Melania Trump provided an interlude that was oddly effective even if revealed as theft by receiving.
Otherwise the Republicans’ theme on the opening night of their convention was that they are very, very scared. It’s Halloween every day with these people.
The theme was that other things — such as people different from them — scare them even more than their own reckless presidential nominee scares them.
Republicans let America know they are afraid of ISIS. They are afraid of resentful black people. They are afraid of Latino immigrants. They are afraid of the Muslim religion. They are afraid of a global economy. They are afraid someone is coming to get their guns. They are afraid of open-carried guns in Cleveland. They are afraid of Hillary Clinton. They are afraid of policies they disagree with.
They fear everything but Donald Trump’s finger on the button.
Their speakers Monday night were so agitated by fear that, among them, U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton was the least volatile. Or maybe it was just that, as a public speaker, Cotton is an impressive resume.
His job was to go out and announce that he’d served in the military and to declare that “help is on the way.” He got it done with what a commentator called a charisma gap. It wasn’t so bad. Cotton’s political ambition survived. Trump has proven Republicans are apt to nominate anybody for president.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani railed and flailed about being afraid. Retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn blared stone-faced about being afraid. Both made Hillary Clinton’s speaking style seem, by comparison, at ease and understated.
Scott Baio said something. A soap opera actor also said something. The mother of a State Department employee killed in Benghazi said she held Hillary Clinton personally responsible. There was a time when everyday political dialogue didn’t extend to accusations of murder.
All of them made a case — or an assertion, one lacking any evidence — that Trump, quite possibly the most frightfully unqualified and irresponsible person ever to get a major party’s presidential nomination, was the man to make us feel safe again.
But nearly all of that took place outside prime time. So it won’t much matter.
What will matter is the television show from 9 to 10 p.m.
The story of that hour was that Trump has a Slovenia-born and fashion-model wife named Melania. It was that Melania stood in a massive, pressure-packed arena and spoke competently in her third or fourth or fifth language. It was that she made herself seem somehow both more exotic and more accessible. It was that she made momentarily plausible the absurd case that people ought to like her husband. She told us that, as president, he would love and help everybody, including the Hispanics he wants to run out and the Muslims he wants to keep out.
Melania said nothing revealing or supportively anecdotal or non-platitudinous. She said nothing lasting. She said nothing deep.
She simply said stuff and did so effectively.
Alas, she also said about two paragraphs that a speechwriter had lifted almost verbatim from Michelle Obama’s speech at the Democratic National Convention in 2008.
So Melania ought to face, but won’t face — because the Trumps and Republicans get away with everything — Joe Biden’s fate.
While a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988, Biden plagiarized a paragraph or two of a British Labor Party leader’s speech. The revelation forced him out of the race.
But he was not permanently harmed. He came back in 2008 to become vice president — a popular and competent and even widely beloved one.
So Melania needs to drop out of the race for first lady, which will necessitate — by the way marriage works — that her husband drop out of the race for president. But the Trumps can return to forgiveness and glory in 2036, when Donald will be a spry, tow-headed 90.
One more thing: Plagiarism aside, probably the best thing Melania did was speak adequately enough to take TV viewers’ minds off the utter caricature of the comically overdone presentation of her ego-consumed husband to make her introduction.
Trump appeared as the male Beyoncé, center stage in silhouette — in bright lights set against darkened ones — as Queen’s “We Are the Champions” presumed to set a profound and stirring musical theme of great triumph.
Melania seemed normal compared to that — as just about anyone would.
John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers’ Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.