Lilek - Note to the Democratic Party: James Carville may not be the bridge-building base-expanding emissary you think he is. If you’re employing him as the fellow who wheels the barrow heaped with meat to the lion den, fine; he’s great for whipping up the previously converted, the faithful, the die-hards who like their rhetoric served up raw and red. But to paraphrase Groucho Marx, I wouldn’t want to be a member of a party that would have him for a member. It’s not just the nature of his rhetoric – why, both sides have people who don’t just go over the top but set new world pole-vaulting records every election. No, it’s because he sometimes acts as though he hovered up a pound of meth before he starts his speech.
I heard four speeches this week – one by Carville before some firefighters, screaming like cat that had been dipped in turpentine; one from Kerry about something or other (it’s hard to stick with it; he sounds like a 45 RPM record played at 33 1/, and you keep making revolving-hand motions in the hopes you can somehow, like a butterfly that flutters its wings in Brazil and causes typhoons in Tahiti, cause him to pick up the pace a little); one from Dick Cheney, and one from Bush. Cheney’s speech was tailor-made for his speaking style, which consists of pressing the point of the sword into the opponant’s arguments and slowly pushing the entire blade in with steady force. Bush’s speech had many thick sheets of boilerplate, but it had economy and optimism.
People like optimism. Yes, I know, the people are a mass of sheep numbed by that lying corporate media and Clear Channel mind-control beams. But people generally like optimistic candidates. Bill Clinton managed to transmute all the pessimistic strains of 1992 into an optimistic persona, because he seemed to be a cheerful guy. I think you nominated a lemon-sucker this time. Plus, the whole “foreign-leaders-like-us-better” angle tells me you’re not getting out much these days. See all those people in the stands watching NASCAR races? Hard to believe, but they would rather the President did what they considered to be the right thing, and did it alone, than did the wrong thing with the full support of Le Monde’s editorial board, including the cartoonist. |
