Melania to the rescue? -- June 8, 2017 column

By MARSHA MERCER

The White House is about to get more crowded.

First lady Melania Trump and son Barron reportedly will move to Washington June 14. If so, the move would be a birthday present for the president, who turns 71 that day.

No more will Trump be home alone late at night at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with just his TV, his Twitter account and the Lincoln portrait to keep him company.   

Trump’s critics and many of his fans hope the presence of the first lady will tame the president’s restless urge to unburden himself of early-morning thoughts. His family’s move “is expected to lend some degree of normalcy to a presidency defined by its abnormality in substance and style,” Politico reported.

What? No more covfefe? No one will soon forget Trump’s May 31 tweet: “Despite the constant negative press covfefe” – an unfinished thought. Covfefe, a nonword, instantly became a punchline and a synonym for the president’s stream of consciousness rants. 

White House staffers and the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill have tried to discourage his tweeting. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ruefully admits his advice to stop tweeting so much has gone unheeded.

Trump loves his unfettered access to 32 million followers on Twitter, where he presents his own version of reality. Many of his fans never see the reports of fact-checkers.

Whether Melania will try to change her husband’s habits, or even can, is doubtful. She says her main role is taking care of Barron.

Trump’s in-laws, who live with the family in Trump Tower and often travel on weekends with Melania and Barron, also will be spending time at the White House. 

Melania’s parents, Victor and Amalija Knavs, reportedly will not relocate full time, as Michelle Obama’s mother and Hillary Clinton’s mother did, however.

After a long line of first daughters in the White House, Barron, 11, will be the first son since John F. Kennedy Jr., known then as John-John.

Barron, who invited his entire fifth grade class in New York to visit the White House last month, will attend the private St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Potomac, Md., this fall. The private, coed school has 580 students and a 7-to-1 student-teacher ratio, according to its website.

Although the Trumps were married in an Episcopal Church, Trump has indicated he is a Presbyterian, and his wife, who was born in Slovenia, which is largely Catholic, said after meeting the Pope that she is a Catholic.

Barron, who decorated his room in Trump Tower, will also be able to decorate his room in the first family’s living quarters, a privilege other first kids have also enjoyed, according to the White House Historical Association.

Melania Trump said during the campaign she would focus on cyberbullying as her project in the White House, but there’s speculation she could change her mind.

She has kept former first lady Michelle Obama’s White House garden. Obama started her “Let’s Move” campaign against childhood obesity the year after her husband became president.

The first lady has not had the political experience of either Obama or Karen Pence. The wife of Vice President Mike Pence is often at his side and is known to be an adviser.

Pence has installed a beehive with 15,000 to 20,000 honeybees at the vice president’s residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory. Pence also had a beehive at the Indiana governor’s mansion when her husband was governor.

The hive is intended to draw attention to what people can do to help bee colonies, which have been in decline. Bees are needed to pollinate about 90 crops, including nuts, fruits and vegetables.

Whatever Melania Trump, a former model, decides in the way of a project, her wardrobe will be scrutinized closely. She made news on her husband’s first foreign trip when she wore a floral silk coat from Dolce & Gabbana that retails for $51,500.

A first lady’s role is not mentioned in the Constitution, but her influence on the world of fashion and culture, if not policy, has been undeniable since the days of Jackie Kennedy.

We can all hope she has a positive influence on her husband and perhaps can get him to think before he tweets.

(C)2017 Marsha Mercer. All Rights reserved

Against odds, the stem-winder survives -- July 28, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

One thing hasn’t changed since Democrats first nominated a Clinton for president in 1992.

A national political convention is still “the ideal forum -- perhaps the only forum left – for what has proved to be a remarkably enduring form of American folk art: the political oration.” So wrote The New Yorker nearly a quarter century ago.

“In an age of sound-bites and manufactured images, it turns out, we still appreciate the real thing, the stem-winder. We’re a people that likes to orate, and to be orated at,” an unsigned “Talk of the Town” column in the magazine’s July 27, 1992 issue said.

Some of the best political speakers of the era had just spoken at Madison Square Garden, where presidential nominee Bill Clinton shared his very personal story of growing up fatherless with his hard-working mother and devoted grandparents.

“I still believe in a place called Hope,” Clinton said, extolling the simple values of his hometown.

Surprisingly, in the age of Instagram and 140-character tweets, nearly 26 million people tuned into the 2016 Democratic convention’s first night, when first lady Michelle Obama and Bernie Sanders spoke, according to the Nielsen TV ratings.

That was about 3 million more viewers than watched the Republican convention’s first night, with Melania Trump. When the final numbers are in, this year’s conventions likely will have drawn more viewers than in 2012 or 2008.

Why do people still care about this ancient form of political communication?

My guess is that everybody loves a good story, and, this year especially voters are hungry for emotional connection.

Since Ronald Reagan painted rhetorical pictures of morning in America, most politicians have used political convention speeches to inspire. There’s an art to giving a speech that tugs at heartstrings and shows personal values without being cloying. There’s also an art to turning complex issues into understandable take-aways. 

People don’t want the pros and cons of the Trans-Pacific Partnership; they want When Bill Met Hillary.

Bill Clinton did not disappoint in his speech Tuesday night. Clinton made his wife’s career in politics and government sound like a love story in a movie. Fighting the knock that Hillary Clinton is a status-quo candidate, the former president said: “She’s the best darn change-maker I ever met in my life.”

One of the main stories out of the Republican convention in Cleveland was Melania Trump’s speech. Unfortunately, the news was about echoes of Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech. Trump had lifted several phrases of seemingly personal stories about family and parental values.

While most leading Republicans stayed away from Donald Trump’s convention, the presidential candidate used his acceptance speech to paint a dark picture of the state of America – and to bash Clinton.

In Philadelphia, Democrats offered a brighter view of America, waving “Love trumps hate” signs and often talking about love -- when they weren’t blasting Trump.

“We are all neighbors and we must love neighbors as ourselves,” Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, Clinton’s new running mate, said, before mocking Trump.

Vice President Joe Biden unified the raucous crowd by emphasizing the importance of the middle class, a group Biden said Trump neither understands nor empathizes with. Trump has “no clue” how to make America great, Biden said.

Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, a rising Democratic star, said: “Patriotism is love of country, but you can’t love your country without loving your countrymen and countrywomen . . . We are not called to be a nation of tolerance. We are called to be a nation of love.”

Michelle Obama stirred emotions with personal reflections about her family: “I wake up every morning in a house that was built by slaves and I watch my daughters – two beautiful, intelligent, black young women – playing with their dogs on the White House lawn.”

“I am more optimistic about the future of America than ever before,” President Barack Obama said Wednesday night. “There has never been a man or a woman – not me, not Bill – more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president,” he said.

Will all the oratory matter? We’ll know in November.

©2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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