Viewers tend to notice what's present but not what's absent. Last night, what was absent was more profound. House Speaker Denny Hastert spent perhaps five minutes discussing the GOP's congressional agenda and results. Other than that, not a word was devoted to the arena in which virtually every national political battle of the last four years has been fought. Reporters had to track down Newt Gingrich in the bowels of the convention hall to ask why he had been edited out of the picture.
Messages are clearer when they're scripted.
But when they're too scripted, the script becomes the message. The Republicans are in danger of crossing that line. Bush's words and gestures while speaking by satellite were so canned and stiff and the students sitting behind him looked so mannequinlike in their obedient stillness that his message lost the feeling of reality. When even a black church sermon is robbed of its force by the minister's repeated glances at the pages laid out on his pulpit as happened Monday night the scripting has gone too far. Two different audiences saw two different conventions.