Clintonian
President Clinton’s speech was very odd.
On paper, it served to accomplish two goals—to say that Barack Obama is a really nice guy, and that Republican criticisms of his presidency have been a little extreme compared to the GOP Bill once knew.
Unfortunately, Clinton strolled out on stage to riotous applause, and he was back, baby! 50 minutes of strange improvisation, posturing, and yelling…skimming through his prepared text but jumping from one applause line to the next. He forgot his prepared speech and just wanted to soak in the limelight again.
The audience deserved better, but didn’t care. Clinton quickly realized they didn’t give a crap what he said—they just wanted to hear how great Obama was, and how baaad Republicans are. So he gave them what they wanted.
But a bunch of interesting stories about Bill Clinton along the way. About how, in his day, and so on. Even there to deify Barack Obama, he managed to keep the subjuect mostly about himself, what he discovered about the Republican plan, and about how he reacted to Paul Ryan. And what he thinks about Obama.
So it became a classic long-winded mess. Which is okay—it reminded a lot of Americans of the old Bill Clinton. And he certainly served up a lot of uncited claims that will keep right-wing fact-checkers busy for the next couple of days.
It was a tale, full of sound and fury, and so forth.
Paul Ryan was a deft boxer—cautious at first, but when he got into the second round, he landed a series of stunning hits, light jabs, and a couple of good uppercuts to the Democratic argument. He wins on points, to be sure.
But Bill Clinton was more like a WWE wrestler: loud, bombastic, and hoarse, he ripped his shirt off, climbed up an aluminum ladder and plunged down to elbow smash a folding table. The audience loved it. He flexed, screamed back at the crowd, and strutted around the ring. And he did it some more. And some more. Yeah, he had a pretty colorful double-leg kick there, and put on a headlock, but somehow the Republican arguments continued to twist out of them. It was truly Hulk Hogan out of retirement to bring the old fans out to see the new, less popular kids.
The Czar felt saddest for the teary-eyed head nodders in the audience who hung on every word he said. Yes, the Czar knows that Democrats probably rolled their eyes at the faces in the RNC audience doing the same, but the difference is clear: Republicans know the country is screwed really bad, and the next President—that is, the one after Romney or Obama—is going to be in a world of hurt when the bills come due and there is no more money left. The Democrats at the DNC are being told there’s plenty of money but billionaires keep hiding it. The Czar wishes that were true, but we all know it isn’t.
And Bill Clinton’s nods back to Republicans of the last few decades indicate he knows it isn’t true, either. In fact, if you are a Clinton loyalist on the fence about this new fellow Barack Obama, you probably picked up on a lot of coded messages.
Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.