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Burt Prelutsky

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FROM THE PHONE BOOTH: The Smallest Space in  Hollywood

	FINEFROCK

The Drama of Obama
Drinking the Sand
by Steve Finefrock - Hollywood Forum [scriptwriter] 2/12/08

Empty rhetoric from a freshman senator of minimal masculine measure, with accompanying oozing charm, can be more alluring than thoughtfulness in a mind that is producing little if any rousing rhetoric whatsoever. That is one major challenge for John McCain against Obama.  We’ve seen this sugary, sweet-talking candidate twice before, in political cinema, most notably [yet not noted so far by the commentariat] in Robert Redford’s Bill McKay in “The Candidate” as well as Michael Douglas’ Andrew Shepherd in “The American President.”
 
“There’s got to be a better way” wailed McKay in his endless, meaningless mantra, blond locks swirling on Redford’s empty cranium, challenging “The Crock” in that seminal 1972 peek into electoral adventures. Crocker Jarmon was the incumbent senator in the fictional California race which ultimately gave us a befuddled winner at film’s end, plaintively asking his campaign manager, “What do I do now?” Former governor, John. J. McKay has earlier endorsed his son’s bid for the U.S. Senate, after an appropriate dramatic tease, telling an old advisor his son will win the then-difficult uphill battle.

Why will the kid win this tough task, asks the assistant – “Because he’s cute” is the casual reply. And so it was so, at film’s end, albeit with some good PR work by his campaign staff, clever lines and assuring rhetorical reminders, There’s Got To Be A Better Way.
 
No answer offered as to what that better way will be.  
 
As with Obama, whose rhetorical flourishes are so McKay-ish, using key words about an America no longer setting black-against-white, old-against-young, etc., that it is like Bill McKay himself, finally overwhelmed by his repetitive blather that he goes bonkers in the limo, making faces and lampooning his own dreary delivery.  [“Can't any longer play off black against old - young against poor. This country cannot house its houseless - feed its foodless.”]


Now THAT would be an entertaining film-clip for Chris Matthews to use, being fond as he’s become on his weekly yaparama weekend chat show.
 
Also, there’s the simile-twin in “An American President” by Aaron Sorkin, whose pen also bled ink into our public consciousness with TV’s “West Wing” [giving secondary use to the expensive Oval Office set built for the feature film].  Michael J. Fox plays an ardent assistant [look up ‘overly-ardent’ in your dictionary, and his character’s portrait is right there], whose most dramatic assertion is cited by screenwriter-turned-pundit Roger Simon in his book on politics. Citing cinema is a growing phenomenon, and Simon does his two cycles back, recording the assistant informing his boss in that popular 1995 view of presidential politics: “People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.”
 
Leadership versus Rhetoric?  We want both. The voters needs the ‘poetry’ of rhetoric, and then next they must rely on their expectation of also receiving in the bargain the ‘prose’ of leadership. B.O.’s BS is full of flourish, lacking in substance. “Where’s the beef?” comes to mind from campaigns past, not to mention his less-than-JFK experience can be even more devastatingly characterized as “less than Dan Quayle” when it comes to any serious experience as we’d need in the Oval Office.
 
Voters often don’t fully grasp what they’re buying in the political marketplace. Back to Andrew Shepherd, responding to Mr. Ardent Assistant: “Lewis, we've had presidents who were beloved, who couldn't find a coherent sentence with two hands and a flashlight. People don't drink the sand because they're thirsty. They drink the sand because they don't know the difference.”
 
A lot of sand in the desert that is the DNC diet of nutrition-free offerings of Other Peoples’ Money.  For us conservatives, the task ahead will be arduous, to meet David Frum’s challenge in his new Conservative Bible, “Comeback” in which he insists we must find new messages for old themes, instead of retreading  old blather that once was not blather, but is worn threadbare.  We’ve become a bit like McKay’s rhetorical rants, his refrain then was tired as ours have become tired today.
 
Not that our message at its core is any different.  Conservatism is and always will be the Default Political Position – for those who UNDERSTAND IT.  While there’s not full sync between the three threads that form the DNA of the conservatives’ triple-helix of philosophy – economic, social and security – we still can find common ground to make the voters want to drink conservative water instead of dry DNC sand.
 
Like Bill McKay, B.O. is no more aware of what lies ahead than a Woody Allen character could command a flight of B-2 bombers, or a squad of SEAL operatives.  Or fly a combat mission off an aircraft carrier.  McKay asks in his coda line, what we should demand of BO and Hillary both: Do you know now what to do next?  Show us where you’ve handled any serious crises, other than campaign tactics and scandal dangers. But oh, do he talk good! Don’t walk so good, but talk aplenty utters forth from his McKay Mouth.
 
B.O. don’t know dough or our soul – he’s good at pretending, but his strength is always limited to his expressions in towering rhetoric. He’d like us to believe there’s a Better Way, but it’s Bill McKay’s way or the highway – that is, the socialist way, the Old DNC way.  B.O. is cross-dressing to sell an old, vinegary wine in a new skin, as JFK did [pretending his was a Cold Warrior’s Cold Warrior], and Carter did {social and religious conservative?  Yeah, right!] and of course as did Clinton [triangulation anyone?].  He is the Fourth Musketeer of political cross-dressing.
 
B.O. is selling the sizzle to a lousy, leathery liberal steak – and the stake we have in this election is far too important to let his sale-of-sizzle go unchallenged. Advertising execs love to cite the old adage, You don’t sell the steak, you sell the sizzle – but buyers are purchasing the steak for its flavor and texture. Sizzle has no nutritional value, doesn’t fill your stomach after filling your nostrils with hopeful expectation of substance.  For voters, the sizzle of Obama won’t be tested for taste until his first crisis in the Oval Office.  That taste will be very sandy at best, more like ashes or even feces – and the nation will be harmed.
 
So, cinematically, where do we stand in the sand of B.O.’s blather?  John McCain is no rhetorical Bill McKay.  B.O. and Hillary are no Dan Quayle – the two together don’t add up to the ‘experience’ of Quayle the day he was sworn in, much less the ‘add on’ he got as VP for four years. [In my political math, one term as VP is triple the value of two terms as First Lady MacBeth] “What do I do now?” is a cute film closing, and fun enough when it risks a single senator among a hundred, in one of two chambers composing the bicameral Congress, and all the procedural masking of those two legislative bodies making personal accountability a minimalist factor in legislating from a crowded room.
 
But “What do I do now?” is not question we want to hear uttered from the tongue of a single executive who cannot hide his vote among ‘present’ listings in a state senate, or be absent for campaigning as his fellows on the chamber floor carry the water [or sand] in his or her stead.  No, we need an executive who's got something worthy of the title “President” on day one.  No internships for the less-than-Quayle democrat offerings.  
 
McCain is highly flawed, as so many on the right regretfully and ruefully remark – but he’s had some experience that counts.  Neither Lady MacBeth nor Prince Perfect has carried the ball of personal, singular responsibility akin to that of John McCain [or even state executive Huckabee]. While B.O. likes to slam Hillary for not only being ready on day one, but being correct in judgment on day one – relying on his singular issue of the war – he has nothing otherwise to support his rhetorically-alluring, McKay-like claim.  The war issue ‘cred’ brings to mind the late Jerry Nachman’s favorite yaparama quip, a mantra of his aimed at liberal co-panelists who made some specious claim with a singular, unpersuasive fact: “That’s one-in-a-row!”
 
One in a row ain’t enough to make the sand into water.  A shame McCain is so poor at rhetoric, his periodic shining moments not being sufficient to reduce that negative judgment.  But he’s hot-head and stiff shoulders above B.O. and The Bitch.  In a chess game, his disk would be ten times taller than either of theirs, having been ‘kinged’ at game’s commencement.  In chess, he’d be a king/queen/bishop/knight compared to their pitiful, pawnish puniness.
 
Yet, the sand is looking like water to a lot of voters, so far limited in their electoral expression by democrats in democrat selections.  Yes, B.O. is cute as McKay – and clever as Clinton [Bill!] – and also benefiting from wearing the toughest Kevlar in politics, a black skin which brands him to be ‘off limits’ to certain political methods [as so learned so well by Ms. MacBeth, to her endless frustration – ain’t Fate a hoot sometimes!].  But we’ve long ‘known’ Barack Obama, though he may not have been a friend of ours, and we may not have worked with him closely or even distantly.
 
But we can say this – HE’S NO DAN QUAYLE.  Nor is Hillary.  But somehow, McCain has to find an offset, equal to the McKay Method of Mindless Mantra.  That is Job One [along with immigration’s Job Juan], among other “First Missions” to make sure the voters don’t drink sand, merely buy the sizzle, instead of drinking our water and consuming our steak.
 
The stakes are too high to let our steak go unappreciated and unempowered by the voting citizens.  Thus, we must all find a way to beat Bill McKay, this time for real, instead of for reel. ExileStreet

copyright 2008 Steve Finefrock

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