‘Deliver on What You Promise’

Photo by Mark T. Osler

Joyce Cusack has the final item needed to make her convention week official: delegate credentials in a plastic sleeve around her neck. The veteran of four previous Democratic National Conventions says she still felt a thrill picking up her badge at the Florida delegation’s breakfast meeting Monday. Florida is a swing state, and the talk among delegates is optimistic about Barack Obama winning where Al Gore and John Kerry could not.

“There’s a wind in the air that says Florida is going to turn blue,” Cusack says.

By afternoon she is ensconced on the convention floor, with her pink flamingo glasses promoting her home state. Trying to talk over the din, she presses a cellphone to her ear as she encourages her daughter back in Florida to watch the first-night speech by Michelle Obama.

After a nine-month battle between the state and national party over whether the Florida delegates would even be seated at the convention—the state’s early primary violated national rules—Cusack is finally soaking up the scene. Her delegation is not only there but has prime seats right behind the delegation from Delaware—home state of Obama’s vice-presidential choice, Sen. Joe Biden.

Before packing her bags in DeLand, Fla., the 66-year-old Cusack had stayed up until 3 a.m. Saturday to lap up everything she could hear on television about Biden. His rap as a long-winded speaker doesn’t bother Cusack, who is finishing an eight-year career as a state representative. “There are a lot of us who have that problem,” she says.

Cusack was surprised and thrilled to hear that Democratic icon Sen. Edward Kennedy would be there, too, despite his incurable brain cancer. Cusack, a registered nurse, knows the sheer will Kennedy had to summon to be there. "It almost makes me cry to think about the effort,” she says.

Cusack still remembers his brother John F. Kennedy’s election as president—and, later, the news of JFK’s assassination preempting a soap opera she was watching. To Cusack, Obama—who got help from the Kennedy family in the nomination battle—represents a return to the optimism of JFK and Sen. Kennedy’s opening session speech was a passing of the torch from his family dynasty to Obama.

Cusack’s own optimism turns cautious when it comes to the party platform, approved Monday. The platform doesn’t go as far as some Democrats would like on issues such as health care and pulling troops out of Iraq. Guaranteeing health care for all is an important goal but would be hard to accomplish in four years, Cusack says, so it’s just as well that the platform doesn’t promise it. “If you don’t deliver on what you promise, people won’t trust you,” she says.

Tamara Lytle was the chief Washington correspondent for the Orlando Sentinel from 1997 to 2008.