And the GOP's secret weapon, Ann Richards. Michael Graham is a writer and radio talk-show host in South Carolina. It was the kind of convention night where Bob Dole himself would be tempted to smile, if he knew how. Like every Republican longing for victory and genuinely concerned about having an inclusive party, I was delighted to see black women and Hispanic men leavening the appearance of painfully white faces staring up from the floor of the convention.
Inclusion is one thing, but desperate diversity is another.
Reporters and commentators were taken with the change of tone, topic and temperament from the Dole convention four years ago. You don't have Buchanan. You don't have Clinton. And he was right. CNN caught a fleeting shot of former speaker Gingrich, back among the penitential New Hampshirites, lingering at the edge of the convention floor like a defeated schoolyard bully hanging around the schoolyard where he once held sway.