Stars of Past and Future

A stirring political oration, the kind that moblizes your fellow citizen to action, is, according to Thucydides and Aristotle, the highest achievement of politics. Now, 2,500 years after the Athenians gave birth to democracy, the most powerful nation on earth would rather watch guys eat centipedes on TV than hear soaring panegyric from esteemed politicians.

Actually that's an unfair way of putting it, because it is hard to blame folks for ignoring party nominating conventions. Due to modern reforms, a party determines its nominee months before the convention. A modern convention has none of the backroom deal cutting and floor fights that make for good drama. Instead, national conventions have become a lavish exercise in marketing and branding, designed mainly to provide 2 minute sound bites on "Good Morning America" for those 32 narcissistic, lazy "swing voters" that this election will apparently be decided by. It's a wholly prefab event, generating no real news.

That said, a national convention is still the forum where a party can communicate most directly to citizens. As such, these quaint gatherings are still vitally important. And a powerful speech at a convention, even one that doesn't do more than lay out some vague, broadly accepted principles, is still good for the soul in that it affirms, if only temporarily, that politics can be a higher calling, not just for the orator, but for the listeners roused into action.

The Past

It's been a long time since I was genuinely excited by a political candidate, by someone who will move me to drop everything and work tirelessly to get him elected. The last one was, in fact, Bill Clinton in '92. Despite his flaws and squandered promise, he remains for me the most compelling public figure of our era, the only man I might line up 2 to 3 hours to shake hands with (but not 6 or 7, which is the length of wait to get his book signed). His speech on Monday night showed again why he's an epochal political figure.

Clinton's the only speaker I've ever heard who can make economic numbers and factoids sing. He's got a unique gift of spouting off a litany of facts, figures, and wonkish proposals without sounding boring. Unlike nearly every other public figure, he'll got six or seven different pitches in one speech: conversational one minute, a preacher the next, combative when need be, good-humored throughout.

Substantively, Clinton's genius is framing the debate and making the case for Democratic policies: he'll identify where the country needs to go, how to get there, and what's been done so far, using those facts and figures to support the case. We're moving closer and closer towards an interconnected and interdependent world, Clinton states, and the Democrats have the right vision and the right policies for that world. Thus far, Kerry hasn't been able to approach this kind of winning rhetorical framework. Let's hope he can articulate a Democratic vision that makes sense on Thursday.

The Future

Delivering the DNC's keynote address amid a tsunami of hype, Obama actually surpassed the sky-high expectations party activists have set for him. But his speech is very different from Clinton's. Where Clinton argues, persuades, and coaxes with overwhelming self-confidence befitting his stature, Obama tells stories and paints pictures with graceful self-possession. His speech tells an evocative story of Democratic America, a land of opportunity, which is paradoxically an united America. Obama provides the thematic backbone to Clinton's meat. His speech crescendos with this wonderful passage:

John Kerry calls on us to hope. John Edwards calls on us to hope.

I’m not talking about blind optimism here - the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don’t think about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about something more substantial. It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs. The hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores. The hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta. The hope of a millworker’s son who dares to defy the odds. The hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too.

Among great Democratic speakers, Obama's easy eloquence -- his smoothly impassioned speaking style -- is more like Mario Cuomo's than either Clinton or Jesse Jackson's full-throated preachy wordplay. It's a terrifically appealing speaking style, and I remain convinced this guy has the best shot of becoming our first black president.

Clinton, as the pundits keep saying, is a rock star. Now Obama is one, too.

The Present

As for Thursday, I know Kery will try to somehow stake his leadership qualities on his badass Vietnam experience. I really hope he'll do more than that. Clinton correctly diagnosed the world as heading irretrievably more interdependent; the role of government is guide us through these times of rapid change, encouraging growth but cushioning those left behind. What's Kerry's vision? Will he finally be able to boil his Iraq votes/plans down to something digestible to every day people?

Lastly, Clinton, along with Gore and Carter, laid a theme that must be repeated again and again: good leadership requires not only strength but wisdom. The GOP has cleverly defined Bush's blind stubborness and aggression as the avatars of leadership. But "decisiveness" and "resolve" aren't necessaily the traits I'm looking for when a captain is leading the ship down the cliff. Kerry task is to redefine leadership as a combination of decisiveness and intelligence, of making the right choice. He needs to make it a choice between Goliath and Solomon.

Fahrenheit 9/11 (Moore) -- C+

Couple passes by a neighbors house and hears screams. Looking in, they see that a father beating his kid to a pulp. The wife exclaims, "That's horrible!" And the husband replies, "Yeah, who in heaven would think of wear a green jacket with a blue plaid shirt?!?"

It's one of those lame jokes about missing the point, the kind of which kept popping into my head towards the end of my viewing of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. The movie's a singularly frustrating experience: it's as if Lars von Trier invented a Sixth Obstruction: "Use the most powerful footage you can find [9/11 footage], choose the easiest target [Bush], and the worst major decision of a leader you can think of [Invasion of Iraq]. Then come up with something totally mediocre."

I'll address the big points that Moore missed further down, but let's talk about what's good here. Moore gets serious props for that opening, cross-cutting various Bushies prepping for on camera interviews (especially the Wolfowitz spit-mousse moment). That opening announces that Moore's gonna expose Bush's brilliantly managed media stagecraft to show the true face of the buffoon in the Oval Office, and the movie's never more effective than when he's making the smirking chimp look foolish. He more or less captures the essence of Dubya as a silver spooned slacker who's never succeeded at a single thing. Whenever Moore stays within his realm as a master cheap shot provocateur, the film works.

More substantively, Moore's right on target in showing how the Pentagon (and the GOP) uses the bleak future of the lower class as a recruiting tool for the armed forces. Connected chickenhawks bloviate about democracy in their cigar rooms while poor middle American kids are sent to do the dirty work. Moore exposes this outrage. The recruiting bit and especially Moore's baiting of chickenhawk congressman redeems Moore's gonzo approach. But Moore wants more. He wants to turn Bush into the Bogeyman of the Ages, and in his eagerness to destroy the man, Moore lapses into incoherence.

The first problem is structure: the movie's just too scattershot. Any one of the following subjects would make a compelling documentary: the Florida vote and recount, the Bush/Saudi connection, the Bushies inadequate response to 9/11, the Bushies' Iraq Plan of Attack, the failure of postwar planning, the ten servers' worth of right-wing hypocrisy, the failed war on terror, the burden of war placed squarely on the lower classes, the Administration's abysmally skewed priorities, and Bush's life of blissful failure. Even though he makes some interesting points (e.g, the Congressional Black Caucus protest of Bush v. Gore), Moore doesn't probe deep enough into any one of these issues. He spends about 10 minutes and then moves on. The goal seems to try to paint an overall picture of administration failure, but most people who read the news already know this. The trick is figure out how and why the Bushies are such failures. Unfortunately, Moore isn't up for the task of being the wonk explainer.

Like many lefty populists, Moore is clueless about geopolitics, and prone to the activists' penchant to reduce the everything into a worldview best summarized by inane slogans like "Power to the People" or "Multinational corporations are evil". All the evil in the world is driven by greedy capitalists and their profit-motive. Afflicted with activist myopia, it really isn't much of a surprise that Moore latches on to the weakest case in popular circulation against Bush -- that he's a stooge for oil interests and Saudi Arabia -- as his grand narrative.

But Moore doesn't so much argue as darkly insinuate, and what we're left with is some vague sense that Bush's is somehow treacherously alligned to Saudi Arabia and the weapons industry, both of which are connected via the Carlyle Group (the Sauds -- the Bin Laden family and the House of Saud are investors, and the Group has vast defense-related holdings). Every connection is squeezed for maximum conspiratorial juice. Here's a blacked out name on Bush's national guard records! And who's this guy? Why someone who hired Dubya! Moore's so sloppy in outlining his case that, if you take this movie at face value, you'd get the overall impression that Osama launched the 9/11 attacks in order to generate profits for his family with stake in American weapons companies.

Moore likes to say that the movie's fact-checked by folks employed by The New Yorker. I believe it. But just because the facts can be verified doesn't mean they tie together in the way Moore suggests. Look, I think there's a provocative story about possible conflicts of interest that arise from the Saud/Bush relationship (two books published this year investigate this very issue), but nothing I've seen indicates that Bush's policies have been driven largely by a desire to enrich his family (and this narrative doesn't jibe with the other picture Moore paints: Bush as an unmotivated, dim-witted slacker). This is not GM, and in Moore's zeal to tar his nemesis as some sort of money-grubbing crony, he leaves a hole the size of Ground Zero in his film: the effect of ideology.

Most close observers of the Bush administration point to two glaring faults: one is an unbridled lust for power (best case is this recent piece on the Bushies' yen for anti-democratic moves by Jonathan Chait); the other, an abiding preference for faith over facts, ideology over analysis (best piece: Will Saletan here). Much of the current mess -- in the Middle East, in our diplomatic relations, the exploding budget deficit, etc. -- can be directly traced to the Bushies' idelogical blindness.

Ideology is the pink elephant in the room that Moore never talked about. The case against Iraq isn't so much that there's no weapons of mass destruction as it was an unnecessary war based primarily on idelogical pipedreams. In the mid 90s, the Project for the New American Century, the group of neocons headed by Wolfowitz and Perle, made invading Iraq a top priority. The neocons were the intellectual architects behind the Iraq war, but I don't recall ever hearing the word "neocon" once. It's their zealous faith in their own ideas (that Iraqis will embrace American soldiers, that a pro-American democracy can be easily installed) against all empirical evidence and common sense that has led to "Mess O Potamia." How do you tackle the Bushies' failings in the War in Iraq and not address this? Why not discuss how Bush's Cold War mentality led to the administration fatally underestimating the al Qaeda threat? It's as if someone made a doc about Nixon and focused only on his cussing and anti-Semitism, completely ignoring Tricky Dick's pervasive paranoia.

And it's not just missing the point, Moore also created a false impression by following the money rather than ideology. For example, which of the following is more likely to be true?

* Was Bin Laden (a) motivated by profits or (b) by a murderous anti-Western ideology aimed at creating an Islamo-fascist empire in the Middle East?

* Is it (a) Bush that has made us so close to Saudi Arabia, or (b) have bipartisan administrations supported the House of Saud in order to keep oil prices and the region stable and not have the "Arab Street" explode?

* Why are the Saudis funding terrorist organizations and support radical Wahhabi clerics preaching anti-West hate? Is it (a) to enrich the Carlyle Group to which they have large holdings, or (b) to distract its citizenship from the corruption and decadence of the Royal Family?

* Is Israel's security (a) not at all a factor in our decision to invade Iraq or (b) a paramount consideration for the neocon cabal in their plans to democratize the Middle East?

(B) is the correct choice for all the above questions. But if you knew nothing about Middle East politics going into the movie, you'd come out thinking the answer to every question is (a).

A detailed, rigorously argued (yet still entertaining) attack on Bush's leadership may rightfully destroy the insane idea that Bush has successfully waged a war on terror. But Moore appears so stuck in his populist shtick that he can't face the fact that the most dangerous people are those who care less about money than their own wacko belief system. The fundamentalist zealots. Think of Al Qaeda, fascists, or the Commies. Add to this group the right-wing nutjobs running this country into the ground. The best analogy might come from Bill Maher on Larry King last night: [paraphrasing]
"There are two groups of people in this country. One who guides a ship using a compass. The other wants to navigate using the entrails of a chicken. I want to be on board the ship guided by a compass." Right on. If Moore were half as sharp as Maher or Jon Stewart, Fahrenheit 9/11 might've been the nail in Bush's political coffin. Instead, it's a golden opportunity missed.

Does it matter? For some, as long as Moore's goals are laudable, who cares how he gets there? Me, I'm one of those abortion rights supporters who thinks Roe v. Wade is a bad decision. Reasoning matters. Good arguments matter, for its own sake and because not everyone is on your squad. Fahrenheit's a fun, cathartic time for us Bush-haters, but there are essays out every week that make a more compelling case against his presidency.

Why is Larry King famous?

How did Larry King become a big shot? How did his show become the first pit stop on the talk show circuit, so much so that it is the logical venue to announce a presidential bid or make a mea culpa?

Larry King might be the ugliest man on television. I don't mean that as a put-down, but to make the point that King himself must be remarkable in some way to overcome his bad looks in the most appearance-conscious of mediums. But he's a poor interviewer, and in two recent interviews with Jon Stewart and Bill Maher, his cluelessness makes it almost embarrassing to watch. King simply didn't get the Onion-type deadpan jokes that Stewart threw out, and tried to ask follow-up questions to obviously absurd statements. Maher makes his jokes slightly more obvious, but King still didn't know what to do with the Smug One's politically incorrect provocations. The man is simply overmatched out there. Was he good at one time? Or is he just the Liz Smith of cable talk shows?

Also, an alert reader notified me that yesterday marked the first year anniversary of Pigs & Battleships' launch. And all it has cost me are about 200 billable hours and a lot of headaches.

I'm mad as hell and...could you pass the wasabi please?

Is Jeb rigging the election again for his big bro? On his blog, Kevin Drum expresses outrage that Jeb Bush compiled a voter purge list that included a ton of
African-Americans, but only 50 Latinos (out of 47,000 supposed ex-felons).  Given that African-Americans vote overwhelmingly for Dems and Florida Latinos (especially Cubans) traditionally favor the GOP, this is deeply troubling, especially considering the Jeb and co.'s legerdemain in 2000. 

Does Osama support Kerry for Prez? On his blog, Josh Marshall expresses outrage that a branch of the Kentucky Republican Party is handing out signs that say:
"Kerry is bin Laden's Man/Bush is My Man." Never mind that nobody has
done more for al Qaida recruitment and incite hatred around the world
for Americans -- not even bin Laden himself -- than good ol' Dubya. As
the theory in Unbreakable goes, the hero would be lost if he didn't have his archnemesis.

Evil Bush destroying our National Parks to curry favor with loggers? On their site, The Onion finds liberals outraged....um, no, it looks like they've exhausted all their liberal outrage. Damn.

Priority Movies (of relevance only to a select few)

(This post is of interest only to the handful of P&B readers who also double as my moviegoing companions. So let me know what you're interested in seeing, buds.)

The following is a list of movies in current release I would consider watching, ranked on 1-5 point scale (with 5 being "I'll drop everything" and 1 being "buy me a ticket and I'll check it out"):

1. Before Sunset (5)
Why? I will throw a fit if I don't see this movie this weekend.
2. Metallica: Some Kind of Monster (4)
Why? Ecstatic reviews; interesting subject matter, and memories of the band kicking G N' R's ass at Dodger Stadium in 1992.
3. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (3)
Why? Alfonso Cuaron.
4. The Corporation (3)
Why? Supposedly a thought-provoking take on the world's most important institution.
5. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story (3)
Why? Why is it so funny to watch grown men get pelted with a rubber ball and other objects? Also, see ESPN commercial with Randy Johnson.
6. Troy (3)
Why? Fuck the naysayers. I still think this movie will kick ass.
7. Napoleon Dynamite (3)
Why? Looks like a funny cross between Wes Anderson and Todd Solondz, but also looks like the quirky Sundance movie from hell.
8. Maria Full of Grace (2)
Why? Is this didactic-looking realist drama really supposed to be this good?
9. Anchorman (2)
Why? Will Ferrell's kinda funny.
10. Baadasssss! (2)
Why? Looks like a movie for geeks, 'cept I still haven't seen Sweet Sweetback.
11. Super-Size Me (2)
Why? Has anyone not seen this?
12. Riding Giants (2)
Why? Dogtown & Z Boys was fun enough.
13 The Terminal (2)
Why? Looks bad, but I haven't missed a Spielberg movie since...
14. I'll Sleep When I'm Dead (1) [corrected]
Why? The only watchable Clive Owen movie out there.
15. De-lovely (1)
Why? Supposedly awful, but even if the rockies may tumble and Gibraltar may crumble Cole's still my man.
16. Zhou Yu's Train (1)
Why? Doesn't Gong Li get neekid in this? Does anyone know? If yes, move up 8 places.
17. The Story of Weeping Camel (1)
Why? Please don't make me watch this.
18. The Door in the Floor (1)
Why? Surprisingly good Dargis review, and Bridges supposedly awesome, but the trailer was so crappy.

Misc.

- Let's hope Missy spends her time away from the blogosphere productively and return rejuvenated and refreshed. I'll miss her witty ruminations on pop culture ephemera.

- Has anyone watched Jeopardy lately? This guy Kevin Jennings is an absolute monster, like the real life version of the kid from Magnolia. He's just destroying the competition like Mike Tyson in his heyday. Truly awesome to behold. (Jeopardy changed its rules recently so that winners stay on until they're beaten, so Jennings can conceivably go on for a year or two.)

- Barack Obama, whom I'd hyped here, has just been chosen to deliver the keynote address at the Democratic convention. (Tradition holds that you pick a rising star to be the keynote speaker; Clinton famously delivered a dud in '88.) And Mike Ditka decided not to run against him. And so the ascent continues unabated.

Shaq and Roger

Nothing to add to this terrific piece by the Sports Guy on the Shaq trade, which manages to make the case that Shaq's trade was a big mistake while somehow also working in Jimmy "Super Fly" Snuka and an exegesis of Walter Hill's The Warriors (the Sports Guy is freakin' brilliant).

The Sports Guy, like every other die-hard Red Sox fan, hates the Rocket. So does this guy. To top it off, Roger's awful hometown start in the All-Star Game in last night elicited much schaudenfreude among the press, even from the great Thomas Boswell. Besides Barry Bonds, can you imagine any other living legends getting this kind of treatment? What if Dan Marino embarrassed himself in his last start? Or Jordan? It's bizarre that the two most dominant baseball players of the last five decades are also among the two most hated. Not that there isn't justification: these aren't the nicest guys in the sports. Bonds is widely loathed for being an all-around boor, while Clemens is lambasted for hypocrisy and nuttiness.

Clemens is only recently widely appreciated by fans, but still not widely respected as he should be. This is the most dominant pitcher of the last 50 years, possibly the most dominant pitcher we'll see in our lifetime. So he's no astrophysicist, but he deserves the respect his dominance accorded him.

What distinguishes Clemens from Tom Seaver and Greg Maddux, the only other pitchers in his rarefied league, is sustained excellence. Check out his career numbers. The Hall of Fame numbers are the 320 wins and 4,000+ Ks, but the key is at the bottom: Clemens posted the top adjusted ERA (ERA adjusted for the league average) in 7 seasons, and was a top five finisher in 12 seasons spread over 18 years. Adjusted ERA measures pitching performance relative to the league -- correcting for "juiced ball" and annual quirks. It's one of the best measures of actual pitching performance, and nobody in the last 50 years -- not Seaver, Koufax, Maddux, Pedro, or the Unit -- have been that dominant for such a long stretch. Clemens was one of the top 5 pitchers in his league for over pretty much his entire career, one or two fluke seasons aside.

The knock against Clemens was that he floundered in the mid-90s, just going through the motions until he can cash in as a free agent. Duquette famously described Roger to be in the "twilight of his career" in 1996, and Sox fans take it on faith that the Rocket coasted that year, but the numbers don't bear it out (nor does it make any sense -- if he's a greedy fat bastard who could turn it on at will, wouldn't his free agent year be the perfect year to do so?). In 1996, Clemens actually recorded the 4th best adjusted ERA that year in the AL. And that year, what I remember most was Clemens laboring through games at 120+ pitches at start, trying to strike out everybody because Duquette assembled a team of DHs who can't catch worth a lick. The bad defense fucked with Roger's head, leading him to throw way too many split-fingers. Still he was one of AL's top five pitchers, and finally went to Toronto and recorded two of the most awesome seasons in baseball history.

Give the man his due.