Greetings from the Democratic National Convention

Greetings from the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. My wife is here as a delegate, and I'm just tagging along.

Cynic: "Oh, you're on a junket. You're a free loader living off the public tax dollar. Thanks for wasting our money."

"Hold on just a minute. This point is often misunderstood. All the delegates and their guests at this Convention are paying their own way. It cost us $438 for airfare. The room costs $200 a day. The hotel is out in the middle of nowhere about 6 miles from the Time Warner Cable Arena, So, to this point, not having a car, we have to eat our meals at the hotel. (Dinner last night was $62.00.) That's expensive, personally expensive."

Cynic: "Then why did you do it?"

"Why do pilgrims go to Mecca? The Democratic National Convention is the spiritual homeland for Democrats. We're here to celebrate the Party and its principles."

Actually, today, Sunday, the Convention has yet to start officially. One hundred delegates and guests from New Hampshire are sharing the hotel with 300 from New Jersey (who will doubtless tell us where they live by identifying the nearest exit on the New Jersey Turnpike). However, several events are taking place. This afternoon, a Welcome Delegates reception will be held, to be followed this evening, by a gathering back here at the hotel sponsored by the New Hampshire and New Jersey Democratic Parties. I'll let you know how they go.

So, as we are at a transition point between the end of the Republican National Convention and the start of the Democratic Convention, it might be useful to look back on the Republican Convention as a guide to what we might expect from the Democratic one.

Nothing involving human beings is without human error. Families try to plan weddings so they are perfect, but they inevitably are not. At my daughter's wedding, the flowers arrived just an hour before the ceremony, and we unexpectedly ran out of appetizers. So it is with conventions.Great effort is expended to have them run flawlessly, but they don't.

Republicans could hardly have expected Hurricane Isaac, which caused the cancellation of  the first day of the convention. On the second day, after a heartfelt speech by Ann Romney, Republicans could hardly have expected the speech given by keynote speaker Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.

Instead of praising Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney as keynote speakers are supposed to do, Christie acted as if he were launching his own 2016 presidential bid, and spent most of his time talking about himself.

On the third day, Republican delegates boisterously welcomed their fair-haired  (figuratively speaking) hero, the vice-presidential nominee Congressman Paul Ryan. Who could have known that Ryan would give a speech so honeycombed with falsehoods that the national press collectively recoiled?

Sally Kohn of Fox News (got that - Fox News!) said his speech was "an apparent attempt to set the world record for the greatest number of blatant lies and misrepresentations slipped into a single political speech."

And, on the fourth day, who could have predicted that actor and director Clint Eastwood would debate an empty chair completely upstaging Mitt Romney's presidential acceptance speech. Eastwood gave the appearance of an older gentleman suffering a schizophrenic episode in which he hallucinated an imaginary friend.

Well, as I said, where there are humans, there are mistakes. Doubtless the Democrats will make a few. We'll just have to wait and see.