CHARLOTTE, N.C.
Perhaps the greatest paradox of American politics is that so many of its practitioners close in on — or reach — the pinnacle of the profession despite a fundamental inaptitude for one or another of its central demands.
George W. Bush was about eight times as comfortable and four times as articulate away from a lectern as at one. But on the path to the presidency, lecterns were no more avoidable than the malapropisms they teased out of him. He suffered and survived both.
Mitt Romney has no visible affinity for the rope line. But that’s where a candidate lives, so Romney makes a borrowed home there, and an uneasy one at that, his body language as stiff as his banter is awkward.
And Barack Obama, the former law professor, prefers to fly at a lofty intellectual altitude and stand at a certain emotional remove. He’s a cool customer. But to get help and to get votes, a politician must make a warm and humble bid for them, maybe even drop to one knee (metaphorically speaking) on occasion. It’s a suitor’s obligation, and it’s a good idea in particular for a suitor who hasn’t been able to keep all of the promises he made the last time he came courting.
On the convention stage here last night, President Obama didn’t have to plead. He didn’t even have to be Bill Clinton, who will not soon cede the title of courter in chief.
Obama and his campaign clearly believe they have the lead and are playing to protect it.
But he did have to collapse the distance between him and a populace that has known better times. More important, he had to collapse the distance between the poetic heights he favors and the prosaic realities of the country’s situation right now: our high unemployment, our damaged economy, our dysfunctional Congress, our partisan acrimony.
Many Americans are exasperated. Many Americans are scared. During his presidency, the country’s recovery from recession has been painful and slow. That demanded some acknowledgment, that called for some humility and that recommended some demystification.
All came in the form of a tweaked definition of the word “hope.” He used his speech last night to say that he himself was never the hope; the American people were. He said that he remained hopeful about the country’s future “not because I think I have all the answers, not because I’m naïve about the magnitude of our challenges.”
“I’m hopeful,” he added, “because of you.”
“You” came to the foreground, while “I” receded. It was striking: the earlier speech by Joe Biden was an extravagant deification of the president that seemed out of synch with the country’s condition.
But it served an interesting purpose. It both permitted Obama to go in a different and less boastful direction and underscored the strains of modesty in some of the president’s words.
The first two-thirds of the speech seemed almost deliberately muted, a considered turn away from the kind of soaring oratory that his critics deride as eloquence without consequence.
Obama’s speech was arresting for other reasons, too. Although he faulted his Republican opponents for a lack of specificity about their policy prescriptions, he didn’t get particularly detailed, either. He and his campaign clearly believe they have the lead and are playing to protect it.
He did bring up a few divisive social issues head-on, mentioning gays in the military, same-sex marriage and reproductive freedom all in one packed stretch, to robust applause from the delegates in the arena.
But what stood out even more was the careful calibration of ego in his presentation. The first two-thirds of his speech seemed almost deliberately muted, a considered turn away from the kind of soaring oratory that his critics deride as eloquence without consequence.
And he scattered his remarks with self-effacing statements.
“The election four years ago wasn’t about me,” Obama said. “It was about you.” He went on to credit the voters who supported him for what he considers the signal accomplishments of the last few years, including an expansion of health insurance to people who didn’t have it.
“You did that,” he said. “You did that.”
“I ask you tonight for your vote.”
“I need you to vote this November.”
Although his voice didn’t reach full thunder until the final stretch, it was never folksy. His style stood in vivid contrast to Clinton’s, a fresh memory because it was such a deeply planted one — it had nearly 50 minutes to take root. That epic speech on Wednesday night was dazzling and undisciplined, generous and needy: the messy man himself in an oratorical nutshell.
“Listen to me,” Clinton said at least four times. Also: “I want you to listen.” “You all got to listen carefully.” “Are you listening in Michigan and Ohio?”
They were listening in Michigan and Ohio — and in Minnesota and Wisconsin and dozens of other states — because it’s pretty hard not to when a politician conveys such an enormous desire for your attention, such a profound interest in your trust and such a fervent hope to be seen as the one who can both explain everything to you and steer you through it. Clinton comes before you not only as your wisest counselor but also as your best buddy, and it’s the latter part of that equation that too often eludes Obama.
His donors complain about it. His fellow Democrats complain about it. David Maraniss noted it in a memorable passage from a story in the Washington Post this week that examined how different Clinton and Obama are.
“Clinton,” Maraniss wrote, “could spend five minutes in a Dunkin’ Donuts in Concord, N.H., and meet a stranger whose face and name and life story he could still recall two decades later. Obama spent four introspective years in New York without making a single lasting friend.”
He floats above. He holds back. And that rankles his allies and even some of his intimates not just because it wounds their vanity (though of course it does) but because it hampers his effectiveness. He loses some good will because of it. He forfeits opportunities. There are arms that go untwisted, egos that go un-stroked, backs that go un-slapped.
And if he wins a second term, the success of it will inarguably depend on his ability to appropriate some of the raw political gusto and nuanced political skills that Clinton has always had. He needs to sell things the way Clinton does: eye to eye, heart to heart.
In Obama’s speech, I was looking for signs that he had come to realize that, and that he had begun to do that. I saw a few, but still hope for many more.
