Nothing better symbolized the differences between the Republican and Democratic conventions than the speeches delivered by a teenager at each gathering.
Speaking last week, 13-year-old Brayden Harrington
offered a moving account of his struggles with a stutter and how Joe Biden, who overcame a stutter of his own, tried to help him at a campaign stop in New Hampshire. This, we learned, is typical of Biden — a man who has endured more than his fair share of suffering and has reached out to comfort those with problems of their own.
What a different message was conveyed this week by 18-year-old
Nicholas Sandmann at the Republican convention. Sandmann is sore that he was portrayed by some news organizations as the aggressor in a 2019 confrontation with a Native American activist at the Lincoln Memorial while wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat. He has become a celebrity by embracing his own victimhood — and he was eager to make the most powerful man on the planet out to be a victim, too. “I know you’ll agree with me when we say that no one in this country has been a victim of unfair media coverage more than President Donald Trump,” Sandmann said.
The Republican convention lineup was larded with Trump’s relatives — it sometimes felt more like a family reunion than a political gathering — but they were no more successful than Sandmann in offering any humanizing anecdotes about the president. Is there a single moment of Trump’s life when he has shown the kind of empathy and understanding that Biden routinely displays?
Even Trump’s offspring delivered rote praise of the Great Leader (“He is a fighter and will never stop fighting for America,”
said daughter-in-law Lara Trump) without offering a single anecdote to make him remotely lovable or even likable. There was, in short, not a word said to dispel the damning impression of Trump’s own sister, who said in a
secretly recorded conversation that the president is a serial liar with no interest in helping people and “no principles.”