On the Attack

Somewhat incredibly, I’ve been watching the Democratic Convention for something like three hours now and I think Claire McCaskill who just finished was the first speaker who actually took some time to make an argument against John McCain. I understand that the theory of the day is that Democrats want to introduce people to Barack Obama, but it seems to me that viable political parties figure out how to walk and chew gum at the same time — it’s hardly impossible to work a few digs at the other guy into a talk that’s mostly about the virtues of your candidate.

But it’s been striking to me that so many speeches have been kind of vague about the need for “change” or about bad things happening right now or over “the past eight years” rather than using the names of political parties or candidates for office. I’ve been able to familiarize myself recently with the legal restrictions in place on what you can say as a 501(c)4 organization, but suffice it to say that Democratic Party officials speaking at the Democratic National Convention are under no obligation to eschew “express advocacy” or to disparage the character, qualifications, or fitness for office of their opponents.