For two straight weeks, we’ve retreated to teleprompted testimony, lusty boos at the mention of disfavored policy, treated to chants of U-S-A, like a high-pressure hose washing away the graffiti of dissent, or sprinkled over the voices of protesters like sawdust on vomit in my old elementary school. We were living in a place where the mention of any state was automatically, almost Pavlovianly, greeted with a cheer, and where warnings of the dire consequences of erring in this exercise in Democracy were punctuated not with heads hung low but by a balloon drop.
These are the conventions of conventions. The cumulative effect is to wonder if this is the best we can do at convincing our fellow man. The visions presented between Republicans and Democrats—diametrically opposed. The Republicans were gloomy, maybe in keeping with the national mood. The Democrats were sunny, certainly in keeping with the truism that Americans want positivity in their leaders. Here was Andrew Cuomo, New York governor, last night:
We’re not going back. We’re going forward. They say they want to make America greater than ever before. We say, You haven’t seen anything yet. You watch what we’re going to do with America.
OK. Uplift beats downcast, right? Well, Andrew Cuomo in his speech referred to his father Mario Cuomo’s brilliant keynote address in 1984—if you listen to that speech, well, back then it was a Cuomo who was telling America that things were bleak, and only his party recognized it:
In this part of the city there are more poor than ever, more families in trouble, more and more people who need help but can’t find it. Even worse, there are elderly people who tremble in the basements of the houses there, and there are people who sleep in the city streets in the gutter, where the glitter doesn’t show. There are ghettoes where thousands of young people without a job or an education give their lives away to drug dealers every day. There is despair, Mr. President. In the faces that you don’t see. In the places that you don’t visit. In your shining city.
What lesson do we learn from this? Maybe it’s true that things were worse. If so, just barely. Unemployment then was just 1.5 percent higher than it is now but fewer people had dropped out of the workforce. The poverty rate then was just below 15 percent. In 2016 the poverty rate is just below 15 percent. Violent crime is down—but college is less affordable.
I think the real lesson is, look at which party went first. In both years, it was the Republicans. And then, look at who was playing defense. So Hillary Clinton is trying to extend eight years of the Democratic rule, and Cuomo was trying to end four years of the Reagan White House, but all this just goes to say much of what we know. That the times might be more ripe for a Republican. Except, of course, if that Republican is Donald Trump. You know, over the last couple days, I really didn’t come away with a great impression of Donald Trump. I mean literally. Here’s Tim Kaine on Wednesday:
You might have noticed. He’s got a way of saying the same two words every time he makes his biggest, hugest promises: Believe me. “It’s gonna be great, believe me. We’re gonna build a wall and make Mexico pay for it, believe me. We’re going to destroy ISIS so fast, believe me. There is nothing suspicious in my tax returns, believe me.”
So Tim Kaine’s Trump is a dim-witted-type doofus. Here’s Jennifer Granholm. Her impression more of a doltish dunce:
Imagine Donald Trump’s version of the Constitution. “I the person in order to form a more perfect union.” Or centuries later, “I shall overcome,” or “Ask not what I can do for my country, ask what my country can do for me.”
The Democrats hit that theme a few times, by the way, latching on to Trump’s claim of I alone can fix it:
He’s forgetting every last one of us.
Americans don’t say I alone can fix it, we say we’ll fix it together.
Of course, Trump’s words were in part a rebuke to Hillary Clinton’s campaigns slogan, “I’m with her.” I’m alone, I’m with her—it’s a meaningless spat over pronouns. It’s the nouns that Hillary used to make the better case. Nouns like wall, taxes, wages, experience, temperament, NATO, bans, security, and knowledge and an appeal to reason. Take this phrase, which is really quite brilliant. Listen as she invokes a Democratic hero, through the lens of a first lady, insults her small-minded opponent, and emphasizes her advantages over him, all in the span of four sentences:
I can’t put it any better than Jackie Kennedy did after the Cuban Missile Crisis. She said that what worried President Kennedy during that very dangerous time was that a war might be started not by big men with self-control and restraint, but by little men, the ones moved by fear and pride. America’s strength doesn’t come from lashing out. It relies on smarts, judgment, cool resolve and the precise and strategic application of power. And that’s the kind of commander in chief I pledge to be.
Overall Hillary Clinton didn’t reach the rhetorical heights of her husband, of either Obama, or even to my mind, Cory Booker, Joe Biden, even Khizr Khan, the father of a slain Marine. Which is to say she’s not the most gifted orator in a field of gifted orators. But to quote one rhetorician, there has never been a man or woman more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president. You know, for 150 years America was a great idea. It’s only really been for the last 70 that it’s been a great nation, a true super power, the most powerful, the richest.
And certainly, America had all the advantages of a well-thought-out Constitution, abundant resources, a populous who bought into the national ethos. But it also had great presidents. Look at the presidents during America’s rise to greatness during and since WWII. FDR: historians’ consensus, third-greatest president in history. Truman and Eisenhower: consistently ranked as Top 10 greatest presidents. Then JFK and LBJ: so incomplete and flawed, but also giants in their way. It’s not just through a historic lens, a nostalgic lens, that we think of these men as great. Their deeds, and the results of their policies prove it. Then Nixon, Ford, and Carter flounder and with that, the country’s fortunes dipped. Reagan restored a confidence. Add then Bush, Clinton, another Bush, and Obama. Now to me, with the exception of George W. Bush, all of these men were men of achievements, of gifts, of energy, of vision, and one or the other—though not always both—intellect and wisdom.
The name Donald Trump belongs on that list like the name Buddy Biancalana belongs on the 1927 Yankees. Like a Route 23 Arby’s belongs in a Michelin Guide, like Sha Na Na belonged at Woodstock. And let’s remember, that last one actually happened.
Hillary Clinton, the case was made, has the experience, the qualities, the compassion to join the list of heretofore men who are worthy of the role of president. And the good news for her is that a highly scrutinized speech is, to her skills, the least friendly venue for her to emphasize those qualities. Now the presidential debates will be held Sept. 26, Oct. 9 and 19. And if she does well in those, and she has all the advantages to do so, there will be one last big stage and it will contain a speech of either concession or victory on Election Day.
