[Mb-civic] What's Better? His Empty Suit or Her Baggage? By MAUREEN DOWD

[Michael Butler]

The New York Times
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March 15, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
What's Better? His Empty Suit or Her Baggage?
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

There's only one reason I continue to brave Washington's dreary formal press
dinners, which are so calcified they're a bad cross between a zombie movie
and those little Mexican Day of the Dead sculptures.

I find it highly instructive to hear politicians make humor speeches. It's
difficult, and few pols do it well.

It took Bill Clinton almost two terms to make a funny speech. He kept
letting a petulant tone creep in. Even though W. would probably rather spend
the night in Baghdad than go to a banquet, way past his bedtime, where he's
getting lampooned by reporters still able to drink, he was a master right
from the start.

Lynne Cheney is a practiced speaker, but a bit tone-deaf on humor. At the
Gridiron dinner here on Saturday, she said of her husband: "He has a great
sense of humor. Just the other day I asked him, 'Do you know how many
terrorists it takes to paint a wall?' And he answered right back, 'It
depends on how hard you throw them.' "

People laughed, but it felt creepy, the kind of humor that makes more
terrorists.

Everyone was curious to hear Barack Obama, the Democratic speaker. He
arrived last year as a star, then lapsed into a cipher, even getting punk'd
by John McCain last month. In the capital's version of "Dancing With the
Stars," Senator Obama won, turning in a smooth, funny performance that
lifted him from his tyro track.

He tweaked fellow Democrats, telling the white-tie crowd: "Men in tails.
Women in gowns. An orchestra playing, as folks reminisce about the good old
days. Kind of like dinner at the Kerrys."

He mocked the president's unauthorized snooping, saying he'd "asked my staff
to conduct all phone conversations in the Kenyan dialect of Luo." He advised
W. to "spy on the Weather Channel, and find out when big storms are coming."

After saying he'd enjoyed the Olympic biathlon of shooting and skiing, he,
deadpan, turned to Dick Cheney: "Probably not your sport, Mr. Vice
President."

It may be true that Americans, as one Democrat told me, "will never elect a
guy as president who has a name like a Middle East terrorist." And it may be
true that Democrats are racing like lemmings toward a race where, as one
moaned, "John McCain will dribble Hillary Clinton's head down the court like
a basketball."

But the clever, elegant performance by Mr. Obama ‹ who is intent on keeping
his head down in the Senate until he, too, can be a tedious insider ‹
underscored the Democratic vacuum. Not only do the Democrats "stand for
anything," as Mr. Obama semijoked, but they have no champion at a time when
people are hungry for an exciting leader, when the party should be roaring
and soaring against the Bushies' power-mad stumbles. They should groom an
'08 star who can run on the pledge of doing what's right instead of only
what's far right.

The Republicans won with Ronald Reagan and W. by taking guys with more
likeability and sizzle than experience. They figure they'll win in a
McCain-Hillary duel by running a conservative beloved by the media and many
Democrats against a polarizing Northerner who can't win any red states
despite pandering to conservatives.

The weak and pathetic Democrats seem to move inexorably toward candidates
who turn a lot of people off. They should find someone captivating with an
intensely American success story ‹ someone like Senator Obama, Tom Brokaw or
some innovative business mogul who's less crazy than Ross Perot ‹ and shape
the campaign around that leader. Barack Obama is 44. J.F.K., who had a
reputation as a callow playboy and lawmaker who barely knew his way around
the Hill, was 43 when he became president.

With seniority comes dullness. And unless you can draw on it in desperate
times, promise is merely a curse.

Democrats think Senator Potential's experience does not match Senator
Pothole's. Much of hers is as a first lady who bollixed up chunks of
domestic policy. They also suspect she may be more macho than he is. They
fret that the freshman Illinois senator would wilt against the Arizona
senator's foreign policy experience ‹ and he probably would. But Mr. McCain,
a big hawk on Iraq, has talked of sending more troops, and his mentor was
Henry Kissinger. These are not recommendations.

W. had the foreign policy "dream team," and it shattered our foreign policy,
ideals and self-image. Despite hundreds of years of combined experience, the
Bushies rammed through cronies and schemes that were so destructive, it will
take hundreds of years to straighten out the mistakes.

The Democrats should not dismiss a politically less experienced but
personally more charismatic prospect as "an empty vessel." Maybe an empty
vessel can fill the room.

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