The Convention by Telephone

For all of those readers out there who can't empathize with the ennui so many reporters feel about political conventions (Mike Kinsley has just described himself as "one of the thousands of journalists, all chasing the same story") I have decided to launch an experiment: How much can you learn, really and truly, about Barack Obama if you aren't in Denver, aren't even in the U.S. and don't have C-SPAN either? I'm not exactly in outer Siberia, but I'm not exactly in the thick of things in Denver (rural Poland, if you must know). Nevertheless, U.S. politics tend to echo around the world in odd ways, almost like a game of telephone: Obama says something in Denver, it gets repeated in New York, it gets changed slightly in Paris and by the time it appears in Moscow, he seems to be saying the opposite. I've decided to listen to those echoes from my strange perspective, and see how they sound.

It is possible, of course, that the answer to the "how much can you learn, really and truly" question is..."nothing." A quick review of the convention Web site this evening, European time, produced some boosterish city-of-Denver video propaganda and a lot of what British papers call "curtain raisers": stories written before the event has actually happened, and that say, therefore, almost nothing. And now it's bedtime. But by the time I wake up tomorrow, Michelle Obama will have spoken, and the game of telephone will surely have begun....