Commentary: The Republican convention gets off to a real weird start
I'm mad I missed Scott Baio's speech. Yes, on the face of it, it's ridiculous, albeit rather fitting, that he was there (although Trump only asked him to speak a few days ago -- on Thursday), and that he got a better speaking slot than Joni Ernst, one of the few female Republican electeds willing to ring in Donald Trump as the GOP nominee.
What to make of that horrible management of the Ernst speaking slot. The rule-of-thumb with these things is that the people watching the first three days of a convention are typically partisan die-hards - you know, the kind of party regulars who know who Ernst is and might be jazzed to watch her. Instead, she spoke to an emptying auditorium after most Republicans had tuned out. Sad!
Her speech was adequate. Nothing to write home about, but adequate seems to be the watchword at this convention so far. It was far better than Michael Flynn's near-endless rant, however. The Putin-loving general, who a minute ago was being floated as Trump's veep, has no future in politics. He was flailing from the moment he got onstage, trying to get the sleepy crowd to chant "USA!" along with him and mostly failing. It was somehow both manic and dull.
The star of the evening, of course, was Melania, who's spent so much of this campaign ferreted away in a penthouse somewhere. But here she was, speaking at length, talking about Donald after he introduced her. (The only moment of the night that seemed really well thought-out was how he appeared on stage in a cloud of smoke, probably because it was the only 15 seconds of night one that Trump was really invested in.)
Two very strange moments in Melania's speech. The first is that she didn't offer a single humanizing anecdote or insight into the candidate. Take out the bland references to the son she has with Trump, and that could have been any other Trump surrogate's speech.
The second, and much more glaring, strange moment is when Melania seemed to plagiarize Michelle Obama's 2008 speech to the Democratic convention.
That "seemed" there was perhaps overly polite. A key section of Melania's speech really was lifted almost word-for-word from Michelle Obama, and you'll be hearing a lot about that over the next few days, because it's such a surreal bit of incompetence on Team Trump's part. Melania told NBC earlier that she wrote it "with a little help as possible," but that was a professional speech written by a professional speechwriter. And that professional speechwriter made an almost unfathomably huge mistake.
One of the big stories of this campaign is how few professional Republican operatives are willing to get anywhere near Trump and company, in large part because they fear they'll be blacklisted in GOP politics if they do. The best and brightest in the party's warrior class aren't helping him, and are in large part embarrassed by him. That means Trump is being staffed by second- and third-tier folks, and that means screw-ups and own goals like Melania stealing a FLOTUS riff are probably unavoidable. No speechwriter worth anything would have ever let that stuff get in.
Then again, with a candidate like Trump, maybe even the best staffers would be ineffectual. Another weird moment: Trump calling into Bill O'Reilly just as Patricia Smith, the mother of Benghazi victim Sean Smith, was giving an emotional anti-Hillary speech. Putting aside whether it's wrong to trot out a grieving parent like that for political purposes, why would Trump try and compete with her? Is there no one in Trump's orbit who would tell him that's a bad idea? If there is, does Trump just not care?
Come to think of it, that Scott Baio's invitation to speak was one of the less mystifying things about the convention's kick off. The GOP loves celebrities, and isn't really run by the kind of people who can differentiate between a big get and a has-been. It's also typically run by people who know the basics, things like "don't steal a passage from a celebrated speech by the current first lady" and "don't pointlessly distract from your own damn event."
Or at least it was before Trump.