Former Arizona representative Gabby Giffords led the Pledge of Allegiance Thursday evening at the Democratic National Convention, bringing tears to the eyes of many attendees. About twenty months after Jared Lee Loughner’s gunshot passed through her brain, she stood on stage under her own power and delivered the pledge, holding her paralyzed right arm over her heart. Her friend, Florida Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, helped her on and off the stage. Giffords’s speech is still obviously impaired due to her brain injury but she nailed most every word, just as she did before a smaller audience in Arizona on the one-year anniversary of the Tucson massacre. The DNC crowd roared after Giffords finished, as Gabby beamed and waved to them.
About an hour later, Beau Biden, the Attorney General of Delaware, took the stage to formally nominate Joe Biden, calling him “my father, my hero.”
C-SPAN cameras zoomed in on Biden, who wiped a tear from his eye and remained choked up for a few moments, bringing his hand to his mouth, a showing that would make teary John Boehner proud. But to quote the Big Lebowski, “Strong men also cry.”
