1 Boring Old Man

Clinton, Thinking About Tomorrow

 

… with Clinton delivering a speech that framed the case for Sen. Barack Obama and against the Republicans in a way that no one at this convention had done before.

Only a day earlier, when there was some unease among Clinton’s associates about whether he was being straitjacketed in what he could say in his speech, Obama tried to defuse the situation by saying Clinton could say whatever he wanted. Good call, as it turned out. Perhaps not even Obama himself could have conjured up an oration so powerful on his behalf. Not only did Clinton utter the words "Barack Obama" 15 times, they came in his first sentence and his last, and there were long riffs about the candidate in between…

The orchestration of his speech came in four parts.

• First was the unscripted ode to himself, which amounted to nothing more than him joyously trying to get the audience to sit down. …he still holds an uncommon place in the modern Democratic pantheon as the party’s only two-term president of the postwar era.
• Then came an ode to Obama, which, if not overly warm, was indisputably lengthy and strong, filling the one void of his wife’s largely Obama-less speech the night before. Saying he is convinced that Obama is "the man for this job," he praised the nominee’s "remarkable ability to inspire people," his "intelligence and curiosity," his "clear grasp" of foreign policy, the strength he gained from the "long, hard primary" against Hillary and the judgment he showed in choosing Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. as his running mate…
• Next came the case against Sen. John McCain and the GOP. Here Clinton went into his professorial mode, biting his lip, jabbing his finger to make a point and throwing wide his hands as a means of inviting the audience in on his wisdom as he cited a litany of Republican failings in domestic and foreign policy. The longest ovation of his speech came after a slap at the Bush administration’s foreign policy propensities to go it alone and rely on force first. "People the world over," Clinton said, "have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of power."…
• And finally Clinton brought it all together by linking his presidency to the prospect of a "President Obama" — and in putting those two words together, it was as though he were finally, after months of reserve and hotheadedness, giving the new kid his blessing. Long gone was the Hillary Clinton campaign ad asking whom people might trust when the phone rang in the White House at 3 in the morning. Sixteen years ago, Bill Clinton said, the Republicans tried to diminish him by "saying I was too young and too inexperienced to be commander in chief. Sound familiar? It didn’t work in 1992, because we were on the right side of history. And it won’t work in 2008, because Barack Obama is on the right side of history."

It is the most repetitive theme of Clinton’s political life: that he always finds a path to redemption when he is down, and in many ways he proved that again with this speech. And he might also have accomplished something larger and less self-centered — by doing all he could to bring Obama up at the same time.