THE FIRST LADY’S SPEECH

The target audience was voters who are into empathy and haven’t detected enough of it from the president. Can an empathetic First Lady can fill the gap? Probably not, but it was worth a try.

Melania opened the empathy fest by talking about victims of the Wuhan coronavirus. This was absolutely the right call.

An empathy-based speech could not have commenced otherwise. It was also the right call to refer to the virus as Covid-19. This was not the speech in which to drive home Chinese culpability for the pandemic.

As the First Lady spoke, I thought of her address to the 2016 Convention. Of that speech, I wrote:
Mrs. Trump’s speech was okay — better than Teresa Heinz Kerry’s, but nowhere near as good as the wifely addresses of Michelle Obama and Anne Romney. She is, however, a beautiful woman with star quality. . . .

Naturally, Mrs. Trump was full of praise for her husband. But she failed to provide a single family anecdote that demonstrated a compassionate, or even particularly human side to the man.