Bill Clinton gave a rousing speech last night at the Democratic Convention (transcript here). The former president again pointed out that, since leaving the White House, he has become a millionaire:
For the first time ever when America was on a war footing, there were two huge tax cuts, nearly half of which went to the top one percent. I’m in that group now for the first time in my life.
When I was in office, the Republicans were pretty mean to me. When I left and made money, I became part of the most important group in the world to them. At first I thought I should send them a thank you note — until I realized they were sending you the bill.
They protected my tax cuts while:
* Withholding promised funding for the Leave No Child Behind Act, leaving over 2 million children behind
* Cutting 140,000 unemployed workers out of job training
* 100,000 working families out of child care assistance
* 300,000 poor children out of after school programs
* Raising out of pocket healthcare costs to veterans
* Weakening or reversing important environmental advances for clean air and the preservation of our forests.
Everyone had to sacrifice except the wealthiest Americans, who wanted to do their part but were asked only to expend the energy necessary to open the envelopes containing our tax cuts. If you agree with these choices, you should vote to return them to the White House and Congress. If not, take a look at John Kerry, John Edwards and the Democrats.
That's gonna leave a mark. But, then again, not everyone heard Clinton's speech. And it came too late to get into the first edition of most morning papers.
The prime time hours of television clash somewhat with the deadlines of a morning paper. Those deadlines aren't arbitrary. Publishers promise their subscribers that they'll get the paper before they leave for work in the morning. That means carriers have to get the papers in time to get them onto everyone's porch before, say, 8 a.m. Working backwards from that time, accounting for the logistics of a fleet of trucks and minivans and for the actual time it takes the press to put ink on paper, means that most morning papers have to have their first edition pages done by around 11 p.m. — which is about when Clinton's speech ended last night.
From a newspaper's point of view, therefore, it'd be nice if the convention speakers wrapped up a bit sooner — let Patti Labelle or Bebe Winans sing out the clock. This would make it more likely that the night's keynote speaker would be capably covered in all editions of the next day's paper — especially for the smaller papers that rely on the wire services for their national coverage.
But — and here's the dilemma — making things easier for the newspapers would also mean that the final 10-15 minutes of prime time would no longer belong to your keynote speaker. Instead they would belong to the spinning heads of cable news commentary, and they simply can't be trusted to … well, they simply can't be trusted.
It seems wisest, therefore, to have your speakers end at exactly 11 p.m. — thus preventing the spinners from having the chance to garble your message during prime time. This means the first-edition readers of the morning paper might not get the whole story, but it may be the only way to protect the public from the likes of Blitzer and Woodruff.
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