God, Jews and good ol' Bubba
By Wes Pruden
PrudenPolitics.com
Bill
Clinton did what he set out to do, and did it well.
He brought the attention and focus of the Democrats,
if only briefly, squarely back to his favorite
person: “Don’t you wish I was the man at the top of
the ticket?” Nobody honks, wonks and bonks quite
like the ravisher-in-chief. The delegates felt
happily ravished, just like old times.
Barack Obama did what he had to do, too. The
pared-down setting, an arena with 20,000 cheering
Democrats instead of a stadium surrounded by empty
seats and the remnants of the plaster of paris
Parthenon shipped in from Denver and 2008, seemed
just right for his acceptance speech. He has to
revise himself and lower expectations for a second
term. If he can’t be the messiah, he can hold
Bubba’s horse.
And
for one brief, shining moment, the Charlotte
convention came alive, almost as if a Democratic
convention of old, with angry delegates standing on
their chairs shouting insults at the podium.
Disputed ballots (or at least disputed voice votes)
threatened to spin the proceedings out of control.
What confusion. What suspense. What glorious fun.
Who but Democrats would decide by majority vote
whether to invite God to the party? No one has yet
improved on Will Rogers: “I’m not a member of an
organized political party, I’m a Democrat.”
The
chairman of the convention, Los Angeles Mayor
Anthony Villaraigosa, called three times for a voice
vote to amend the platform which nobody will ever
again read, to restore a mention of God and the
recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
After two unsuccessful votes you could see dilemma
written in his face. He had to rule that the
amendment was adopted not by a simple majority but
by the two-thirds vote required by convention rules.
The
first time the voices crying “aye” and those
shouting “no” seemed about even; the second time the
“no’s” seemed louder. The mayor looked like the
goose hit on the head with a long-handled wooden
spoon. “I, uh,” he said after a long pause, “I guess
I’ll do that one more time.” A young woman at his
side, presumably a parliamentarian, told him in a
frustrated aside: “You’ve got to rule, and then
you’ve got to let them do what they’re gonna do.”
The third time was not exactly the charm, and the
“no’s” clearly had it. But a result had been
ordained by the party powers that be. “In the
opinion of the chair, two-thirds have voted in the
affirmative.” Mr. Villaraigosa’s sheepish expression
said he didn’t believe a word of it, and later in
the day he told a PBS interviewer that he was sure a
“majority” voted “aye.” Neither of the PBS
interviewers, being well-mannered ladies, thought to
remind him that a mere majority was not enough.
The
deed, which had to be done, finally was, and it was
left to the spinners to put a face on debacle. They
cast President Obama as “personally” intervening to
get God and Jerusalem back in the platform, though
there was nobody to believe that the president had
not been consulted earlier before God was banished
and Jerusalem and the Jews were told to get lost.
Mr. Obama had never before acknowledged Jerusalem as
the capital, pending resolution of “final status
issues” in the so called “peace process.” When Jay
Carney, the president’s flack, was asked in July to
name the capital of Israel he declined to do so.
With the changes in the platform made at his
direction President Obama put himself at odds with
the Obama administration. (Will Rogers, take another
bow.)
The
president’s luckless spinners, faced with the
impossible job of thinking up a fib big enough for
the occasion, could only embarrass themselves. The
president, intervening, was only expressing his
“personal” view. “It doesn’t make sense for a U.S.
president to impose his personal beliefs in a policy
context,” an Obama campaign official, trying to keep
a straight face, told Weekly Standard magazine. “But
it’s important for him to make clear where he stands
on these issues.”
This
is certainly an imaginative precedent for a
president – that yes, a president is expected to set
out the goals and expectations for his
administration, but, after all, he shouldn’t be
expected to agree with himself. Why ask the
president? You might as well ask Joe the Plumber. Or
the cat.
But
now we can get serious with the campaign. There will
be plenty of rough places for both Barack Obama and
Mitt Romney to stub a toe. The president, who looked
invincible in the spring, now looks “vincible”
indeed. To quote the president’s favorite former
president: “Bring it on!”
Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington
Times.