The Keynotes of the 2016 Political Conventions: The Death of a Genre?

The Keynote

In the spirit of the chapters in Campbell and Jamieson’s landmark works on the presidency, let me first attempt to define what the genre is. This definition will suggest the genre’s importance. Campbell and Jamieson do not assemble data in the quantitative sense; rather, they examine the speeches in each generic category and, standing back from them as a group, pinpoint the commonalities, the varieties, the idiosyncrasies, and any evolution that is apparent. Sometimes, the result of the rhetorical analysis is what we might term a “stable” genre—one that is more or less the same from speech to speech. The inaugural address is one such genre: George Washington established the pattern, and all afterward have more or less followed suits—with exceptions, usually deemed poor examples. However, more often, the result is an “unstable” genre. Here, there seem to be two possibilities—inherently “unstable” (one or more characteristics varying from example to example) and “unstable” because evolving. Presidential apologia would be an example of the first, with a great deal of variation depending on what image restoration strategy the president chooses to use. State of the Union addresses would be an example of the second. Not a speech until the 20th century, it changed once there was a television audience, and it changed again once there was an opposition response delivered afterward.

The keynote may fit into both of these “unstable” categories. There do seem to be two variants, and there also seems to be evolution that might be contributing to the genre’s demise. I will, for the purposes of my analysis of the 2016 conventions, offer a definition. However, one should note the terms used to establish each characteristic: The terms suggest the high degree of variability. One should also note, even before we consider defining the genre, some basic facts about the keynote’s history.

Like the State of the Union address, the keynote is a 20th-century development. The Republicans had a keynoter in 1920, Henry Cabot Lodge, who was also the convention chair. Then, the Republicans skipped to 1936. From 1936 onward, there has been a keynote, with two keynoters in 1972. The roster of keynoters reflects variety—governors (Earl Warren in 1944, Thomas Kean in 1988), senators (Mark Hatfield in 1964, Howard Baker in 1976), war heroes (Douglas MacArthur in 1952, Colin Powell in 2000).

The Democrats first featured a keynoter in 1936; they had two in 1976 (Senator John Glenn, Congresswoman Barbara Jordan) and three in 1992 (Senator Bill Bradley, Governor Zell Miller, and former Congresswoman Barbara Jordan). The Democrats featured no war heroes, but did have a former NBA star.

This relatively brief history, as well as the peculiarity of multiple keynoters at some gatherings, should suggest that there will be less stability than, for example, the presidential inaugural and the presidential farewell, both of which go far back in time and have the commanding example set by George Washington. So, with variability in mind, what characterizes the convention keynote?

First and foremost, the keynote offers the keynote, that is, the convention’s and the party’s theme. Thus, whatever note it sounds should be echoed by other speakers. In 1992, for example, former Texas Congresswoman Barbara Jordan delivered one of two speeches the convention planners (Bill Clinton’s team) labeled “keynote.” In her address, Jordan made it abundantly clear that at that gathering the theme was “change.” She chose to explain the nature of that change—“change from what to what,” as she put it. Others at the convention will reinforce the message, so much so that the Republican National Convention had to respond by arguing that the proposed Grand Old Party (GOP) change was superior to the proposed Democratic change. Jordan’s keynote—one might argue—set the theme for both the Democratic Convention and the Republican Convention.

Second, the keynote is addressed primarily to the party, with the broader television audience overhearing it. Now, in theory, all convention speeches are addressed to the party: After all, they occur at a party gathering. However, the keynote is especially addressed to the party. It is the opportunity for someone admired by the convention planners (early, party officials; after the 1970s, the presumptive candidate’s “people”) either for accomplishments or for potential to tell the party members who they are. The speech is, thus, important in the continuing identity-forming process of the party.

Third, the keynote is offered by someone without immediate political baggage. So, you do not see someone who is seeking or who just sought the nomination taking the stage. The parties seem to move in one of two directions with the speaker—an established party figure such as Mario Cuomo and Howard Baker or an up-and-coming party figure such as Barack Obama and Marco Rubio. The key to this characteristic seems less what people are chosen as what people are thereby avoided. The speaker cannot be too immediately political because being so would prevent the person from adopting the persona of speaker to the party on behalf of the party.

Fourth, the keynote (ideally) strikes the proverbial “happy medium” between being partisan and being philosophical. Jordan’s 1992 keynote, referred to previously, perhaps tilted too far in the philosophical direction, but there have been some keynotes that have sounded more like vice presidential nomination acceptance speeches insofar as they bashed the opponent and praised the nominee. Many think that Mario Cuomo in 1984 hit the middle mark perfectly with an address that was partisan insofar as it indicted the Reagan presidency for failing to acknowledge “that other city” but did not sound like cheerleading for the Mondale–Ferraro ticket. Many keynotes through the years have talked in terms of Democrats and Republicans, not mentioning candidate names. At a certain point in time, this made sense since the names were not known, but even in our present era, when we know the nominees’ names well in advance of the conventions, many keynoters speak much more about the parties than the particular people. Barbara Jordan in 1992, for example, did not utter the name “Clinton.” On the other hand, some keynoters named names repeatedly—both the names of the party’s nominees and the names of the opposing party’s nominees. Purists may prefer the philosophical keynote to the partisan, but the reality is that there are two variants of the keynote genre.

As the foregoing suggests, the keynote serve an important political party function. If one steps back from the entirety of a typical convention, four rhetorical functions might be identified: to criticize the opposition, to outline what the nominees will do, to praise the nominees, and to speak about what the particular political party stands for. One might well map the common speeches onto these three purposes. Nominating and seconding speeches, for example, praise the party’s candidates; the vice presidential nominee’s acceptance speech attacks the other side; the presidential nominee’s acceptance speech—with a more presidential demeanor—talks about future policy directions. Speeches by vanquished candidates are expected to say good things about those who won the nominations, and speeches by former presidents are expected to explain how these victors will continue the pursuit of the positive goals they tried to pursue. Among the common speech genres, the only one addressing what the party stands for is the keynote. Arguably, it has a unique rhetorical function.

One might naively believe that the parties do not need identity rhetoric because they are well-established and constant. As recent studies have demonstrated, parties are quite volatile (Darman, 2014; Patterson, 2012; Richardson, 2014; Wilentz, 2016).

Somehow, the Republican Party, very much the party of the common man, became the party of the wealthy by 1900, so much so that Republican President Theodore Roosevelt felt he must abandon it. Then, during the 1950s and 1960s, there was very much a split between a pragmatic moderate wing and a very ideological conservative wing. The latter triumphed in 1964 with the nomination of Barry Goldwater, but the nation was not ready for the message yet. Then, it retriumphed, with “The Great Communicator” Ronald Reagan’s oratorical brilliance, in 1980. Then, it split between social conservatives and fiscal conservatives.

The Democratic Party traces its history to either Jefferson or Jackson, but, during the Civil War era, it was very much the southern-dominated group that tried to thwart social justice. After a retreat, it reemerged as a progressive-leaning (on some but not all issues) group with Cleveland and Wilson. Then, Franklin D. Roosevelt created a coalition of northern progressive, organized labor, African Americans, and southern segregationists that, very surprisingly, endured through 1948 and maybe a bit beyond. Recall that John F. Kennedy felt he had to make civil rights a second-term issue because of the dominance in the Senate of southerners of his party who would block all of his agenda if he pushed civil rights early. That coalition eventually did collapse, with Nixon (and George Wallace) picking up the disgruntled southerners. After arguably moving too far left in 1972 with George McGovern, the party developed a liberal-centrist tension that colors Democratic Party politics to this day.

These accounts are not meant to be definitive: Books could be written (and have) on both parties’ evolutions. The point I want to make is that party identity is not constant. Over century-long stretches, the parties have, arguably, reversed: Republicans moving from progressive to conservative; Democrats moving in the opposite directions. Over shorter periods, the changes are less striking but are still noticeable. Barbara Jordan (again) tries to tell the Democrats in 1992 that they cannot be the party that threw money at social problems but need to embrace the fiscal caution exhibited by “New Democrats,” such as nominee Bill Clinton (whom she never names).

In this context of ever-evolving party identity, the keynote address has a unique rhetorical place. It tries to tell the party what it stands for, what it is. Without a strong keynote, a party risks losing its identity. Such a loss inevitably results in internal dissension and decline. The party needs a strong keynote then. And, if the success of our political system is dependent on two strong parties, then our political system needs strong keynotes on the part of both Democrats and Republicans. Unfortunately, the keynote’s importance has not always been recognized. There have been some unsuccessful ones—usually because they failed to meet the four defining characteristics. But it is not my intention to survey keynotes through the years and point out the good and the bad. Rather, I want to point to realities external to the parties that are threatening the genre.

These realities begin with the media’s decision to shrink network coverage of the conventions from gavel to gavel to an hour per night, Monday through Thursday. Those planning a convention then had to decide what to air during this time of maximum exposure as opposed to earlier primetime that would be covered by cable news networks (with many interruptions by commentators) and to preprimetime that would receive the least exposure. Below is a list of what planners might want to include in the priority window:

Some of these will vary from year to year: For example, in 2016, Trump has two Republican predecessors, both of whom declined to attend the Cleveland meeting, whereas Clinton had three, one of whom could do double duty as a spouse; but, in 1976, Ford had only the disgraced Nixon and Carter had none. Even with year to year variation making some of the speeches less pressing, this list is still daunting if you are a planner and you have a total of 4 hours of network time. What to include? What to marginalize?

The selection process can work against the keynote in two ways. First, its importance might not be acknowledged by planners and media and, as a result, it falls into a less prominent category, if not disappears. Its importance is something a rhetorical scholar would quickly recognize. Convention planners—and the media as well—are second, its importance might be noted but it, as category, might get combined with some other category as it is executed and/or it might get crammed with other speeches that might overwhelm it. Either way, the keynote—and the important political function it serves—becomes minimized if not lost. The 2016 conventions give us examples of both of these possibilities. At the Republican National Convention, the keynote vanished; at the Democratic National Convention, it lost its impact because of how it occasionally morphed into another genre and because of how it was framed on its night.

The Trump Convention

Once upon a time, party officials planned conventions. Then, with the increased importance of the primaries and with the identity of the presumptive nominee known well in advance of the convention, the planning task shifted from party officials to the candidate’ team. This team was usually politically savvy enough to know what was typically done at a convention. There would then be an expectation that certain time-honored traditions would be honored. The Trump team, however, was not experienced. With Paul Manafort in charge, one would have expected a degree of awareness of the various traditions, but there seems to have been only a degree, resulting in nods in tradition’s direction but not much more.

In addition, at least according to the candidate, the Trump team did not feel bound by the way conventions were typically arranged, thinking that they perhaps needed to be more entertaining. Given both the inexperience and the ambivalence about tradition, we should not be surprised that the convention was different from most. In fact, we might well be surprised that the traditional elements present were present.

In many ways, the Trump team had it easy: Neither of the two living Republican former presidents wanted to speak; many of Trump’s primary opponents did not want to speak. He had fewer pieces to fit in, and, consequently, fewer pieces he needed to marginalize or discard. One piece he did discard, however, was the keynote. There was no speech designated as such.

The absence of a keynote is, perhaps, symptomatic of both where Trump stood vis-à-vis the Republican Party and the state of that party. Trump had been a Democrat and had financially supported the campaigns of several Democratic candidates. He now found his position more in harmony with the GOP than with the Democrats; however, on certain issues, there did seem to be a gap. In addition, because he felt the Republican Party establishment was not supportive of his candidacy, he did not feel obligated to do party business at his convention. The keynote, properly done, is the party talking to the party. Given Trump’s attitude toward the GOP, he and his people may well have felt that the speech represented party business that he had every right, given the way he was treated, to ignore. The Trump team may also have felt that a speech that had the party talking to the party was likely to bore the prospective television audience. That audience wanted more entertaining fare, and Trump likely wanted the speeches to all focus or him—or attack Hillary Clinton. Rhetoric praising “the party of Lincoln” or “the party of Reagan” may have struck him as beside the point in 2016.

The party, however, very much needed a keynote. The long primary season, with 17 candidates, had revealed a number of tearing seams in the party. Many were tied to personality, but many were based on issues. If one listened carefully to the several Republican debates, the only consistent shared theme was dislike of Clinton and Obama. United by whom they were opposed to, the candidates did not communicate a philosophical position that united them. Because Trump’s philosophical position was difficult to discern, this absence of a GOP philosophy was more of a problem than if the candidate had been Bush or Cruz. Those two would have evinced somewhat different philosophies, traditional conservatism with Bush; something more “Tea Party-ish” with Cruz. Either way, there would have been a philosophy. Not so with Trump and thus the need for a keynote to tell the GOP who they were, other than those who intensely disliked Obama and Clinton.

The consequences of this rhetorical failure cannot yet be determined. With either a Trump victory or a Trump loss, the party moves forward without a clear idea of what the party is. That is, of course, not a strong political position, one that requires a rhetorical leader within the party to step forward quickly and offer a definition of the GOP to fill the void. If one steps back from the day-to-day drama of Campaign ’16, one can discern Speaker of the House Paul Ryan occasionally trying to play this very role. One can imagine, with either a Trump victory or a Trump loss, that Ryan may well be the definer-in-chief for the Republican Party during 2017 and 2018.

The Clinton Convention

Whereas the Trump team had the advantage of fewer people who wanted the podium, the Clinton campaign had to try to accommodate just about all of the items on the list above. The only advantages the team had were, first, that Hillary Clinton’s spouse was also a former president and, second, that she had had 5, not 16, rivals for the Democratic nomination (with 2 of those, Lincoln Chafee and Jim Webb, largely irrelevant for convention planning purposes). These advantages did not significantly reduce the need the campaign felt to cram as much as possible of note into the 10:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. EDST window allowed by the major networks, with a bit more of note into the earlier primetime period (8:00 p.m.-10:00 p.m.) during which there was cable network coverage attracting political “junkies.”

One might argue that, on Wednesday night, the cramming resulted in a sequence of progressively louder rhetorical explosions, directed at different audiences: Biden talking to the middle class; Bloomberg talking to independents who might think Trump qualified because he is a successful businessman; Kaine talking to both mainstream Democrats and those progressives who had not yet discovered how progressive he was; Obama talking to the American people who had elected him and, with surprisingly high numbers, found him favorable. The cramming was not a negative because the speeches were directed differently and were framed in that manner by the media covering Wednesday night. No one watching was confused about each speaker’s distinct rhetorical role.

On Monday night, the cramming was more of a problem because there were three crucial speeches and the media did not know how to frame them. They were delivered by first lady Michelle Obama, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Slightly earlier speeches by New York Senator Kristen Gillibrand and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker—with an odd comic colloquy between Minnesota Senator Al Franken and stand-up performer Sarah Silverman (both of whom wrote for and occasionally performed on Saturday Night Live)—added to the framing problem. Was there a single theme? If not, did each speaker have a clear role?

Of these many performances, the easiest to frame was the last: In genre terms, Sanders’s address was a speech given by a defeated rival. This genre is arguably sometimes important and sometimes not, depending on how defeated the rival was and how crucial his or her supporters were thought to be to the nominee’s chances in the general election. Clinton did not outdistance Sanders by much, and his supporters were thought to be very much needed if Clinton was to triumph over Trump. Therefore, his speech was thought to be important and was given a great deal of media attention. He was in much the same position that Hillary had been in in 2008. Many wondered if he would come through for Clinton the way Clinton had come through for Obama. Michelle Obama’s speech also received much attention. Her “star power” provides one explanation, but the rhetorical disaster of Melania Trump’s speech a week earlier provides another. How much better would the plagiarized Michelle do compared with the plagiarizing Melania?

In between was the speech delivered by Elizabeth Warren (Drabold, 2016), the designated keynote. Although, if viewed in isolation, it was an effective speech, it lost its effectiveness because it was sandwiched between Michelle Obama and Bernie Sanders. More was of interest or at stake in those speeches, and the media paid more attention to them. Warren’s keynote, crammed in as it was, got lost. Arguably, it also got lost for two other reasons. First, some in the media—for example, The Washington Post—thought it was the first of two keynotes, with Bill Clinton’s speech on Tuesday being the second; second, Warren was framed as representing the “Sanders Wing” of the party, a role she really did not need to play that night because Bernie Sanders himself was going to speak after her.

The keynote address also lost its effectiveness because it was not entirely in the mode of a keynote. Let us consider the four characteristics outline earlier.

Does she tell the party who it is and thereby give the convention a focus? Eventually, yes. If the Democrats are not the party comprising the working class, the party is at least those who are committed to fighting for the working class. Like Obama in 2004, she uses her personal story to highlight the opportunity America ought to offer to all, and she defines the Democrats as defenders of this opportunity. By contrast, she makes clear, Donald Trump (and Republicans) are opposed to helping workers and are predisposed to helping the rich.

There are three problems with Warren’s approach, however. No one of them is crucial in weakening it as a keynote, but, together, they may be. First, her definition of the party is rather clearly in line with the rhetoric used heavily by its progressive wing. In attempting to bring that wing more fully behind Clinton, she may have given the party a tinge too liberal for centrists in and out of the Democratic fold. Second, her theme was picked up by only some of the speakers who would follow her on the next three nights. Vice President Joe Biden on Wednesday night was very much rhetorically aligned with Warren but others were pursuing several other courses. Third, Warren did other things in her speech that may have upstage her attempt at defining the party. More about these “other things” when we turn to the fourth characteristic of the keynote genre.

Does Warren speak to the party? No and yes. The first two thirds of her address, in which she talks about the fading opportunities in America and the Republicans’ role in blocking action that might help, seems addressed at the television audience—at American voters. Then, in the last third, she shifts audience. She talks about how Trump is trying to divide “us” and how necessary action is thwarted “[w]hen we turn on each other.” In these sentences, it is not entirely clearly who the “we” is. But then, Warren begins a litany, each piece beginning with “We believe” and ending with “we’re with her”:

We believe that no matter who you are, no matter where you’re from, no matter who you love, equal means equal. Hillary will fight to make sure discrimination has no replace in America. And we’re with her!

We believe that no one, no one, who works full time should live in poverty. Hillary will fight for raising the minimum wage, fair scheduling, paid family and medical leave! And we’re with her!

We believe every kid in America should have a chance for a great education without getting crushed by debt. Hillary will fight for refinancing student loans and debt-free college. And we’re with her.

We believe that after a lifetime of hard work, seniors should be able to retire with dignity. Hillary will fight to expand Social Security, strengthen Medicare, and protect retirement accounts. And we’re with her!

We believe that oil companies shouldn’t call the shots in Washington, that science matters, that climate change is real. Hillary will fight to preserve this earth for our children and grandchildren. And we’re with her!

We believe—and I can’t believe I have to say this in 2016—in equal pay for equal work and a woman’s right to control over her own body! Hillary will fight for women. And we’re with her.

We believe we don’t need WEAKER rules on Wall Street, we need stronger rules, and when big banks get too risky, break ’em up. Hillary will fight to hold big banks accountable. And we’re with her.

We believe that the United States should never, never, sign trade deals that help giant corporations but leave working people in the dirt! Hillary will fight for American workers. And we’re with her!

And just one more. We believe we must get big money out of politics and roots out corruption. Hillary will fight to overturn Citizens United and return this government to the people. And we’re with her!

Here, in offering a credo, her “we” seems to be the Democratic Party.

Is Warren the appropriate person for a keynote? She had not been a candidate for the presidential nomination, and she had chosen to remain neutral in the Clinton–Sanders contest, so she possessed the requisite distance from the campaign. She also both had the requisite standing in the party (like Cuomo in 1984) and was up-and-coming (like Obama in 2004). Her meteoric rise into and within the U.S. Senate had provided her with both current standing and prospective standing.

Finally, how did she finesse the philosophical–partisan divide that seems to produce two species of keynote? Perhaps because she was already being used as a stump speaker for Hillary Clinton, Warren veered to the partisan side. In between an initial attack on Trump’s privileged background and a later attack on his business practices and his bigotry, she sandwiches an attack on Republicans in Congress who have repeatedly said “no” to progressive legislation designed to help those seeking opportunity. Initially, she says,

On one side is a man who inherited a fortune from his father and kept it going by cheating people and skipping out on debts. A man who has never sacrificed anything for anyone. A man who care only for himself—every minute of every day.

Then, she turns to the Republicans:

Look at Congress since the Republicans took over. Democrats proposed refinancing student loans. And Republicans? They said no! Democrats proposed ending tax breaks for corporations that ship jobs overseas. And Republicans? They said no. Democrats proposed raising the minimum wage. And Republicans? They said no.

Then, back to Trump:

Time after time he preyed on working people, people in debt, people who had fallen on hard times. He’s conned them, he’s defrauded them, and he’s ripped them off.

Her speech, at points, sounds more like a typical vice presidential nomination acceptance speech than a keynote. Her use of repetition reinforces this impression as does her litany of “We believe” (anaphora) and “we’re with her” (epistrophe) in the speech’s peroration.

One would think that one asked to deliver a keynote address would look carefully at previous examples of the genre—Barbara Jordan’s two (1976, 1992), Mario Cuomo’s (1984), and Barack Obama’s (2004). If Warren had so looked, she might have proceeded differently. Perhaps she looked instead at less successful keynoted that erred too much on the partisan, attacking side, or perhaps she conceived of herself as addressing the convention (and nation) in a manner much like she had already manifested in the campaign. If she conceived of her speech in this manner, the cause may be not her mistake but the Clinton campaign’s failure to make it absolutely clear that she was the keynoter. That the Post reported Bill’s speech as a keynote is probably not sloppiness on the part of the reporter but, rather, looseness in the use of the term “keynote” by the Clinton team. More broadly, her speech, which occasionally but not always conform to genre, may reflect a general decline in this speech’s importance. People and the media are no longer looking forward to “the keynote.” (Many may not be able to explain what the speech is or does.)

The media, of course, covered Elizabeth Warren’s (Drabold, 2016) speech. They covered Michelle Obama’s and Bernie Sanders’s more. Wikipedia is, of course, less than a definitive basis for any argument, but, as a socially constructed text, it does perhaps offer a communal consensus. Accessed just over a month after the Democratic National Convention, Wikipedia lists the “noteworthy” speeches. Michelle Obama’s is on the list, as is Bernie Sanders’s; Elizabeth Warren’s “keynote” is not. Its omission, although it proves no argument, is nonetheless revealing.

The Democrats did not need a strong keynote the way the Republicans did. There had been a Democratic president for 8 years, and, after some distancing on her part, Hillary Clinton was clearly attaching her presidency to Obama’s. There was a rather clear “Fighting for You” message throughout the convention: Obama had fought; Clinton would fought. The only dissent in the party was among those who thought Clinton would not fight hard enough. But all agreed on the fight, especially after Hillary Clinton’s rhetoric had gradually edged closer to the Sanders and Warren rhetoric during the preconvention period. The Democrats needed to be told who they were less than the Republicans did. So, the absence of a strong keynote would not seem to be the problem for the Democrats that it is likely to be for the Republicans.

The Future of the Genre

Even though Warren’s failure to be a true keynoter in all respects probably has few immediate costs, that failure plus the total absence of a keynote at Trump’s convention may signal that the convention keynote is becoming a genre of the past. Two other trends also point in this direction: First, the number of conventions that have (due to the nominee’s generosity or indecision) featured more than one keynote and, second, the number of keynoters who have departed from the model set by the likes of Barbara Jordan and Mario Cuomo by vacating the middle ground between partisan and philosophical and moving markedly in the partisan direction.

The second trend blurs the keynote address with many other convention speeches, most notably the vice presidential nominee’s acceptance but also those by party leaders, who sound a partisan note, and defeated rivals, who sound a broad partisan note because doing so is easier than saying too many nice things about a person who just defeated you. The effect of this blurring is to distract from what the keynote is supposed to do. The first trend has a similar effect: It detracts from the importance of a single keynote by suggesting that here are multiples ones. Are there then multiple themes? Are there then multiple definitions of who the party is? No longer is there a voice signaling to the party faithful who they are and what mission they should now embrace. With multiple keynoters, the situation is more multiple choice—unless the speakers coordinate, in which case there is redundancy. That is certainly not desirable when primetime speaking time is scarce.

What seems to be happening is that the term “keynote” has lost much of its meaning. It is now being used as label signaling “important.” In the material the parties send to the media, they also label certain speakers as “featured.” So, the media may just be lumping all of the highlighted speeches together in determining what commentating time the media personalities and their guest experts have left. “Now, to the podium for something important” may have replaced “Now, to the podium for the keynote.”

Politics and political communication, of course, evolve. The convention of 2016 is not the convention of 1916 (100 years ago) or 1964 and 1968 (close to 50). But as communication evolves, rhetoricians need to assess the gains and the losses. The keynote, if it disappears, would be a loss if the speech still, in 2016, served a purpose. So, the ultimate question to ask is do the political parties, every 4 years, benefit from a moment when someone who is sufficiently neutral and sufficiently respects tells the party who their members are? Is party identity so clear that the need for the moment has passed, or is party identity still as volatile a matter as it has been in the history of both major political parties? If one answers as I think one must, then the loss of the keynote is a rhetorical problem for our politics.