Dan Nowicki

The Republic | azcentral.com

PHILADELPHIA — It was hard to miss the dramatic contrasts between the Democrats' and Republican's national conventions.

The four-day spectacles, which offer an opportunity for the presidential nominees and their parties to present their best face as the general-election battle begins, seemed to be held in different Americas.

One, a foreboding place besieged by terrorism and violence. The other, a nation with struggles but where people of different backgrounds can overcome problems by working together.

Either group, it seemed, might not recognize the picture of the United States that the other portrayed.

The candidates' nomination speeches distilled these contrasts. Hillary Clinton, the first woman ever nominated by a major U.S. party, spoke of unity and reached out to all Americans, even those who won't vote for her, with a positive tone. Donald Trump at times painted a grim portrait of the United States as a nation facing immediate threats from illegal immigration, terrorism and attacks on law enforcement.

These differences — and the internal tensions that erupted at times into booing and chants throughout both conventions — provide insight into the state of the presidential race, as well as the future of the two parties.

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How they told their story

Trump's speech effectively communicated where his campaign is coming from, but the rest of his convention had a put-together-on-the-fly quality.

The Democratic Party's convention, which concluded Thursday here at Wells Fargo Center, a polished, show-biz extravaganza.

It featured big-name Hollywood and music world personalities mixed with political heavyweights such as President Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and former President Bill Clinton.

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The Democrats also made it a point to spotlight diversity, both in the makeup of its state delegations and in its convention speakers, which, besides the politicians and celebrities included speakers of different races, religious faiths, sexual orientations and physical ability.

They highlighted the accomplishments of the current administration while setting the stage for Clinton to make her case for continuing its legacy during her nomination-acceptance speech.

"One of the things that's really crucial about modern conventions is that they are scripted and this is a moment where you have the opportunity to tell your story in your words, with basically no counterpunch or counterpoint from your adversaries," said Jeffrey Engel, director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Texas. "The Democrats have done a very effective job of doing that while the Republicans basically demonstrated just how chaotic the Trump campaign has been and likely continues to be."

Unity was elusive

Despite calls for unity and displays of inclusion, both conventions exposed internal divisions.

Restless critics from the Democrats' liberal wing, angry about revelations in a dump of hacked emails that the Democratic National Committee appeared to work against the left-leaning Bernie Sanders in the primaries, made noise throughout the convention, even during Clinton's acceptance speech.

However, Clinton was able to come to terms, at least temporarily, with her chief rival, Sanders of Vermont, who delivered a speech advocating her election and motioned that she should carry the nomination by acclamation.

On the Republican side, the refusal of conservative Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas to endorse his GOP rival, Trump, set off an angry eruption of boos and left a wound that, should Trump lose in November, could remain as the 2020 Republican presidential field takes shape.

"You have two parties that are sort of adrift, I guess, in certain ways, or there is a power struggle within the parties to define where they're headed that won't be resolved until after the election," said R. Craig Sautter of DePaul University's School for New Learning in Chicago, the author of three books on the history of presidential conventions.

"This Democratic convention will be memorable for a lot of people, particularly if the party goes Sanders' way, like the Republican Party went (conservative Sen. Barry) Goldwater's way after 1964," he said. "They will remember this as a watershed moment."

Star power and stagecraft

The Republican National Convention, which ran July 18-21 in Cleveland's Quicken Loans Arena, could not match the Democrats' star power, even with the party nominating celebrity billionaire Trump for president.

The Democrats had an all-star line-up featuring actresses such as Sigourney Weaver, Angela Bassett and Chloe Grace Moretz plus performances from past and present pop stars such as Katy Perry, Demi Lovato, Paul Simon and Carole King.

The Republicans heard from lesser lights such as Scott Baio and Antonio Sabato Jr., actors respectively best known for roles in television's "Happy Days" and "General Hospital," and reality-show star Willie Robertson of A&E's reality show "Duck Dynasty."

To hard-core political and policy junkies, the celebrities and musical interludes may seem frivolous or unnecessary, but they help keep the attention of viewers with a more casual attitude toward politics.

The imbalance in star power extended to the political realm, as well.

While Capitol Hill GOP leaders such as House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., spoke, many top Republicans were conspicuous in their absence, including former Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, and respective 2008 and 2012 GOP nominees Sen. John McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

The GOP convention's delegates and speakers were overwhelmingly white. And it was marred by a plagiarism scandal involving the speech delivered by Trump's wife, Melania — some of its language had been cribbed from Michelle Obama's 2008 DNC speech — and by the convention-floor uproars over a rules fight on the first day and over Cruz's telling delegates to vote their consciences rather than back Trump.

Chants of "Lock her up! Lock her up! Lock her up!" stoked the anti-Clinton GOP base but came across as abrasive to many, even being criticized as over-the-top by Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., who also did not attend his party's convention.

"The Democratic convention has been a far better organized and more professional operation," said Larry Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics who marked his 20th national convention in Philadelphia. "The Democrats have had a well-thought-out and thoroughly engaging program. It is beyond obvious that Trump and the Republicans just threw that together. The first three days were subpar, to say the least."

What they show about the campaigns

Experts said the candidates' nomination-acceptance speeches are the most important aspects of any convention, but the management of the events also is telling.

Engel, of SMU, said the sloppy handling of the Melania Trump speech and the clumsy roll-out of veep pick Mike Pence are emblematic of the way the candidate is running his campaign. Trump first indicated he would introduce Pence at a July 15 event before the convention, then postponed the announcement because of a terrorist attack in Nice, France, and then he announced his Pence choice on July 15 anyway via Twitter.

Trump also stepped on one of the nights of his own convention by calling into Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly program.

His conversation with O'Reilly pre-empted one of his convention's more powerful moments, the speech of the mother of one of the Americans killed in the Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attack on a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya.

Instead of that speech, viewers heard Trump underline the friction inside the GOP, criticizing Ohio Gov. John Kasich, another of his primary rivals, for not attending the convention.

"It really just shows a lack of control, I think is the best way to describe it," Engel said. "It really reinforces the point that Trump is trying to do a national campaign with what is essentially a skeleton staff. He is trying to manage this all from his own Twitter account."

Even in the face of continuing opposition from the "Bernie or Bust" Sanders die-hards at the convention, the Democrats kept on message and the proceedings remained disciplined, Engel said.

"There's a divided Republican Party," Sabato said. "The Democratic Party, I must say, is not as divided as the Republican Party, but they are more divided than I had realized."

Nomination speeches set the tone

When all is said and done, though, voters — and history — mostly will recall Clinton's speech in Philadelphia and Trump's speech in Cleveland.

"Sixty percent-plus of this is the nominee's speech, because it tends to color the entire convention," Sabato said. "Because whatever has happened before becomes the preface to a book. The book is written by the nominee."

Clinton, who has been dogged by a public perception that she is not trustworthy, used her speech to present another side of herself, acknowledging that many Americans don't really know her well or don't always understand her motivations despite her many years in the public eye.

Clinton offered herself as a unifying candidate, promising to be a president for all Americans, even those who didn't vote for her, and to "empower Americans to live better lives."

"My primary mission as president will be to create more opportunity and more good jobs with rising wages right here in the United States, from my first day in office to my last," she said.

She also called passing comprehensive immigration reform "the right thing to do," taking the opposite position of Trump, who wants to build a border wall and has called for mass deportations.

For his part, Trump focused heavily on "law and order" issues, including corruption, and promised to return security to the country.

"Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it," Trump said in what has turned out to be one of his speech's more memorable lines. "I have seen firsthand how the system is rigged against our citizens, just like it was rigged against Bernie Sanders. He never had a chance."

It is somewhat routine, even predictable, for a candidate from the party in power to downplay problems while the candidate from the out-of-power party plays them up, but Trump's speech went further than usual, perhaps reflecting a dark public mood and voter pessimism.

Trump said his party's convention came at a time of crisis.

"To all Americans tonight, in all of our cities and in all of our towns, I make this promise: We will make America strong again," Trump said. "We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And we will make America great again."

Sautter, the DePaul University expert, said that, although "there were no poetics to it," Trump's speech seemed to effectively sum up his case for the casual viewer.

But Engel made a comparison to the 1996 presidential race between President Bill Clinton and Republican Bob Dole, who reflected nostalgically on the past while Clinton called for a "bridge to the 21st century."

Clinton won re-election easily that year, even carrying Arizona, a state that for nearly 70 years has otherwise stayed in the GOP column.

"We're really seeing a stark contrast here, for which there is a lot of historical precedent, where one party is talking about returning to the past and championing the values of a social order of a bygone, halcyonic day," Engel said. "And another party is talking about things that are new, and talking about the future and talking about moving forward.

"Historically, in the modern era, whenever we see one party talking about the past and the other talking about the future, the one that talks about the future always wins. Always."

Nowicki is The Arizona Republic's national political reporter. He reported this month from the Republican National Convention in Cleveland and the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Follow him on Twitter at @dannowicki and on his official Facebook page.