Convention Reflection

Opportunities come and go. Today it seems like the convention was over as quickly as it came upon me. If I had missed one event, or an interview, it will never feel like a loss because the experience of being at the Republican National Convention could have been nothing other than a net-positive.
There was so much happening at the convention that I anticipate several post-convention posts on the various incidents, encounters, and experiences I had. This post will give some overall reflections on the experience of blogging the convention.
It was difficult work but a rewarding challenge. Without the help of Kevin Patrick (fellow writer at Blogs For Bush) and Scott Sala from SlantPoint I would have felt like a fish out of water all week. I can only wonder how much more difficult my experience would have been without their help throughout the week.
Being invited to the convention is an experience I have no doubt many bloggers would have loved to have. I hope I was able to offer them a look at the convention that they enjoyed. I felt my responsibility was not just to the planners of the convention, but to those who would have jumped at the opportunity to have been in my shoes.
Heading home from the convention exhausted, I may have felt at the time that I was glad it was over. However, as I take a look back on the past week, I wish I could hold on it for a little while longer, and in the next few days it will be a race against the inevitable fading of my memories to document my experience in writing before it’s too late, and forget those little details observations I wasn’t able to get down during the week.
Scott and I learned almost immediately what it meant to be a credentialed blogger. Within an hour of picking up our credentials, we found ourselves on the floor of the arena witnessing Vice President Dick Cheney’s speech sound check. It was not an event for the history books, but the reality of what our five credential badges meant was realized in that moment. The next few days were going to be much different then covering the protests in the city on Saturday.
From the very first interview on Monday to being watching (in person) President Bush give his acceptance speech, I was in awe of this convention. This was my first convention and I am sure it won’t be my last.
The convention may be over. I might be back home. But there is still a lot to say, and I hope to share it all with you this weekend. Stay tuned for my follow-up coverage of the Republican National Convention.

Blogs For Bush Interviews Richard Miniter

I now have available for your listening pleasure, my blogger exclusive interview (from Thursday night) with Richard Miniter, author of “Losing Bin Laden: How Bill Clinton’s Failures Unleashed Global Terror” which is coming out in paperback in a week.
We discussed the convention and more specifically a key issue in this election: the war on terror, he told me that there are lots of things in that people need to remember before going to the voting booth. He told me, “If you elect Kerry, you are voting for the Clinton approach to fighting terrorism … if you look at the foreign policy team – the counterterrorism team that Kerry has assembled, it is the old Clinton team … It’s all the same people, it’s all the old same ideas, the law enforcement approach to fighting terrorism. You can say a lot of things in favor of that approach, but the one thing you cannot say is that it works.”
I decided to ask Mr. Miniter how Bush’s approach to fighting terrorism differs from that approach, from both before and after 9-11. He informed me that before 9-11 Bush had a plan to hit bin Laden’s bases in Afghanistan but it took a while for that plan to make it through the national security bureaucracy and it was finally approved on September 4, and by then “it was just a race against time.”
He did tell me, that since September 11, the Bush administration “has been unlike any administration, Democrat or Republican, since the end of WWII. Extremely effective, extremely active.”
Most interesting was when he told me, that based on information he has from high level intelligence sources that on average, that they disrupt one plot a day against Americans somewhere around the world.
Miniter, who has had access to intelligence documents, told me that there was a plot against the U.S. embassy in Paris that was stopped, the U.S. embassy in Bamako, Mali was also targeted, but an attack was prevented. A plot “to turn 15 different ships into floating bombs and set them off against U.S. warships ñ that was stopped.”
There have been many plots that have been stopped, and some of these end up on the newswires, but the “the media just yawns.”
The government has been trying to get this information out. But the media just ignores it. Because of this, Miniter told me that is why blogs are so important. He says, “blogs operate as alternative assignment editors.” Because assignment editors decide which stories are important and which ones are not. Bloggers can “connect the dots,” he told me.
With all this insight into war on terror, I had to ask him if he felt John Kerry could fight an effective war on terror. He answered, “I don’t think he can, partly because the team that surrounds him is the Clinton team. These guys had a whack at it between 1996 and 2000.” And then explain how mindset of the members of the Clinton administration, particularly in their response to the USS Cole bombing. “They had all these excuses for not acting, and it worries me ñ if you elect Kerry, you elect this team … you are electing a failed approach, a ‘make excuses’ not ‘take action’ approach.”
This interview offers some great insight into why we need George W. Bush to be reelected. Miniter strongly believes that Kerry just won’t cut it when fighting the war on terror. I urge you all to listen to this interview

Home, Home Again

Hey everyone, after missing two trains and going through the ordeal of being stranded because of a dead car battery, I have made it back home.
Follow up coverage on the Convention will be coming in the next few days… In the meantime, here is a roundup of some media coverage the RNC Bloggers got:

• The NY Daily News

• Investors Business Journal (a harsh article criticizing lack of traffic to the RNC Bloggers’ sites.
• Kevin McCullough defend the RNC Bloggers from Mark Follmann’s Salon.com piece.

Coming soon, my exclusive interview with Richard Miniter.

FOUR MORE YEARS!!!!

I have just returned from Bush’s speech.
Read my lips, George W. Bush will be President for FOUR MORE YEARS!!!!!!!
Inside, all you feel, all you could be was proud. I was so glad to be in there and be a part of it. The energy, the enthusiasm. It was outstanding. I had never been to a Bush rally before, This was my first time seeing him give a speech in person and it was just an incredible experience.
This was the big event of the week. The moment everyone was waiting for.
I wish I could convey the experience, but I don’t know how to describe it.
John Kerry is on the TV right now making a fool out of himself. He is clearly desperate… and after Bush’s speech, Kerry is runnning scared.
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President Bush’s Speech

Blogs For Bush has it!

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