The first thing to say about the Big Dog’s speech on Monday was the marvelous shot held for two or three sentences over the former president’s shoulder, so we could see the teleprompter. And the words on the teleprompter didn’t match the words coming out of his mouth.
Sure, the content was the same. This wasn’t one of the times where he drives his teleprompter guy crazy by riffing off-the-cuff for ten minutes before picking the prepared text back up, nor one of the times when they loaded the wrong speech, so he made the whole thing up as he went along, out of his memory and his knowledge and his instincts. OK, as far as I know that last only happened once. No, this was just his perfectly ordinary breathtaking confidence in front of an adoring crowd. The rhythm of the crowd, I guess, didn’t quite match the rhythm of the speech as written, so he shaped it as he went, rolling the sentences over and charming the audience like Spencer freakin’ Tracy.
You know, like Bill Clinton used to do.
I’ve never bothered much with reading his speeches; I don’t think they read very well. Of course, he’s always had two: the stump speech, short-ish, inspiring, vague, punchy and charming; and the policy speech, long, rambling, ill-organized, tedious and charming. This was the former, and nobody does it better.
Do y’all remember, four years ago, when the cameras tracked him down that endless corridor as the applause built and built until he emerged already triumphant into a hall and a television audience that he had already seduced? He did that on Monday just by walking on stage. It was over before he said word one. It was scary and exhilarating to watch, even on television. It’s hard for me even to describe it as a speech—yes, he did say some clever things, and yes, I’ll get to them in a minute, but mostly he just came out with all the skill and instinct he ever had and commanded “love me, love me” and the audience cried out “be what we love, be what we love” and then we all had another moment we could keep, folded up and tucked into our yearbooks, to take out every now and then and sigh.
Damn, he’s good.
Now, having said all that, he did in fact make quite a good speech. I think there are four or five bits out of this speech that people will recall. I’m not talking about the one-liners, but bits of content, actual blocks of the speech and themes running through it.
First, there’s the I’m-so-reasonable bit where he says he can respect that Republicans are sincere in their differences with Democrats. Of course, his description of what Republicans believe is preposterously untrue and would never be recognized by Republicans. But he’s not actually talking to them, but to left-leaning ‘independents’.
Digression: Most independents, according to the research I’ve seen, aren’t actually very independent of Party at all. There are plenty of independents who never vote for Republicans, for instance, but for either Democrats or third-party candidates, or they leave the line blank. Similarly on the other side. They say they aren’t of the party, but they actually cross the aisle at about the same rate as those of us who register with the party do. I don’t mean to denigrate those independents here; there is plenty of reason for a person to sometimes vote Green and sometimes Democrat, and little reason to expect that person to vote for any Republican. They vote according to principles and policies, and the parties run on those lines. End digression.
Now, one way to make sure that independents who generally vote Democrat actually do vote for a particular candidate is to make the candidate himself appear to be ‘independent’ or at least ‘bipartisan’. It’s something many Republicans have done quite successfully over many years; it’s usually a tactic of a party out of power. Anyway, Bill Clinton goes on for a long time, saying ‘look, I respect the Republicans and their honest and sincere belief in crazy extremist right-wing divisive crackpot cronyism.’ Or at least, “If you agree with these [crazy extremist right-wing divisive crackpot] choices, you should vote to return them to the White House and Congress. If not, take a look at John Kerry, John Edwards and the Democrats.” Now, that’s reasonable, isn’t it?
Then he does something I think is pretty clever: he elides Our Only President and his father, and even the late Ronald Reagan. “We tried it their way for twelve years, our way for eight, and then their way for four more.” That’s the second big theme, and I think it’s successful. He reminds people of when the recessions were—before he took office, and after he left. Things like that don’t happen when Democrats are in the White House, he says. In doing this, he also, by implication, elides himself and John Kerry. He also portrays the parties as sides of a pendulum going this way and that way making it sound natural that we return again to his side. Of course, the world doesn’t go back, and we won’t be voting for him, but oh, if we could...
Third theme: Send me. Oh, my. That’s a good one. As Amy Sullivan points out, this resonates as well as it does not simply because it’s a great line, but because it’s a reference to something many of us have heard many times in churches and synagogues. Isaiah, chapter six. The six-winged seraphims crying “Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts”, the live coal on the lips, and Lord says “Whom shall I send?” Send me. Sh’lachayni. The haftorah for the Ten Commandments. I don’t know which groups of Christians use the hymn “Hark, the Voice of Jesus Calling”, which ends “Answer quickly when He calls you, ‘Here am I, send me, send me’,” but I think it’s in everybody’s hymnal. The line is also quoted in “The Master Comes! He Calls for Thee”; Isaiah and “send me” generate 25,000 ghits. Bill Clinton has always had the ability to express his religion in ways that inspire believers without pissing off the unbelievers. This, though, may well be a high point.
The fourth theme: choosing a more perfect union. Enh. I liked it, and I’ll steal it, but it wasn’t as memorable. One of the things that I like about it is the emphasis it places on election, on choosing. It showed, by the way, what a difference personal style makes. It’s a history lesson, after all. He’s talking about the fight between Hamilton and Jefferson, he’s talking about the Civil War and about the sixties, and he doesn’t sound like he’s lecturing us. Why not? Because we love him, and because he accepts that love and revels in it. Those last four paragraphs in the mouth of Michael Dukakis would have been awful; from Bill Clinton they were just fine.
,
-Vardibidian.
One thing that struck me from Tuesday night: listening to parts of Tues’ speeches, hearing clips from other days, grumbling at the talking heads pretending to analyse as if I couldn’t… anyway, it seemed to me that over all, the GOP really is drifting rightward, and the Dems tailing after, and creating some gap between progs & dems that wasn’t so big before.
This is not news; this only the first time I’ve been able to perceive it.
Hurm.
Wow. I half-listened to this in the background as I read your entry, so when the “Send me” part came up I paid attention, and it was really nicely done. I didn’t catch the religious reference, but yes, now that you mention it it’s obvious. But really, what made it work best for me was the audience joining in on it (which, of course, Clinton made room for; I don’t know whether it was spontaneous or not). Inspirational.