From start to finish, the Republican Convention was the Donald Trump show and just like the President himself, it was flawed but often effective.
Ultimately there was only one speech at this convention that ordinary voters are likely to remember beyond next week, and that was Trump’s.
Trump’s acceptance speech, in the spectacular setting of the South Lawn of the White House in front of a large crowd, was a theatrical triumph which is likely to reboot his struggling election campaign.
The President painted a vivid image for voters about the sort of utopian America he envisages and the dangers that he says await the nation under a Joe Biden presidency.
Trump succeeded in hammering home his key points; that he is best placed to revive America’s economy; that he is the guardian of a way of life which promotes freedom of religion and speech over big government and cancel culture; that he is the promoter of gun rights, conservative judges, pro-life policies and border security and that he would ensure law and order at home while taking an America First approach abroad.
By contrast, Trump portrayed Biden as the prince of darkness, taking America down a dark road of economic socialism, censorship, identity politics, open borders and underfunded police forces while displaying weakness on the world stage.
The speech was Trumpism on steroids; a grab-bag of truths, exaggerations and lies mixed together such that few ordinary voters could untangle them.
But then this Republican Convention, like the Democrat Convention the previous week, was all about perception and the big picture rather than the actual showcasing of detailed policies.
The strategy of the Republicans was to use the four day convention to change the public perception of three gaping holes in Trump’s first term resume; the coronavirus, race and women. Polls suggest that these issues could easily cost him the election. Almost two out of three Americans disapprove of his handling of the pandemic and his handling of race protests, while his support among black voters is at a woeful 5 per cent and among suburban women it has fallen to just 34 per cent.
To tackle these issues head-on Republicans loaded the convention with African American speakers, from Congressmen to civil rights heroes to reformed prisoners, who gave a rarely-heard conservative black perspective on race and racial unrest.
The program also focused heavily on women, including speeches from three Trump aides who portrayed the President as a staunch promoter of women in leadership roles and spoke of a more caring and empathetic side of the President.
The speech of the First Lady Melania Trump was refreshingly compassionate and also offered a more humane view of her husband.
The most audacious attempt to revise history was the convention’s portrayal of Trump as the coronavirus hero, having supposedly saved millions of lives through his quick thinking reaction to the crisis. The truth is pretty much the polar opposite and if Trump loses the election there will be no greater reason than his grotesque mishandling of the pandemic that has cost the lives of more than 175,000 Americans, crushing the world’s richest economy along the way.
As a spectacle, the Republican convention was hit and miss. On the plus side, the attendance of crowds at both Trump and Pence’s speech added an atmosphere that the Democrats lacked with their all-virtual show.
But unlike the Democrats, who showcased three former presidents, the Republicans lacked star power.
It says much about Trump’s dominance of the Republican Party and his fractious relationship with many of its leaders that those who stayed away included former president George W Bush and prominent party figures such as Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Mitt Romney and Lindsey Graham.
As a result the first half of the nightly programs were mostly a dreary parade of low level Republicans whose names have barely been heard outside the beltway.
The program also suffered from having far too many speakers named Trump along with their spouses. The endless loop of “Daddy is awesome” speeches hardly made for riveting or persuasive political theatre. The bizarre and hysterical speech by Donald Trump Jr’s girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle was a gothic horror show.
But none of this really matters because Trump’s finale on the South Lawn was a genuine show stopper and in the end, it was always about Donald Trump rather than his entourage.
Trump’s forceful speech with the White House as his backdrop, was his best chance yet to tell Americans why they should give him a second term. He nailed the moment.
Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia
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