The Big Dog, The Cool Cat, And The Cuckoo Birds
The Big Dog rolled into town last week. He was giving a speech and spent the night in
the guest bedroom. He’s a little older
and grayer but he’s still the same BMOC you remembered. He made your kids laugh, ate prodigious
quantities of food, drank your wine, hugged your wife an eighth of a second too
long, kept you up way too late. The
following morning he poked you out of bed at a ridiculous hour, and took you
and your hangover out for a five-mile run.
Bill Clinton came to Charlotte to nominate Barack Obama and
the veteran hurler showed he can still bring it. All the repertory was still
there. The slider that seems to come in
straight, but breaks down and away from right handed hitters. The sinker that starts as a hittable whisper and ends at your shoe-tops. That inside fastball of his, a little high and
a little tight, but never aimed at the head and always thrown with a
smile. And finally, his eephus pitch, a
fifty-five mile an hour floater that looks so tantalizing that you either
freeze, or swing (and miss) so hard it pulls you out of your shoes.
Barack Obama made a calculated gamble bringing Bill in. There’s an old adage in the theatre that you
never share the stage with a cute child or a cuter animal, but the President
knew he needed something different, a little star power other than his own.
After nearly four years of the often-painful prose of governing, Obama sensed
the electorate wasn’t looking for a revival of his particular brand of 2008
vintage poetry.
So Obama was a Cool Cat.
He’s usually cool; he has to be, given the vitriol that is routinely
thrown in his direction. When the
announcement was made, Mitt’s campaign and the conservative media establishment
went into conspiratorial spin mode. The
most persistent refrains were that Obama was desperate, and that Bill would go off
the reservation and barely talk about the man he was nominating. Bill’s eyes, they said, were firmly planted
on a 2016 Clinton Restoration in the White House.
None of that happened, of course. Bill was Bill, explaining, teasing, charming,
ad-libbing (about 2000 words of ad-libbing) revving up the crowd and making
them laugh. For the last four years,
Republicans have been unrelenting in characterizing Obama as The Other-a
strange alien being, birth certificate deprived, a Kenyan socialist, etc.
But Bill Clinton is jazz, a pure American art form; his drive, in his
appetites, his gestures, his accent.
Bill blessed Barack, and dismantled the GOP’s personal attacks and
policy drive while he was doing it.
The morning after, some on the Right sneered at Clinton’s
speech as some corn-pone hokum, but wiser heads tried to pivot. Romney himself beamed upon Bill. Clinton was
a fine and moderate man, very bipartisan and a pretty fair President. The GOP
loved Bill. They have always loved Bill If only Barack were like Bill.
Bill didn’t take the bait, and interestingly enough, neither
did Obama. He didn’t try to outdo
Bill. Obama’s acceptance speech was
almost pedestrian. He didn’t soar. He talked about governing, and the work
undone, and his plans for the future. He
hit a few ideological touch-points, he complimented his listeners, and he
thanked Michelle. But Obama wasn’t the
striver anymore, he was the President, and he acted like one.
The professional politician and media review was fairly
negative. The Right jumped all over him. Obama was boring, flat, Romney was better, and
Clinton showed him up. Obama’s regular
supporters expressed disappointment.
From the mainstream newspapers, a sigh over the lost opportunities to
make big concessions in a void. From the Left, well, Barack may have been last
summer’s romance, but the Cool Cat was no competition for the Big Dog. All
agreed, a subpar performance from a
fading star.
Except, some odd things began to happen. Obama the orator
might have been out, but Obama the President got a little traction. His convention bounce was a bit bigger than Mitt’s,
and there were rumors that Mitt and friends were pulling ads in Pennsylvania
and Michigan. Bill’s good-humored but careful dissection of everything
Romney/Ryan had an impact as well.
People listen to Bill. Romney suddenly
backtracked on certain aspects of Obamacare.
And Ryan insisted that Bill was wrong, everything in the Romney Plan
would benefit everyone, but he couldn’t share the details.
Bill Clinton did what Bill Clinton does best--make the Right
a little crazy. The GOP’s supporters in the press, mindful of Clinton’s
enormous popularity, stayed away from him but doubled down on the
anti-Obama rhetoric: Theissen, Gerson, Douthat, Brooks, Kudlow, Noonan, the
entire Fox Empire, all in their own special way.
That outrage is causing some of them to
crack. George Will, stalwart standard-bearer
of the Right for 40 years, may have finally lost his bearings. Late last week
he published a stunner, blaming the authoritarian nature of college and
professional football on the Progressive Movement and the Democrats. To read Will, you would think “Friday Night Lights” was
originally to be set in Manhattan, and all those football coaches only pretend
to be devout Republicans. In fact, they
are a Fifth Column meant to undermine the patriotic culture of the South. As a
public service, I’m providing the link. Read
the column, and I think you will see that the Cuckoo Clock may be starting to
chime in some households.
Does this mean Obama is going to win? Definitely not. Conventions bounces are, by their nature,
ethereal. The debates are coming
up. The big money continues to pour into
the GOP and friendly coffers. Plenty of
time and plenty of cash are available. And plenty of anti-Obama sentiment.
But for many, the
irony meter no longer registers. This
past weekend, I got the following text:
“Just walked
past an elderly woman, wispy gray hair, quite thin, well-turned-out, with beige
crocheted gloves, a hat, sunglasses, and a button that, when I passed close enough
to be able to read it, said "Socialism is not an American value."
Hang
in there, George Will. Help is on the
way.
MM
