Kamala Harris' speech sure was short

And that means something.

Kamala Harris’ convention speech last night “at only 38 minutes, was the 12th-shortest in modern history,” said NPR, “while her opponent holds the records for the three longest acceptance speeches in American political history.”

Yeah, well, there’s a reason for that.

The NYT’s Glenn Thrush offered his idea on the topic:

What I take him to be saying is that Harris was reaching out to the generation of tweeters and TikTokers whose attention span might not be all that long. Make is short and sweet — get in, introduce yourself, and get out.

And there might be something to that.

I think something else was going on. I think it was an act of democracy.

Here’s what I mean: Dictators, strongmen and authoritarians speeches love giving long speeches.

Fidel Castro was famous for it. “He still holds the record for the longest speech ever delivered at the United Nations — 4 hours and 29 minutes in 1960. And that was just a 140-character tweet compared to the 7 hours and 10 minutes he spoke at the Communist Party Congress in Havana in 1986.”

So was Hugo Chavez: He once gave an 8-hour speech on Venezuelan TV. There are lots of examples of this kind of thing.

"You are only ever going to get long speeches when the speaker doesn't have to worry about the audience running away," Oxford University’s Robert Service once told the BBC.

So Donald Trump’s 92-minute speech at the RNC last month sent a signal:

It’s all about me.

Harris’ 38-minute speech, meanwhile, offered a different signal:

I’m not going to waste *your* time.

Authoritarianism and narcissism go hand-in-hand. That’s why Harris kept her speech short¹ — and why she was capable of doing so.

1. All top-level politicians are narcissists, so you’ve got to look for the folks who have room for other personality traits. Trump doesn’t.