If
those of us who pay attention to these things learned anything from last week’s
US political conventions – apart from the sad fact of Clint Eastwood having
followed Charlton Heston’s path from tooth-gritting tough guy to jabbering
senile reactionary – it’s that William Jefferson Clinton could probably be
elected President again this year, if he were allowed to run.
For all President Obama’s
intellectual brilliance, he has never once given a speech as nuanced or
effective as the one delivered by Bubba the other night; it was by turns
informative, charming, inspiring and just plain savage. It evoked memories of the
1993 address to a joint-sitting of Congress, when – ignoring the teleprompter –
he riffed impromptu for nearly an hour (brevity’s never been his strength) on
his deficit-reduction plan.
It was masterful. Without ever
becoming mired in dry jargon, he outlined not only the political and economic
challenges America faces in coming years, but also practical ideas for
confronting them. Without ever descending to name-calling or base sloganeering,
he surgically neutered the theories of the opposition; demonstrated why the
opposition themselves are hidebound, hare-brained ideologues who, given the
chance, will compound the disasters of the last decade; and all the while gave
the appearance of seeking a bipartisan love-in to rejuvenate the nation.
They called Reagan The Great Communicator; Obama, The Professor in Chief. The former was
effective in the way corporate motivators and appliance salesmen are effective:
he had a nice line in slogans, and his demeanour made you trust him. The
latter, while inspiring when harnessing his personal history to the
deep-running streams of the American psyche, tends to get bogged down when it
comes to selling policy. That’s why he left himself open to the charge of
“class-warfare” over tax-reform, even with Warren Buffett standing next to him
on the White House lawn.
Bubba’s different. He falls out
somewhere between your favourite uncle, a Nobel Laureate in Economics, and
Casanova; he’s a folksy, intelligent seducer. “Come here,” he seems to say,
that little grin curling the corners of his eyes. “Sit down with me, I’m gonna
tell you how it is. Trust me”.
I was moved afterwards to pull his
most recent book, Back to Work, down
from the shelf. The same style and substance are evident here as well. There he
is on the cover, broad face smiling – warm, knowing. More than any writer
besides, perhaps, Hunter Thompson or William Burroughs, you can hear his voice
in your head as you read. In a very few pages, in that same, concise, easy
manner, he sets out the situation at present (2011, when he was writing); how
it was arrived at; the alternative theories on offer – and their flaws; and a
forty-six point plan for solving the problems and moving ahead renewed.
During his second term – and ever
since – we got distracted by Bill Clinton’s trousers. It’s too easy to forget
that he also happens to be brilliant. When he first came to office,
conservatives were up in arms at the possibility of an un-elected
co-presidency; such was Hillary’s prominence and ambition. The United States
could do worse, four and-a-half years from now, than to end up with exactly
that. If Mitt Romney is elected this year, they’re really going to need it.
No comments:
Post a Comment