Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Rhetorical Magician

Sidney Blumenthal does a nice job of deconstructing Clinton’s speech and I think gets to the heart of why it worked. Clinton has a natural instinct for framing an argument.

By means of rhetorical alchemy, Clinton transformed himself into no less than Bush: Like Bush, he pointed out that he was a dodger of military service in Vietnam and a rich man gaining lucrative tax benefits instead of sacrificing along with everyone else during a war. Clinton played on Clinton hatred by turning it on its head, a magic act performed with deadpan delivery. The audience was in on the joke from the beginning.

Clinton disdained the very idea of personal attack through a humorous aside: ‘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.’ By making himself his own straw man, Clinton could ridicule at will. The greater the self-deprecation, the deeper the stiletto thrust in Bush.

I would be very interested in hearing Clinton’s thoughts on political rhetoric. He’s awfully good at it — and reading the moment in which it’s delivered — and yet I’ve never heard him speak at any length about it. Maybe it’s not something he can actually explain. But, nonetheless, aspiring politicians should definitely study what he does. He’s the best in my lifetime.

And speaking of Clinton, No More Mr Nice Blog helpfully spares me the necessity of writing this post (which I had put off and am now glad I did.) When I read Gary Wills’ generally good review of My Life, I too was astounded by his assertion that had Gore taken office following Clinton’s impeachment and conviction that he would have had a honeymoon and transformed the debate in the liberal direction because that’s what happened to Lyndon Johnson.

Hah! Maybe on the moon, but here on planet earth, Republicans don’t give honeymoons anymore — they go for the jugular. Where does this wide eyed credulity come from?

NMMNB correctly asks:

Is Wills nuts?

Look, you don’t have to believe that the Republicans would have tried to impeach Gore if they’d succeeded in driving Clinton from office — although Wills’s NYRB colleague Elizabeth Drew, unlike Wills a full-time Washington reporter, insisted at the time that that was the case. You just have to look at the GOP’s behavior throughout the Clinton presidency, starting long before the Republicans attained a majority in both Houses of Congress. Alan Ehrenhalt nailed it in a 1998 op-ed:

It was on Election Night 1992, not very far into the evening, that the Senate minority leader, Bob Dole, hinted at the way his party planned to conduct itself in the months ahead: it would filibuster any significant legislation the new Democratic President proposed, forcing him to obtain 60 votes for Senate passage.

…it worked. Little that the President proposed became law in the two years that he operated with Democratic majorities. There was no health care reform, no economic stimulus package…. the procedural consequences turned out to be grave: Congressional Republicans were tempted by success into even more dangerous constitutional mischief.

In the fall of 1995, emboldened by new majorities in both the House and the Senate, they forced the closure of the Federal Government. For all the millions of words that have been written about this event then and since, the reality of it has rarely been portrayed in succinct terms. This was not a political showdown — it was an attempted constitutional coup….

And on and on into the serial fishing expeditions that led to Clinton’s impeachment.

I don’t know what is wrong with Gary Wills that he still hasn’t figured it out, but I certainly hope that most Democrats have. The Republican party does not play by any rules. It is foolish to ever think otherwise.

Convention Blog Recommendation

Check out Steve Garfield’s Video Blog. He’s got speeches you don’t get to see on TV, interviews with unusual people and a real insiders look at the convention. It brings to life all those other blogger’s tales of too many people and not enough diet coke. (Notice how much it’s just like any other trade show — the trade being politics instead of software or shoes.)

You can watch a piece of the veteran’s speech by Wesley Clark that I referenced below. It really is a stem-winder.

This is a very original convention blog. I give it two thumbs up!

Too Much Goodness

I think this post by Josh Marshall is very insightful. I’d heard this new theme being thrown about a day or two ago — that Junior has been too successful to win a second term. Why, he might as well as already have had his second term he’s been so ambitious and so successful at achieving his ambitions. Americans are just plain worn out from all that success. They need a break. Once they get their break, though, they’ll be ready for more.

Yeah. After the Democrats clean up all the “successes” they’ve left in huge steaming piles all over the world.

This is actually rather transparently pathetic. As Josh points out:

Rather than taking it on its merits, though, I have a different take on this argument. It’s a rhetorical or logical reasoning halfway house on the way to a realization of how badly the president has screwed up what one might generously call his ambitious plans. As with Kubler-Ross’s grinding five stages of grief, first we have denial. Then anger. And with this argument we have something akin to that tipping-point stage of ‘bargaining’ — the sensible pundits’ first tip-toe out onto a serious consideration of the impact of the president’s term of office.

I think that’s about right. The right-wing pundits went way out on a limb with this guy — even ridiculously comparing him to Churchill and Lincoln. They have to crawl quite a distance to get back down to earth.

 

National Security Democrats

Andrew Sullivan’s impression of the first night of the convention is very interesting. And it’s interesting because he seems genuinely surprised that Democrats are talking about national security and behaving as if they sincerely care about it. He is almost shocked to find that Dems simply think they have a better idea about how to ensure our national security rather than that they just aren’t interested.

Do most Republicans actually believe that Democrats don’t care about their own safety? Has the knee jerk belief in Dem weakness and perfidy gone so far as to now think that we don’t even care about our children’s lives? I suppose it has…

If you listen to nothing but right wing talk you are bound to believe that Democrats are one step away from endorsing bin Laden for president. (Nothing the libertine sex fiends of the Democratic party love more than a fundamentalist theocracy… oh, wait.) We are portrayed as actively hating this country to the point where we would actually wish for more terrorist attacks. Why wouldn’t someone be surprised to see that our party is actually quite serious about national security? We are whining cowards who capitulate at the least little bit of a threat from anyone (which is why we want to take away their guns and their Bibles.)

I’m hoping that Sullivan, who for all his faults is not a cynic, represents a small slice of libertarian and moderate Republicans who can see that the Dems may do better on national security and foreign policy than these wild-eyed radicals. Our seriousness on this issue I have long believed was key — not just to winning the election but to actually beginning to bring this threat under control. Perhaps Kerry’s boring, yet serious image will actually contribute to that notion.

Who’s Out Of The Mainstream?

So, USA Today hires the woman who wrote that Tim Mcveigh should have blown up the New York Times building and they are surprised that she pens a column calling the Democrats the Spawn of Satan Party. Her usual home, Human Events prints USA Today’s explanation:

In response to questions on whether the paper was surprised by what they got from the conservative author, considering her well known penchant for speaking her mind pointedly and often with sarcasm and wit, Gallagher said, “Yes. We just didn’t think it would be that difficult [to finalize].”

He said the staff of USA Today was familiar with Coulter’s writings; however, he did not explain how the column Coulter submitted differed from her usual columns. Gallagher repeated his assertion that the differences that precluded publication of the column were not based on silencing Coulter but “simply on editorial differences.”

“The staff of USA Today was familiar with Coulter’s writings.”

Sure they were. It sounds to me as if the staff was familiar with Coulter’s reputation maybe, but were not specifically familiar with her writings. They were sitting around a meeting one afternoon and thought it would be cool to hire a couple of “edgy” writers from opposite ends of the political spectrum. Coulter and Moore came to mind. But, if anyone had actually ever read Coulter’s work they would have known they were dealing with a woman whose “caustic wit” has long since melted into an acid bath of character assasination and bizarre eliminationist fantasy. Her next stop is a job writing for white supremecist web sites.

This is what drives me and others nuts about the mainstream media. They are so obviously out of touch with what’s going on in political discourse outside of the official channels. Ann Coulter believes that liberals/Democrats are sub-human — untermenschen. This is not a secret. She makes a very good living entertaining her fans on the right by vividly painting Democrats as not just misguided and wrong, but as dirty, ugly and evil. It’s her stock in trade.

This column was typical, as her regular employer, a right wing rag, readily admits. That USA Today didn’t know this about the most famous right wing smear artist in America says more about USA Today than it does about Ann Coulter.

Lordly Derision

Just a quick note to link you to the most cynical blogging of the convention so far, from my dear friend Lord Saleton of Slate.

It is so awfully boring having to sit through these tedious speeches by the shrill and the mendacious and the inauthentic Democrats. I’m so glad I’m an independent so that I don’t have to be associated with the soiled riff-raff who actually have to win elections and govern in this country. I remain so grandly pure.

This is so helpful.

Luckily, so far the press seems to have bought the unity theme — they are always 2 steps behind the zeitgeist. But, those who have their fingers clutching the pulse know that there is a serious internal fight a-brewing (at exactly the wrong historical moment, IMO.)

But, blabbing this stuff to the Dean of CW on the first night of the convention is criminally disloyal as far as I’m concerned. With friends like these…

Howleriffic

I have a public service idea for the convention bloggers. When you are talking to reporters, why don’t you all mention that they should read The Daily Howler?

Sommerby does the absolute best press criticism in the blogosphere and if the press who are interviewing you want to know how bloggers see the press, his site is a good place to start.

Just a suggestion from a boring, partyless couch-blogger.

Man Of Many Talents

Fine blogger and musician, Brew, has a CD called “Get Out of Iraq” that you can buy there at the convention or online at Simplefears.com

Go to the link for a sample. It’s a good tune.

Send Me

Gotta love Clinton. He just has that Mojo.

I can’t remember what the event was, but I remember hearing him do that “send me” riff before and I think it’s very powerful. It’s a biblical reference that resonates with those who respond to that, but it’s also poetic and inspiring to the secular. It’s the kind of language that Amy Sullivan and others are alwasy talking about — not explicitly religious, but resonent to the religious.

He has that very rare gift of being able to discuss complex issues in simple ways without being condescending. (Edwards has that ability, too.) He drew the contrast between the parties in ways that people who don’t follow politics and feel uncomfortable with the emotion involved can wrap their arms around.

It was a good night, I think. Everybody up there were Democratic stars and since this is essentially a televised pageant, political star power is a potent plus for us. Since St. Ronnie the GOP has been reduced to flogging cartoon characters like Schwarzenegger, but they don’t have real political superstars. Our politicans are actually much more fun to watch.