or sheer, stark television drama, Bill Clinton's lonely walk down the corridor before his Monday night speech was the highlight of the Democratic convention. ABC anchor Peter Jennings said the president's solitary journey ''has a rather strange look to it,'' while his NBC counterpart, Tom Brokaw, called it ''an appearance that was worthy of a retiring rock star.''
Once on stage, Clinton, the best White House TV performer since Ronald Reagan, galvanized the convention crowd by asking, ''Are we better off today than we were eight years ago?'' But when he finished, the pundits were quick to pinpoint his role as double-edged sword.
''What the president didn't talk about tonight was `Clinton fatigue' and the people who have lost some respect for him,'' noted NBC's Tim Russert. In describing how Clinton fatigue and foibles were bleeding onto Al Gore's candidacy, Brokaw bluntly compared the vice president to the student blamed in class ''when the teacher turned around and pointed at the wrong guy.''
In an interview with the Globe, CNN senior analyst William Schneider said that to be effective, the Democratic convention needed to pull off a ''Tennessee two-step, embracing Clinton's policies while distancing Gore and Lieberman from his behavior and values.''
Last night, the prime-time TV portion of the convention was designed to accomplish the latter, as vice presidential nominee Joseph Lieberman, an Orthodox Jew who frequently invoked God, praised the virtue of his running mate. A vocal Senate critic of sex and violence in the entertainment industry, Lieberman said that Gore ''believes, as I do, that no parent in America should be forced to compete with popular culture'' to raise their kids and extolled the vice president as ''a man of family and a man of faith.''
When Gore's actor friend Tommy Lee Jones and daughter Karenna Gore Schiff followed by lauding him as ''a good, caring, loving man'' and as an attentive father, CNN's Jeff Greenfield was quick to note that ''the regular-guy thing is a huge theme tonight.''
As CBS anchor Dan Rather put it, the gatherings in Philadelphia and Los Angeles are little more than ''a tightly scripted infomercial.'' (CBS actually aired a wistful ''The Way We Were'' piece recalling the days when nominating conventions were actually exciting.)
In that framework, the Republicans who met in Philadelphia two weeks ago had to make an ''infomercial'' to convince independent voters that George W. Bush was leading an inclusive, moderate Republican Party into battle. In Los Angeles, the trailing Gore campaign had a trickier task, trying to balance and ultimately sell an ''infomercial'' of dueling images to the viewing audience.
First, there was the difficult parlay of Clinton, mastermind of the economic recovery, and Clinton, the scandal-tainted sinner. Then there was the dicey choreography of bringing home the hard-core liberal base while convincing critical swing voters that the Gore-Lieberman ticket was comfortably centrist.
On Tuesday night, ABC's Sam Donaldson shrewdly noted that ''the Republicans were successful ... in Philly by sending a [message] that was hot, straight, and true.'' The Democrats in Los Angeles, he added, were exhibiting a collage of ''mixed messages.'' Even their convention music seemed to suffer from a split personality. While the strains of the forward-looking ''Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow'' reverberated in the hall following Clinton's Monday speech, Senator Edward Kennedy's ascension to the podium on Tuesday was greeted by the nostalgic tune ''You're Still the One.''
If there was a story line that dominated early television coverage of the convention, it was Gore's need to first bring Democratic voters back into the fold. With PBS commentator Mark Shields noting that Bush already had more than 90 percent of the Republicans behind his candidacy and Russert stating that Gore, in contrast, had slightly less than three-quarters of Democrats in his camp, the math dictated the images the Democrats needed to display.
And so, in the words of ABC commentator George Stephanopoulos, Tuesday was ''liberals night. They're gonna give the liberals old-time religion.'' CNN commentator Tucker Carlson was less polite, characterizing the lineup as ''so retro ... the old face of the Democratic Party.'' And PBS's Paul Gigot dubbed it ''Ralph Nader night without Ralph Nader.''
The crucial prime-time speeches belonged to Kennedy and his niece Caroline, whose discomfort in the limelight was painfully evident on television. But those watching cable coverage earlier Tuesday saw a parade of party heavyweights from the bygone days before the centrist Democratic Leadership Council began setting the ideological tone and agenda.
Veteran liberal war horses Mario Cuomo and Walter Mondale both showed up on ''Larry King Live,'' and the most rousing television performance of the evening came from Jesse Jackson, who opened the party's tent flaps as wide as possible by declaring that ''this Democratic convention is set in that great divide between Beverly Hills and South Central.''
Yet, some commentator reaction to Jackson's fiery partisan speech - at one point he delighted delegates by ticking off the names of such conservative Republican foes as Senators Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms - highlighted the difficulty of the Democrats' balancing act.
Russert called the speech ''very partisan and directed at the base,'' but suggested it was not as politically effective as the more mainstream appeal General Colin Powell displayed for the Republicans in Philadelphia.
On CNN, Salon.com Washington correspondent Jake Tapper wondered aloud if the Democrats hadn't made ''a big tactical mistake'' on Tuesday. ''The whole evening just recalls 20 years ago,'' he added.
But at this year's Democratic convention, another night means another televised message, one foreshadowed on Tuesday night when ABC's Michel Martin hauled out the damning statistic that ''Gore is losing the white male vote by a margin of 2 to 1.''
A few minutes later, her colleague Cokie Roberts was proposing a remedy for that problem. ''Tomorrow night and the next night,'' she told viewers, ''it's on to the Independents.''
In his speech last night, Lieberman walked a tightrope by mixing traditional Democratic positions with what CNN's John King called ''an emphasis on values, on integrity.'' And the ''Tennessee two-step'' continued.
