Against My Better Judgement

[poliphilo]

I don't trust politicians. Let me repeat that:

I DO NOT TRUST POLITICIANS

But wasn't Bill Clinton good....

Usually when a politician comes onto my TV screen and shows me his teeth (Tony Blair for instance) I feel an urge to knock 'em down his throat.

But wasn't Bill Clinton good....

The Republicans are calling it spin. Well, yes; I can see how the performance was crafted, how the jokes were calculated, how the self-deprecation served a larger purpose, but his points about the billionaires' tax refund and the deficit- please tell me how that is spin. I mean, those things happened or they didn't happen, right?

I watched the build up with hardened cynicism. Glenn Close was crap, Hillary was crap, The reverend gentleman who was in that boat with Kerry was- well- predictable- so my expectations were lower than low, but- wasn't Bill Clinton good!

Comments

[balirus.livejournal.com]

He is an amazing speaker, last night's was a great stump speech and he really shined. I heard him speak at a fundraising dinner for a gay rights organization called Empire State Pride Agenda in '99. For the event he was only scheduled to speak for 30 minutes and came in without a prepared speech. For an hour and a half he held a room of 2000 people in the palm of his hand using nothing more than his absolutely incredible personal charm and an amazing ability to know everything about everything. There wasn't a person in the room that didn't fall in love with him. Clinton can speak with such smooth brilliance it's like pouring candy into your ear.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

My mate Judy is so smitten with Clinton she wrote a whole book of poems about him. I never quite understood why- until now.

[archyena.livejournal.com]

It's part of the reason Al Gore lost, after Clinton, he was a real let down.

[kaysho.livejournal.com]

He is superb, when he manages to stick to his points and not wallow in them too much. He doesn't speak. He talks. To you and only to you. You listen, because it's as though he were standing in front of you engaging you in conversation, not standing behind a podium hundreds of feet away or on the far side of a television screen. He can make subtle points like his "strength and wisdom" line or his understated request to "take a look at John Kerry", and those lines have the oratorical punch few other speakers could give them, because you are emphatically listening and you pick up the meaning behind the subtlety.

It does make you wonder how much better he could've come out of his transgressions with Monica Lewinsky if he'd simply said, "I did it." :)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Modern politics is all about communication, yet there are so few great communicators. Strange....