BY DAN
KENNEDY
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click
here.
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
THE KING OF VOX POP. For all
of Bill Clinton's prancing and preening last night about his own
eight years in the White House, what really made his speech
extraordinary were the touches of self-deprecation. Listening to him
talk of his new-found wealth, he sounded for all the world like Bruce
Springsteen singing about being "a rich man in a poor man's shirt."
And he used it to great effect in criticizing the disastrous economic
policies of George W. Bush:
For the first time when
America was in a war footing in our whole history, they gave two
huge tax cuts, nearly half of which went to the top one percent of
us.
Now, I'm in that group for the
first time in my life.
And you might remember that when
I was in office, on occasion, the Republicans were kind of mean to
me.
But as soon as I got out and
made money, I became part of the most important group in the world
to them. It was amazing. I never thought I'd be so well cared for
by the president and the Republicans in Congress.
I almost sent them a thank you
note for my tax cuts until I realized that the rest of you were
paying the bill for it. And then I thought better of
it.
But that was just a warm-up for the
main event: Clinton's praise of John Kerry's military service, framed
in the context of his own - and Bush's and Dick Cheney's - well-known
desire not to fight in the Vietnam War:
During the Vietnam War,
many young men, including the current president, the
vice-president and me, could have gone to Vietnam and didn't. John
Kerry came from a privileged background. He could have avoided
going too, but instead, he said: Send me.
When they sent those swiftboats
up the river in Vietnam and they told them their job was to draw
hostile fire, to wave the American flag and bate the enemy to come
out and fight, John Kerry said: Send me.
And then, on my watch, when it
was time to heal the wounds of war and normalize relations with
Vietnam and to demand an accounting of the POWs and MIAs we lost
there, John Kerry said: Send me.
Then when we needed someone to
push the cause of inner-city children struggling to avoid a life
of crime or to bring the benefits of high technology to ordinary
Americans or to clean the environment in a way that created new
jobs, or to give small businesses a better chance to make it, John
Kerry said: Send me.
So tonight, my friends, I ask
you to join me for the next 100 days in telling John Kerry's story
and promoting his ideas. Let every person in this hall and
like-minded people all across our land say to him what he has
always said to America: Send me.
The "send me" refrain became kind
of a call-and-response exchange with the audience. It was remarkably
effective, and the Kerry campaign couldn't have asked for a better
introduction to its candidate on network television in prime time.
Hillary Clinton's introduction was good, and she is obviously a much
less wooden speaker than she was during her 2000 Senate campaign. Al
Gore was warm, funny, and human. But Clinton - as he has been in
Democratic circles since 1992 - was the undisputed star of the
night.
One touch of irony: despite the
self-deprecation, despite the strong words of praise for Kerry,
Clinton still showed him up by demonstrating that he is the best
communicator in politics, and the one towering figure within the
Democratic Party. Maybe he can't help it - he's just too good. But
Clinton didn't make it any easier for Kerry to get out from under the
Clinton shadow.
I sat next to Slate's Will
Saletan last night, surrounded by other Slate-sters and New
Republic staffers. Anyway, here
is Saletan's take on the proceedings.
SCAIFE'S LONG REACH.
Here
is the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review's coverage of Teresa Heinz
Kerry's "shove it" blast at the paper's right-wing editorial-page editor,
Colin McNickle. McNickle is writing a blog
from Boston, but has not yet weighed in on his exchange with Heinz
Kerry.
While everyone is a-twitter over
Heinz Kerry's outburst, what's almost forgotten is that the
Tribune-Review's owner, billionaire right-wing financier
Richard Mellon Scaife, once called
a female reporter a "fucking communist cunt."
Granted, a would-be first lady
needs to watch her language more than Scaife does. (Not that "shove
it" qualifies as being much worse than "I'm not going to answer your
question.") But Media Log thought you'd like a reminder as to whom
she was telling off.
posted at 9:44 AM |
1 comments
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1 Comments:
But here's the problem with Clinton's Kerry speech: The extraordinary pedestrianess of Kerry's legislative accomplishments. Read the "Send Me" paragraphs and it's hard to come to any conclusion other than that Kerry peaked in Vietnam. Now, that was no doubt a very good place to peak, but I just don't see anything about him that says "I am the President of the United States of America".
Also note that Kerry apparently has done just about nothing praiseworthy for white voters. That may not be a terrible thing in itself, other than that they make up 80% of the voters.
Heinz Kerry deserves praise for telling that obnoxious journalist to shove it, even though she should have told him to go screw himself. She may want to drop the civility stump speech, though.
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
