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Christopher Caldwell and Jonathan Mahler

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from: Christopher Caldwell

McCain: Master Orator

Posted Tuesday, Feb. 29, 2000, at 10:27 AM ET

Dear Jonathan,

First, I maintain a cynicism about politicians in general. Second, since my Washington friends have flocked to John McCain with all the circumspection of front-row Beatlemaniacs, I've redoubled my skepticism about him. Third, McCain's tobacco pandering is not only opportunistic and politically repellent but indicative of one who couldn't give a rat's ass about social liberties.

But having stipulated those things, I'll admit that John McCain's Virginia Beach speech attacking Pat Robertson moved me as no political speech has in a decade--and not just because it was an electrifying fighting speech in a good cause. McCain managed to attack intolerance without resorting to a symmetrical intolerance. That's much easier said than done in political oratory. I'd argue that no Democrat--least of all FDR--has ever done it. The key was McCain's substitution of his own vivid, real-life Christian message for Robertson and Falwell's snake-oil salesmanship.

"Many years ago," McCain said, "a scared American prisoner of war in Vietnam was tied in torture ropes by his tormentors and left alone in an empty room to suffer through the night." McCain tells how one of the night guards would come in and loosen the captive's ropes, then retie them before dawn, so the sadists on the day shift wouldn't notice. On Christmas morning, when the prisoners assembled, the kind guard walked up to the prisoner and unobtrusively scratched a cross in the dirt with his toe, scuffing it out when his fellow soldiers neared.

One wants to ask: Who writes your stuff? Literally, this is beautiful. McCain doesn't say whether that prisoner was him. Modest! In this light, the key word in the passage quoted above is "scared." It defuses any element of bragging, shifting the focus from heroism to faith. Christian toe-scratching messages, of course, have a long pedigree. The ichthys symbol (better known today as the Bumper-Sticker Fish) was just such a secret greeting. And who knows what "torture ropes" are, but the imagination of listeners can do wonders with them.

One of the best polls I've seen in the last few weeks is the one the Washington Post ran this morning. As voters hear more about McCain, they like him more, by 54 to 33. As voters hear more about Bush, they like him less, by 50 to 41. It seems clear now that Bush cannot win in the fall. Those Republicans who accuse McCain of undermining the party to advance his ambitions are absolutely right. But those who say a Republican coalition that has Southern pandering at its center is a loser's coalition ... they're even righter.

• • •

I'm a Clueless fan, too. I'd love to talk cinema with you, but have a rather limited frame of reference. In the past year, I've seen only six: Private Ryan (loved it), Shakespeare in Love (a pompous stinker), The Spy Who Shagged Me (brain-dead, beneath contempt), An Ideal Husband (terrif), Sweet and Lowdown (inoffensive), and Ripley (satisfyingly complex; a disgrace Philip Seymour-Hoffman didn't get an Oscar nomination). Otherwise, my movie watching consists of regularly scheduled weekly rentals of The Sound of Music (a masterpiece that has yet to bore me after 10 watchings).

Last fall, I also saw Sonnenallee, a cute, nostalgic comedy about life under Communism, in a 30-year-old cinema on Karl Marx Allee in Berlin. What an experience. The place was a typical Ostkino: scarlet carpets, chandeliers, a nice bar where you can smoke, and seats that were as comfy as Barcaloungers. The movie was fair, but the theater provided me with the first inclination I've ever had to say a single nice word about Communism.

• • •

Let's talk baseball this afternoon.

Best,
Chris

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Christopher Caldwell

McCain: Master Orator

Posted Tuesday, Feb. 29, 2000, at 10:27 AM ET
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Christopher Caldwell is senior writer at the Weekly Standard and a columnist for New York Press. Jonathan Mahler is a senior editor at Talk.
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Highlights from The Fray:

[The Breakfast Table participants covered a wide variety of serious and political subjects this week, and as usual Fraygrants knew which were the really important topics, and were keen to participate in the life of the mind:]

The reason the quoted verse of the Steely Dan lyrics makes no sense is that you have omitted the central line:


Any major dude with half a heart
Surely will tell you, my friend
Any minor world that breaks apart
Falls together again.
When the demon is at your door,
In the morning he won't be there no more.
Any major dude can tell you

Doesn't that make it crystal clear?

--Ralph Bartlett

(To reply, click here.)


I rather think that Jonathan missed Chris' main point. Baseball teams shouldn't be adopted for their success, or for their failures. There's something mightily strange about growing up in California and rooting for the Yankees. After all, there was hardly any shortage of New York teams on the West Coast - whence the need to appropriate the only one that remained where it belonged? I'm a Red Sox fan because I was born and raised fifteen minutes from Fenway Park, because one of my strongest childhood memories is the glory of '86 (and yes, the pain), and because hope springs eternal at the end of winter. I do, however, want to compliment Chris. He may not be a native New Yorker, but he seems as smugly superior as any Yankees fan whom I have ever met.

--Yoni

(To reply, click here.)


Maybe it's one of those "you had to have been there" sort of things, but I thought The Sure Thing was charming. It was funny without being crude or stupid. And the punchline you were strugling with? After a series of catastrophes, the protagonists find themselves locked out of shelter in a downpour. The girl suddenly recalls that she has a credit card, but "I'm only supposed to use it for emergencies!"

--Bill Altreuter

(To reply, click here.)


To Bill Altreuter:
Actually that was the set-up line. The punch line followed: "Maybe one will come up."

--B.Roman

(To reply, click here.)


You should start and post a list of phrases to be banned from the press henceforth. My three nominees (for now): 1) sloe-eyed; 2) tsunami; 3) "I knew (blank) and you're no (blank)."

--Matt Murray

(To reply, click here.)


Here are some more proposed Taboo Phrases: 1) Its the *******, stupid! 2) Risky tax schemes 3) Move forward 4) Media savvy 5) Sole remaining Superpower 6) Outside the mainstream 7) Go negative.

--John McGraw

(To reply, click here.)

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