something of themselves, we know also that most of us don't actually move that far from our economic point of origin.

Every moment of uplift and insight Thursday night was followed by a slam-back-to-Earth instance of sourness.

The spellbinding appearances of Romney's Mormon allies were followed by another airing of a video of edited Obama remarks ("You didn't built that!") which drew three rounds of boos from the audience, breaking the sense of emotional momentum on behalf of Romney in the hall and immediately reminding that whatever image Romney was seeking to create for himself Thursday, he has for months fed and fed on a strain of deep disdain for the president among his fellow partisans. And that was what it was like all night -- every moment of uplift and insight was followed by a slam-back-to-Earth instance of sourness.

The well-produced biographical video that showed Romney's early family years wasn't aired in prime time, and was soon followed by the nationally televised and disrespectful performance of Clint Eastwood talking to an imaginary Obama and a real, empty chair.

Romney's nomination acceptance speech is already being criticized as a vacuous or Oprahfied bid to broaden his appeal. But to the extent that he was trying to reach out to disaffected Obama voters and the potentially persuadable in the first two-thirds of his speech with personal stories and paeans to women's leadership, the fact that his windup once again called forth audience boos against the president -- start at around the 26:45 mark in the video of his speech if you want to hear them -- drove home the point that whatever he says, he's not fully in control of his party.

Paul Ryan on Tuesday night said that America has a choice because the time for choosing is near. But Romney too has a choice. He's going to have decide if he wants to run a positive campaign that reaches out and tries to bring new people into the GOP fold -- or the negative, base-oriented one he has so far. In Tampa, he awkwardly tried to have it both ways.

The actor's rambling remarks struck a puzzling note in Tampa.

TAMPA -- Anyone who says that contemporary national political party nominating conventions are too heavily scripted these days has got to watch this video of Clint Eastwood ad libbing to an empty chair at the GOP convention.

The Washington Post has helpfully posted the full transcript of his remarks.

The former national security adviser and secretary of state took up the mantle of GOP elder at the convention in Tampa.

TAMPA -- Viewed and heard from the floor of the Tampa Bay Times Forum, her delivery was as clipped and formal as when she was being grilled by the 9/11 commission in 2004 over the U.S. failure to prevent the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. The same almost-brittle delivery once struck fear in the hearts of traumatized Americans, as when in 2002 she warned of Saddam Hussein's military ambitions in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, "there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't what the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

But on Wednesday night in Florida, the energy that greeted former George W. Bush national security adviser and secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was all 2012. Taking the podium to wildly enthusiastic applause and cries of "We love you, Condi!", Rice delivered a resoundingly well-received speech that touched professorially on an array of contemporary foreign policy issues and enough compassionate conservate causes to provoke nostalgia for the presidency of a man who left office with a 22 percent approval rating.

Looking only slightly older than when she left the national stage, she stood before a sort of electronic scrapbooking board on the Republican National Convention stage that flashed an array of images putting her in the middle of the story of the Bush years. Rumsfeld turning toward her. Rice seated with her heeled foot extended outward, a group of male shoes in the shot. President Bush turning toward her. Rice and Colin Powell, striding side by side.

Before she spoke, the Drudge Report, which earlier this year posted quickly debunked rumors that she was on Mitt Romney's vice presidential short list, published a draft of her remarks. The Romney camp did not send out advance speech excerpts for her, perhaps to help build anticipation for her speech (you can read the prepared for delivery version here).

In her speech, Rice criticized President Obama more gently than many who have trod the stage this week, saying that the Arab Spring proves the "desire for freedom is indeed universal" but that the promise of the unprisings is "engulfed in uncertainty" and America's allies do not know where the country stands.

"'Where does America stand?'" Rice asked. "You see when friends or foes, alike, do not know the answer to that question -- unambiguously and clearly -- the world is likely to be a more dangerous and a chaotic place." Warning against malign powers who would seek to fill a leadership vacuum abroad, she asserted, "peace really does come through strength" and said America's might would be "safe in Mitt Romney's hands."

But it was her remarks on her own personal story and on the need for better K-12 education for minority children -- which she called "the civil rights struggle of our day" that she drew the greatest response from the audience, suggesting that she's no longer seen just as a foreign policy intellectual and high-stature former government official but as a powerfully symbolic figure. Her personal successes and race give her an unusual authority within the a party starved for black leaders to contrast with Obama and values-laden personal narratives to contrast against programs Republicans would cut.

Rice said earlier today she would not consider a position in a Romney administration. But even if she doesn't, it's clear from tonight that her place in the Romney-Ryan Republican Party is assured.

"The time for choosing is drawing near," Ryan will say tonight, alluding to Reagan's 1964 speech "A Time for Choosing."

One line jumped out at me in Paul Ryan's advance excerpts of his nomination acceptance speech. "The right that makes all the difference now is the right to choose our own leaders," he will say, according to the Romney-Ryan campaign. "You are entitled to the clearest possible choice because the time for choosing is drawing near."

If there's something that sounds a little archaic and formal about that line, it's because it's an echo of Ronald Reagan's 1964 stump speech, "A Time for Choosing," which was broadcast in support of Senator Barry Goldwater's presidential campaign in late October of that year. The key passage Ryan is alluding to:

I am going to talk of controversial things. I make no apology for this.

It's time we asked ourselves if we still know the freedoms intended for us by the Founding Fathers. James Madison said, "We base all our experiments on the capacity of mankind for self government."

This idea -- that government was beholden to the people, that it had no other source of power is still the newest, most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American Revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.

You and I are told we must choose between a left or right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream-the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism. Regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would sacrifice freedom for security have embarked on this downward path. Plutarch warned, "The real destroyer of the liberties of the people is he who spreads among them bounties, donations and benefits."

The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing.

Public servants say, always with the best of intentions, "What greater service we could render if only we had a little more money and a little more power." But the truth is that outside of its legitimate function, government does nothing as well or as economically as the private sector.

People may just be starting to learn about him, but the Republican vice presidential pick is already the subjected of highly polarized views.

Gallup reports today that "Americans have mixed views of Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, who will be confirmed as the GOP's vice presidential nominee on Wednesday night, with 38% saying their opinion is favorable, and 36% saying it is unfavorable." But if you look at who is rating him favorably and who is not, you can see he's already a highly polarizing figure who has not won over many partisans. His speech tonight might be an opportunity to change that, slightly. More likely, it will further solidify his support among Republicans, who are strongly in his corner already.

Conventioneers are here for Romney and the speeches -- but also the amazing sideshow.

TAMPA -- House Speaker John Boehner is hosting a nightly warehouse party here in Tampa for GOP bigwigs. A Republican aide sends along this picture of the defining internal feature of the space: a carousel. Seems apt somehow for the general carnival environment that characterizes political conventions. Boehner's warehouse parties at the GOP conventions are a tradition that dates back to 1996.

Chris Christie and Ann Romney may have been the main show, but two earlier speakers made plain a major tension pulling the GOP in different directions. Mia Love. (Reuters)

TAMPA -- The Republican National Convention's first evening session paired two speakers who represent opposing poles of hope and fear within today's GOP: the impressive daughter of Haitian immigrants who is seeking to become a representative from Utah, and an actress who has sought to tarnish President Obama by questioning if the Hawaii-born son of a Kenyan father and American mother is in fact constitutionally eligible to hold the office of the presidency.

In their remarks could be found the central tension in Mitt Romney's Republican Party, a group that knows it must diversify if it is to keep pace with a changing American -- but still contains the forces of reaction made nervous by that very change.

Mia Love in many way represents the highest promise of the GOP, a distant but not inconceivable future where the party attracts more than token black membership or votes and provides a warm welcome to the hard-working children of immigrants who gave up their culture, their language and their extended family for the far from easy task of making a new life in America. Still under 40, the mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah, would be the first black woman elected to Congress as a Republican should she win. She was introduced in a lovely video (below) that keyed up what could have been significant remarks launching her on the national stage, had she had any kind of time to speak. Instead, her remarks were kept extremely brief.

Love was followed by Janine Turner, a blonde former actress with Fox News-style makeup and a radio show who, the Internet tells me, was a star in the 1980s and 1990s on television shows such as Northern Exposure. Turner ripped into Obama for his "gimme gimme" mentality, the first in a line of speakers that extended to former senator Rick Santorum and former Democrat Artur Davis to suggest that Obama wants to give the lazy people something for nothing.

"Patrick Henry said, 'Give me liberty or give me death.' Today Obama enables an entitlement society that says, 'Give me liberty and gimme, gimme!'" Turner said.

"Why? Because Democrats depend on dependence," she continued. "America was not born with a gimme, gimme mentality, and American liberty cannot survive with a gimme, gimme mentality. America was built with her hands at work, not with her hands out."

Janine Turner. (Reuters)

Turner gained notoriety recently for her birther beliefs and questioning Obama's right to serve in office. In a PJ Media article, "Reasoning 'Kenyan Born'," published with the subtitle, "Obama's author bio leaves us three possibilities. None of them reflect well on the president," Turner argues:

The irony is that the left, with its desire to flatline life, and the right, with its desire to be quietly conservative and politically correct, are colliding in a ruin of republicanism.

Case in point -- the question of where President Obama was born. This question is permeating the web in a radical way with the emergence of Obama's former author bio, which states he was "born in Kenya." This bio was a part of Obama's persona until he began to run for president in 2007.

Yet, according to the left, anyone who is curious about the "Kenyan born" revelation is a racist. Meanwhile, the right, riddled with fear of being called racist, is clamming up with political correctness. Where is the reason in either approach? There isn't any.

Obama manipulates the racist card often by stating that it is hard to get elected with a name like "Barack Hussein Obama." What does that type of comment imply? It implies that most Americans are racist. He stabs the arrow deeper into the American heart he promised to heal.

Yet the law of the land, the United States Constitution, is very clear that the president of the United States should be American born. If this were a legal case in court, the book bio stating that Obama was "born in Kenya" would be taken into consideration. Yet if the American people question why a document would say something like this, suddenly they are racist, birthers, ignorant, or not being politically correct....

It is reasonable to wonder why Obama's bio would say such a thing.

Love and Turner were joined in the procession of speakers Tuesday night by the female Hispanic first lady of Puerto Rico (Lucé Vela Gutierrez), the female Hispanic governor of New Mexico (Susana Martinez), a male Hispanic Senate candidate from Texas (Ted Cruz), the Indian-American governor of South Carolina (Nikki Haley) and the working class son of New Jersey, Governor Chris Christie. It was an evening to showcase GOP diversity while delivering a stinging rebuke to Obama for his approach to government programs. Even Romney's wife Ann cast herself as the descendent of immigrants, as did Santorum.

Perhaps the admixture of diversity and attacks that many have said are racially charged or racially coded -- such as accusations that Obama has "gutted" welfare reform's work requirements, though this is not in fact the case -- is a way for the GOP to not just deflect the critique but reject the charge of race-card playing outright.

"Mia, your mother and I never took a handout. You will not be a burden to society. You will give back," Love likes to quote her father as having said.

It means something different when she says something like this -- espousing the up-by-your-own-bootstraps philosophy so common among immigrants and their children -- than when someone like Turner attacks Obama for being for "gimme gimme."

And it means something different for the future of the GOP, too.

She'll be speaking tonight after 10 p.m.

...Tonight I want to talk to you from my heart about our hearts. I want to talk not about what divides us, but what holds us together as an American family. I want to talk to you tonight about that one great thing that unites us, that one thing that brings us our greatest joy when times are good, and the deepest solace in our dark hours.

Tonight I want to talk to you about love.

...

Mitt's dad never graduated from college. Instead, he became a carpenter.

He worked hard, and he became the head of a car company, and then the governor of Michigan.

When Mitt and I met and fell in love, we were determined not to let anything stand in the way of our life together.

...

I read somewhere that Mitt and I have a "storybook marriage." Well, in the storybooks I read, there were never long, long, rainy winter afternoons in a house with five boys screaming at once. And those storybooks never seemed to have chapters called MS or Breast Cancer.

A storybook marriage? No, not at all. What Mitt Romney and I have is a real marriage.

...

At every turn in his life, this man I met at a high school dance, has helped lift up others. He did it with the Olympics, when many wanted to give up.

...

This is the man America needs.

This is the man who will wake up every day with the determination to solve the problems that others say can't be solved, to fix what others say is beyond repair. This is the man who will work harder than anyone so that we can work a little less hard.

I can't tell you what will happen over the next four years. But I can only stand here tonight, as a wife, a mother, a grandmother, an American, and make you this solemn commitment:

This man will not fail.

This man will not let us down.

This man will lift up America!

The Republican presidential candidate hasn't always avoided those who share Todd Akin's beliefs.

Mitt Romney distanced himself Monday from embattled Missouri Rep. Todd Akin over the Republican senate candidate's assertion that "legitimate rape" causes women to "shut down" conception.

"He should understand that his words with regards to rape are not words that I can defend, that we can defend, or that we can defend him," Romney told WMUR during a campaign swing through New Hampshire.

But this isn't the first time a member of the Republican Big Tent has asserted this, and in 2007 presidential candidate Mitt Romney sought and won the endorsement of the man who has since the mid-1980s promoted the scientifically baseless idea that rape doesn't lead to pregnancy, Dr. John C. Willke.

Hailing him as "The Father Of The Pro-Life Movement" and "an important surrogate for Governor Romney's pro-life and pro-family agenda," the Romney for President campaign in 2007 welcomed Willke's endorsement.

"I am proud to have the support of a man who has meant so much to the pro-life movement in our country," Romney said in a statement at the time. "He knows how important it is to have someone in Washington who will actively promote pro-life policies. Policies that include more than appointing judges who will follow the law but also opposing taxpayer funded abortion and partial birth abortion. I look forward to working with Dr. Willke and welcome him to Romney for President."

Willke was equally effusive. "Governor Romney is the only candidate who can lead our pro-life and pro-family conservative movement to victory in 2008," he said in the statement. "Unlike other candidates who only speak to the importance of confronting the major social issues of the day, Governor Romney has a record of action in defending life. Every decision he made as Governor was on the side of life. I know he will be the strong pro-life President we need in the White House."

In Tuesday's New York Times, reporter Pam Belluck found that Willke was sticking to his scientifically baseless beliefs about pregnancy and rape, saying that because rape makes women "uptight" it decreases the likelihood they will get pregnant during a violent encounter:

Dr. John C. Willke, a general practitioner with obstetric training and a former president of the National Right to Life Committee, was an early proponent of this view, articulating it in a book originally published in 1985 and again in a 1999 article. He reiterated it in an interview Monday.

"This is a traumatic thing -- she's, shall we say, she's uptight," Dr. Willke said of a woman being raped, adding, "She is frightened, tight, and so on. And sperm, if deposited in her vagina, are less likely to be able to fertilize. The tubes are spastic."

Leading experts on reproductive health, however, dismissed this logic.

"There are no words for this -- it is just nuts," said Dr. Michael Greene, a professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School.

Belluck also found Bryan Fischer, director of issue analysis for the American Family Association, pointing to Willke's 1999 article to justify Akin's statements. Willke wrote about what he said was "certainly one of the most important reasons why a rape victim rarely gets pregnant, and that's physical trauma....There's no greater emotional trauma that can be experienced by a woman than an assault rape. This can radically upset her possibility of ovulation, fertilization, implantation and even nurturing of a pregnancy."

"In other words, ladies and gentleman, Todd Akin was exactly right," Fischer said.

Fischer last gained notice during the 2012 campaign for successfully organizing a push against Romney's appointment of Richard Grenell, an openly gay man, to be his national security spokesman. Fischer called Grennell's sexuality "offensive to God" and took credit for his resignation and for bringing Romney in line with social conservatives once he stepped down.

Asked for comment on Willke's views and whether Romney knew of them before seeking his endorsement, a spokesperson for the campaign pointed to Romney's statements on Akin, but declined to comment on the doctor.