Today in the NYR Online, Fintan O’Toole writes about last week’s Democratic National Convention, an event marked by an “undercurrent of strangeness.” “What could not quite be said was that in part the Democrats were celebrating their release from the contract of loyalty to their own still-serving president…. The joy that radiated through and from the United Center was the other side of what had been so recently a deep despair.”

Thus, O’Toole argues, in coalescing behind Kamala Harris “the Democrats in Chicago were singing a redemption song. It had three parts: valediction, malediction, and benediction. They managed most of the time to harmonize them without too much dissonance. This was no mean feat.”

Below, alongside O’Toole’s essay, we have compiled a selection of writing from the archives about the quadrennial convention extravaganza.

Fintan O’Toole
Fear and Joy in Chicago

The excitement that radiated through the Democratic National Convention was the other side of what had until recently been a deep despair.

Michael Chabon
Obama & the Conquest of Denver

“Quadrennial; I ate that stuff up. There was a daily mass recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. Everyone stood up—on the last night, Obama Night, tens of thousands stood up, and put their hands over their hearts, and said the magic word, indivisible. I was a little self-conscious about doing that, at first, but found that I still remembered the words perfectly, and it was like singing ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’ at the seventh-inning stretch.”

—October 9, 2008

Joan Didion
Politics in the ‘New Normal’ America

“The Democratic nominee for president was nonetheless not a candidate with whom every Democrat who came to Boston could be entirely comfortable. Many of those impatient with what they saw as a self-defeating timidity in the way the party was presenting itself took refuge across the river in Cambridge, at ‘alternative’ events…. ‘Kerry, Kerry, quite contrary,’ a group of young women calling themselves ‘Radical Cheerleaders’ chanted outside Faneuil Hall. ‘So far right it’s kinda scary.’”

—October 21, 2004

Lars-Erik Nelson
Gore in the Balance

“On one night, this August 17, Gore turned the 2000 campaign on its head. Introduced by his wife, Tipper, with a slide show of family snapshots, Gore made a TV wrestler’s flamboyant entry, striding to the podium through a sea of raucous delegates rather than entering through a stage door. He bounded on stage, seized Tipper, and bent her backward over his left arm for a long lingering kiss straight out of a Harlequin novel. ‘Disgusting,’ scowled the conservative commentator Robert Novak, and Democratic hearts brightened everywhere at this first, faint hint of good news for their champion.”

—October 19, 2000

Garry Wills
A Tale of Two Cities

“American politics, especially now, does not offer us a choice between a party that favors the rich and one that favors the poor. Clinton cannot be called to account by an electorally nonexistent left. We must choose between a party that neglects the poor and one that savages them, between a party that defers to the rich and one that deifies them, between a party that abjectly apologizes for government and one that demonizes it. One party signs a Faustian contract with the devil. The other party offers the contract. Better Faustus than Mephistopheles.”

—October 3, 1996

Elizabeth Hardwick
Chicago

“Wednesday night, during the siege of the Hilton, when the police mercilessly beat young men before the eyes of everyone, you could hear the timid but determined voices of ‘concerned’ women calling out, ‘What are the charges against that young man?’ Or, ‘Stop, please, Sir, you are killing him!’ The mention of the instruments of law and order sent the police into a wild rage and for a moment they stopped beating demonstrators and turned to threaten the frightened suburbans.”

—September 26, 1968

Save $168 on an inspiring pairing!
Get both The New York Review and The Paris Review at one low price.

Get the deal

Politics   Literature   Arts   Ideas

You are receiving this message because you signed up
for e-mail newsletters from The New York Review.

Update your address or preferences

View this newsletter online

The New York Review of Books
207 East 32nd Street, New York, NY 10016-6305