Enter Bill Clinton who, unlike Al Gore, did not kiss his wife. This was the man who still has the Democratic delegates' hearts, as the tumultuous applause showed. For most of the last century, Democrats have liked to believe that their party is led by philosopher-princes, men of great intelligence and learning and sensitivity who are leaders of historical importance. Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy were seen as such leaders; Lyndon Johnson and Jimmy Carter were discarded when they seemed deficient. Nominees who do not win–Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis–are shoved offstage; McGovern, a nice man, has been around the convention but Dukakis, a resident of nearby Brookline, has been invisible.
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In contrast, Republicans have been content to nominate leaders who serve their purposes but who, by no stretch of the imagination can be seen as Renaissance men: Richard Nixon (smart but cold), Gerald Ford, George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, George W. Bush all fit the mold. So, it seemed, did Ronald Reagan though, as we discovered after his withdrawal from public life, he was an autodidact intellectual, who read widely, wrote frequently and developed his own unique positions on issues over many years and coolly and sometimes ruthlessly put them into effect as president. The Republicans are inclined to Joseph Alsop's theory of politicians, when he said they are like toilet fixtures: it is enough that they serve the intended purpose, they need not be beautiful.
But Bill Clinton wants to be beautiful, and Democrats want him to be. And his speech was in many ways beautiful, delivered with remarkable self-assurance and with a physical grace comparable to Reagan's. Clinton has been thinking about history and about the difference between the parties, and he shared that thinking with the delegates and the television audience as he has been sharing it with convention audiences this week, although in truncated form, so as to end promptly at 11pm, as convention wrap-up orators are supposed to do. Some of his speech was sheer demagoguery, of a sort he might not have indulged in as a candidate for fear it would not be sustainable over the course of a campaign. He excoriated the Bush administration, for example, for abandoning the Kyoto and the International Criminal Court treaties, though as president he had never submitted them to the Senate, for the sensible reason that they never could have been ratified. He criticized Bush for dropping his 100,000 cops program–a bookkeeping exercise shrewdly designed to funnel money to grateful mayors–and for not backing re-authorization of the so-called assault weapons ban–a frivolous bill that bans guns based not on their capacity but on their appearance. Tawdry stuff.
But he also came up with a good rhetorical argument for John Kerry. The current president and vice president and I myself, he said, had declined to serve in Vietnam, but John Kerry, who could have avoided service, said, "Send me." The refrain built up, and the delegates chimed in: "Send John Kerry." This is exactly the message Kerry wants to send. Clinton, like his wife, may not in his heart want to see John Kerry elected. Despite his statements, as president he never worked closely with Kerry and he certainly warned Kerry off running in 2000 as campaign-manager-in-effect for his chosen successor Al Gore. But after that speech he cannot be accused of not doing his part to elect Kerry and Edwards. The Boston convention is the product of the Edward Kennedy wing of the party: the Massachusetts delegation is in front of the hall and Arkansas and New York are far in the bleachers. But the heart of the delegates still seems to be with the Clintons. He is the philosopher-prince they cherish; Gore and, so far despite all the scripted praise of him, Kerry are still the fixtures they are willing to accept as the instruments to remove the hated George W. Bush from power. Kerry will have his chance to prove himself the philosopher-prince Thursday night. But Bill Clinton on Monday night set the bar high, and Kerry, who in 1972 was running for Congress and thought himself on a short path to the White House when Clinton was just the McGovern coordinator for Texas, has to jump higher than he has ever before to exceed it.
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