Clinton Antics Will Make Bill and Hil the Next American Idles

March 31, 2008 by Stanley Crouch, Jazz Critic and Essayist

The amateurish ploys of the Clinton campaign are, at this point, so self-destructive that they seem tragic.

We should all know that Bill Clinton is one of our most charismatic Americans. I found this out the first time I met him at a White House party for Lionel Hampton. Someone came into the room unannounced, his back was to me and I didn't know who he was until he turned around, but I couldn't stop staring at him. I knew then that I had encountered a rare brand of charisma.

I had a similar experience when I first heard Hillary Clinton speak as a surprise guest at the Ziegfeld Theatre in Manhattan. Everyone who spoke that night seemed obviously amplified by the microphone except the woman in the dark pantsuit.

When I spoke briefly with her at a library on a college campus, I noticed that she had a good grip on that distant but intimate quality politicians share with movie stars. The feeling that you should not get too close; this person is both above you and an inarguable intimate.

Those qualities do not communicate well through television for some reason. On TV, Clinton seems by turns icy, contrived, hysterical, sentimental, bitter, manipulative and self-righteous. In short, dehumanized by the mysterious dictates of technology, she takes on qualities that most people hate.

Perhaps because of the way camera lights hit the planes of her face and the tinny distortions of her voice imposed by television microphones, something apparently evil happens. Part of Richard Nixon's comeback strategy was to overcome what was done to him by the defining force of TV when he was bilked of the presidency in 1960 then humiliated by losing a run for governor of California in 1962.

Hillary Clinton has never been able to figure that one out.

In the narrows of the idiot box, she seems to have fused in her very being the traits of self-pity and a sense of entitlement. The strategy is as common on the right as the left and, when not planned out, is usually called into play at moments of extraordinary panic.

That is the only explanation for the easily refuted lie Clinton told about traveling with her daughter into the Wild West dangers of Bosnia. Spooked by Obama's speech in Philadelphia, she and Bill must have decided that she had to bring the attention back to her by topping the Illinois senator in some way.

Obviously, the only trouble was that there were reporters and cameras with her in Bosnia, and the pilot who flew the plane carrying Hillary and Chelsea Clinton refuted her on every point! Then, wealthy campaign contributors took off the gloves and tried to bare-knuckle Nancy Pelosi, who was merely saying to the superdelegates that the nomination should go to the one with the most votes.

No way! said the Clinton people. They should vote for the person who has the best chance of beating John McCain.

For all of the sound and the fury, I do not think that the Clintons will destroy the Democratic Party. And they will not ensure the victory of McCain. But I think that they have destroyed any possibility for themselves of returning to the White House.

The press now has another grudge against them, their supporters have to be shocked by this level of lying, and the rest of America sees pathos in their continuing desperation. Then, of course, her documented lie about Bosnia is just what the Republicans would need to perforate any belief in her ability to tell the truth.

In the Western World, where the details of human frailty in the highest places are revealed most clearly, we are witnessing the loud destruction of two liberal idols. Neither the charisma nor the sophistication of Bill and Hillary Clinton has moved to the rescue in this moment of grand but muddy pathos.