It's been a while since we looked at the Mom Index on politics. Luckily for you, Dear Reader, I'm actually out in New Jersey visiting my mother, so we can check in the index in close to real time.
We watched a lot of the convention speeches last night, after spending most of dinner talking about politics. The Dad Index isn't particularly useful for monitoring politics, since I think my father derives great joy from being contrarian and disrespecting everyone in the national political scene. The Dad Index is always down on everything. The dinner conversation, though, allows us to take pre-speech and post-speech Index readings.
On Democrats in General. This one wasn't affected by the convention itself. Both before and after watching convention coverage, my mother claimed to like Democrats in general, and expressed some fondness for both Bill and Hillary Clinton. I think this shows just how successful the rehabilitation of the Clinton public image has been; just a few short years ago my mother was calling the one of them a scumbag and the other evil.
On Ted Kennedy. Pre-speech: the Mom Index rates Teddy quite favorably. If he did horrible and stupid things when he was younger (cf. Chappaquiddick), she said, it's heartless to hold him accountable for them in light of the fact that he lost both of his brothers so young. He's had a hard life. Post-speech: "Susan, honey, you don't think he was drunk, do you?"
On Barak Obama. Pre-speech: "Isn't he an Arab? He's Egyptian, right?" A quick primer on his background didn't help all that much, but a short bio piece on the local PBS station built some sympathy for the skinny kid from the South Side, on the basis of his having lost his father so young. Post-speech: In what I consider the greatest tragedy of the evening, my mother missed Obama's speech on account of having fallen asleep while Howard Dean was talking.
On Teresa Heinz Kerry. Pre-speech: My mother was horrified by the whole "shove it" business, declaring Teresa rude and unlikeable. Post-speech: My mother roused from her Dean-induced slumber while Teresa was speaking in tongues and excused herself from the room to get some water. She came back in time to hear the great spin about opinionated women speaking their minds; I thought that was a nice bit of work, myself, turning the press flap in to a positive, and it played well on the Mom Index. "Good for her, you tell them" was the final verdict on the potential First Lady's speech.
In Summary: While my mother found it baffling (if cute) that I ended the evening by proclaiming that the Democrats were restoring my faith in the machinery of politics by finally getting off their asses and promoting a positive message, she did agree that it was a good showing overall.