Redeem Team

A week ago, it didn't take much imagination to see the Democratic National Convention going wrong. Very wrong. We're talking bitter splits along race and gender lines. We're talking hotheaded spouses and knotty family ties, with people feeling disrespected, a raucous crowd to dump fuel on the flame, and TV cameras to capture it all. We're talking "The Jerry Springer Show," with the fate of the country in the balance.

If any chairs were to get metaphorically thrown in Denver, Wednesday would have been a good night for it. During the early part of the program, the focus shifted to delegates trooping to microphones on the floor, their impulses in tow. So rich were the possibilities for mayhem, even Wolf Blitzer piped down. Yet even as some states let the proceedings drag—I'm looking at you, Montana—the roll call turned out to be very nearly harmonious: our democracy in messily gorgeous action. By the end of the program, the Democrats had left Springerland emphatically behind. We've seen this before, haven't we? A group of outsize talents with the egos to match, who may not like each other but seem intent on finding a way to support each other—not least because, individually and collectively, they have some serious redeeming to do. This may not get Barack Obama elected in November, but it made for an arresting, pivotal night.

Consider Bill Clinton. In fact, consider Bill Clinton from Bill Clinton's point of view. One day, you're the first black president; the next, you're a racist. One day you're a political genius and everybody reveres you; the next, you're getting blamed for spoiling your wife's campaign, and, by the by, a brilliant upstart is too busy beating you at your own game to bother kissing the ring. So when you step onstage in Denver, you may find yourself lacking a certain esprit de corps where said upstart is concerned.

But you are still Bill Clinton. Which means that, for a bundle of reasons indecipherable to the rest of us—high-minded, self-serving, some in between—you're going to gaze out upon the 20,000 people shouting their heads off, you're going to take a deep breath, and you're going to do everything in your considerable power to remind them who the Big Dog is.

It turns out Clinton's instinct was right on one count: foreign-policy night wasn't a good time to use him. But he found time to bring the speech around to domestic affairs, and to do That Thing He Does. As he ticked off policy issue after policy issue, the Republicans seemed newly perfidious, the need to vote them out of office freshly urgent: he contrasted the rise in worker productivity under Bush with the fraying health and security of the middle class, asking, "Are these the family values the Republicans are so proud of?" He also nailed down all the particulars for why Hillary voters should support Obama, something she hadn't done the night before. Also, he may have said a word or two about his presidency.

When John Kerry took the stage after Clinton, long, long experience suggested that he was going to slip into the gray line of senators—Reid, Reed, Rockefeller, Bayh—who had been trying that evening, generally unsuccessfully, to establish Obama's foreign-policy bona fides. But as I peeked out at Kerry from between my fingers, something unexpected happened. He began to give a speech so good it was astounding—so good it was absurd.

Four years after his generally supine performance as presidential candidate, Kerry opened up the most blistering line of attack used on McCain all week. He made it work so well that you have to wonder how all the other speakers could have missed it. Problem: Sen. John McCain is a war hero with a maverick reputation. Solution: Explain to world that "Senator McCain" has left the premises, having been replaced by "Candidate McCain," a doctrinaire, Bush-backing, flip-flopping vote-monger. Kerry drew specific and damning contrasts between Senator McCain and Candidate McCain on issue after issue, including his use of the Rovian character assassination that had once been used against him. Plus this little gem: "Talk about being for it before you were against it." Kerry, Kerry, we hardly knew ye.

But he was still getting warm. Kerry said that McCain had stood on an aircraft carrier and called for war with Baghdad three months after 9/11, but that Obama had foreseen all the calamitous fallout of such an invasion. "Well, guess what?" he said. "Mission accomplished." That may just be a tart little jab, but Kerry landed a more important punch when he pointed up to the flag and said, "This election is a chance for America to tell the merchants of fear and division: You don't decide who loves this country. You don't decide who is a patriot. You don't decide whose service counts and whose doesn't." Fueled by palpable resentment about the attacks against him in 2004, he was championing a kind of outspoken liberal patriotism not much in evidence this week, and he inspired a round of "USA" chants heard even less often. In 13 splendid minutes, the speech traced the outlines of a vastly different convention: tough-minded, flag-draped and sharp to the point of belligerency. By the time the Republicans are done vivisecting Obama next week, they may have wished they hadn't waited until day three to start using it.

In theory, attacks like Kerry's are the sort of dirty work that Joe Biden is on the ticket to supply. Yet the man behind the deathless "noun-verb-9/11" swipe at Rudy Giuliani proved less effective at attacking McCain last night. Announcing your friendship with McCain has become a kind of throat-clearing gesture for Democrats, but Biden pushed too far, talking about their travels together around the world, saying, "It's a friendship that transcends politics." Once a kinship that close is on the table, calling the man "complicit in [Bush's] catastrophic foreign policy," etc., etc., starts to sound disloyal.

If the attacks were a letdown, though, the biography was superb. Biden's son Beau, headed shortly to Iraq with the National Guard, offered a genuinely moving introduction that left many in tears—even Biden himself seemed on the verge, when he appeared. The speech that followed was, in some respects, an ill-constructed mess. But it was a mess from the heart, a bounce-back effort from a guy who could have had this shot 20 years ago, until he blew it. In tone it did more than any other speech this week to evoke—with affection—the world of rubber-chicken dinners and VFW hats, a Democratic Party that doesn't fit so cozily on the shiny stage of Pepsi Center. Biden can't help but give that speech, because that's who he is and where he comes from. He also needs to give that speech, because voters want to hear it, and his running mate couldn't give it if he had a million years to try.

Obama's surprise appearance after Biden's speech put an energizing little bow on the evening. More importantly, it was so strategically inspired that you can almost forgive the banality of much of the first two nights. Obama's tone—friendly wave, hug the Bidens, "I think we are gonna have a great night tomorrow night"—was velvet glove. But the mere fact of showing up was iron fist. It was an elegantly simple way to let everyone inside and outside the hall know that all the gifted folks and party elders who did such impressive things for themselves and their party last night—Kerry and Biden, the senators and congressmen, both of the Clintons— have a new leader now, and he's it.