Deep into the Reagan era, and at a creative low point, filmmaker/author Peter Bogdanovich attended a Bruce Springsteen concert and had an epiphany. In a subsequent essay, he described a charismatic figure who, through his music and message, was giving hope to people who had lost hope.
"Charismatic" is not the first adjective that attaches itself to John Kerry, nor is he likely to rival the eloquence of the bard of Asbury Park. Yet when he took the stage at the Thomas & Mack Arena, to the strains of Springsteen's "No Surrender," transference between Kerry and his audience was palpable and unavoidable.
The man at the center of the frenzy was not bearing hope as much as receiving it. He's the vessel into which thousands of voters, clearly pent up with frustration at what has happened to America in the last four years, are pouring their hopes. There will never be a Cult of Kerry—certainly nothing approaching the quasi-religious zeal that animates the followers of Howard Dean—but after four years in electoral Death Valley, Democrats are parched unto death and John Kerry looks like one tall drink of water.
In 1996, I saw Bill Clinton and the late Sen. Paul Wellstone address an enormous crowd at Minneapolis' Target Center. You couldn't pack a more potent one-two rhetorical punch than Clinton and Wellstone. But the 1996 atmosphere doesn't compare with Tuesday's sizzle. The sense of urgency in the air is exponentially higher, as are the stakes (for some, nothing less than the future of representative democracy in America).
Once an arboreal stump-speaker—aptly likened to Foghorn Leghorn—with a nine-point plan for everything, Kerry is now fast-paced and impassioned. He hits one hot-button issue after another, working the crowd into a crescendo of outrage.
Kerry's rhetoric on Iraq had limited resonance, though, especially for the many in the audience who audibly hankered for a "declare victory and get out" policy. Now that Bush has oozed away from his Rambo stance and toward Kerry's multilateralism, the two are left arguing distinctions without differences.
Mind you, Kerry tends to say, "This is important," as though it weren't self-evident, and "Finally..." doesn't always presage finality. But Kerry got off one good epigram ("Values spoken without actions taken are [merely] slogans"), and found an apt riposte to the juvenile go-it-alone bravado of the Bush-Cheney ticket: "Building support isn't a sign of weakness; it's a sign of strength."
As for the chattering classes, don't get too enamored of your Teresa Heinz Kerry-is-a-liability script. Alas, we didn't get any "opinionated" remarks from the foxy First Lady aspirant. But she worked the crowd for the better part of an hour afterward, magnetizing well-wishers—especially women of every age group. She's an event unto herself. John Kerry may play guitar but, as the campaign button says, "Teresa rocks."