The Nation's Pulse: I Love You, Man
Terzian, Philip
"The Nation's Pulse: I Love You, Man" by Philip Terzian I Love You, Man Ron Brown was a charming, energetic, indefatigable lawyer-politician who did quite well in Washington. Once, when he was chairman of the...
...I have a notebook in which I paste favorite photographs and captions from newspaPHILIP TERZIAN writes a column from Washington for the Providence Journal...
...There was the president embracing fellow Democrats at the home of Ron Brown's widow...
...And yet, is it so generational after all...
...This tactile urge seems strongest in those with something to prove: All those photographs of Stalin, arms draped around legions of jovial peasants, happily safe from the Gulag, for now...
...Once, when he was chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and I was a newspaper editor in New England, he visited my office and we chatted, along with a handful of colleagues, for an hour or so...
...As he skillfully parried my hostile questions—smiling, winking, adjusting his necktie, hammering home his well-worn themes—he personified the modern major political operative: fluent, polished, decidedly in control...
...To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, it takes a heart of stone to read Cohen's exploration of death and Bill Clinton without laughing...
...And then there was president Clinton...
...Later, in the aftermath of Ron Brown's death, the president skillfully combined the two tragic events, his practiced voice cracking at opportune phrases, his blue eyes glistening, his throat catching slightly at eloquent moments, his copious brain recording electoral votes...
...Then reckon, for an instant, where hugs are more familiar: Khrushchev and Mao, Castro and Allende, Castro and Brezhnev, Brezhnev and Chuck Connors, Erich Honecker smooching Brezhnev on the lips, Qaddafi and Minister Farrakhan, Comandante Ortega and Peter, Paul and Mary...
...still, the praise seemed more than a trifle overstated, the grief and despair a little too profound, the piety slightly out of tune with Ron Brown...
...It cannot be done...
...Where statesmen once stood in solemn austerity, leading through example by controlling themselves—think, for that matter, of the posture of the Kennedy clan after Dallas—in our Oprahfied epoch emotion runs riot, and Bill Clinton impresses skeptical journalists as he gives (in Richard Cohen's words) "mourning people what they needed, sometimes a hug, sometimes a tear, always some fine words...
...Digging his chin swiftly into his chest, he raised up his head in an attitude of grief: his eyes were closed, his mouth was quivering, and his hands wiped imaginary tears from his eyes...
...For me, the answer lies partly in the hug...
...Now, it may be asked, what is the difference between a cloying Bill Clinton and the smooth theatricality of Ronald Reagan...
...56 June 199 6 • The American Spectator George Bush spoke at Pearl Harbor, and his voice began to wobble as he mentioned the sailors entombed beneath the sea, no one could imagine the emotion was not real...
...It's worth bearing in mind the next time the president lands on the south lawn of the White House, and strolls across the grass in the helicopter's breeze, his arm clasped firmly around r2 the first lady's 2` waist...
...On the weekend after Ron Brown was killed, the president flew to Oklahoma City to get a head start on the first anniversary of the bombing of the Murrah federal building...
...When he died in an airplane crash in Croatia, the loss was made more bitter by the knowledge that this friendly adversary, in our rancid national capital, would soon be replaced by some dolorous yes-man like Warren Christopher...
...It's a paradox: The idea that hugging, as an instrument of policy, bears an inverse relation to genuine compassion, and is generally avoided (among statesmen, at least) by those with the closest affinity to their subjects...
...Still, to read about Ron Brown, or listen to the various obituary tributes on the television news, you would not have known that he was a man who loved money perhaps more than he loved politics, and that an independent counsel was breathing down his neck...
...Consider the sensation, and the moment in history, when France's Francois Mitterrand and Germany's Helmut Kohl clasped hands in remembrance of their nations' tragic past...
...cift4 The American Spectator • June 1 9 9 6 57...
...The British, of course, would not be British if they did such things, at least in public...
...Indeed, NBC's "Today" show was so struck by Clinton's empathy that it showed a revealing scene...
...When a man is killed in the prime of life, of course, you don't dwell on his deficiencies...
...No doubt, the dignity of the office has been transformed in our time: We live in an age when no personal detail in a president's life, no matter how appalling, is concealed from the public: Diseased intestines (Eisenhower, Reagan), postmortem photographs (Kennedy), gall bladder scars (Johnson), taped vulgarities (Nixon), tipsy first ladies (Ford), surgery for hemorrhoids (Carter), irregular heartbeats (Bush), underwear, marital difficulties, "distinguishing [genital] characteristics," family drug abuse, unexpected siblings (Clinton...
...Richard Cohen, a Washington Post columnist who is some-times critical of the president, was stirred to pay tribute to the president's mortuary skills...
...Well, not much—except to say that, for better or worse, most people assumed that Reagan's bag of tricks was used to enhance a series of genuine sentiments...
...So why does Bill Clinton, under such circumstances, seem so artificial...
...Imagine how ghastly if, instead, they had embraced...
...Part of this, no doubt, is a generational distinction...
...but envision, for a moment, Margaret Thatcher and Sir Geoffrey Howe in a squeeze, or the two Tonys, Benn and Blair, entangled with themselves...
...Who will soon forget the terrifying image of Saddam Hussein patting the head of the boy British hostage, as cold an assurance of warmth as could be...
...44 Kantor was then passed along to Vice President Al Gore, whose hug was rather more perfunctory...
...In pondering the modern inclination to hug, it is difficult to think of many democratic leaders with similar tastes...
...Here was the president comforting employees (all female) at the Department of Commerce...
...But it is impossible to imagine if, say, Cordell Hull had been killed in an airplane crash, FDR consoling Frances Perkins, or General Marshall, or even (it must be said) Eleanor Roosevelt herself, with an ostentatious, elongated, weepy public hug...
...Receiving Ron Brown's body at Dover Air Force Base, the president engaged in more therapeutic hugging...
...The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for President Clinton...
...And thus, in the Clinton presidency, there is a deliberate effort to demystify the office, to move from Mount Olympus to "Larry King Live," to consciously diminish the circumstance and pomp, the genteel demeanor, the sense of decorum and propriety that was felt by all occupants of the White House, no matter how humble or exalted their origins...
...Americans are a sentimental people, suspicious of poise...
...At the time, of course, the White House depended on its surrogates in Congress and the media to place explicit blame: The killers of these federal employees, and their children, were acting out the words merely spoken by such anti-government skeptics as Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh...
...Cohen's worshipful account of the strength Clinton draws from his acquaintance with bereavement was a startling combination of morbidity and kitsch: "Les Aspin just ran out of heart," he wrote, "...and Jacqueline Kennedy succumbed—too young, too young...
...At a special memorial service in Washington, the president created a hug-receiving line...
...As if to prove the point, in the following week, when the president appointed Mickey Kantor to succeed Ron Brown, he clasped poor Mickey to the presidential chest, threw his arms around his shoulders, and squeezed the special trade representative with sensual delight—who then was passed along to Vice President Al Gore, whose hug was rather more perfunctory...
...pers, and I find that I have begun accumulating pictures of Bill Clinton engaged in the act of hugging other people...
...and for most, I suppose, this was all deeply moving...
...Clinton may regard himself as the inheritor of the Franklin Roosevelt tradition as an activist liberal president...
...THE NATION'S PULSE by Philip Terzian I Love You, Man Ron Brown was a charming, energetic, indefatigable lawyer-politician who did quite well in Washington...
...Indeed, the hugging disease is very nearly epidemic, invading all sorts of unlikely venues: When golfer Nick Faldo defeated Greg Norman in the latest Masters tournament, the winner bestowed a hug on the vanquished—certain compensation for Norman's $450,000 loss...
...The death of dozens of innocents is an awesome thing, but the Clinton administration has exploited this tragedy with vulgar abandon...
...Having deposited Ron Brown in Arlington National Cemetery and hugged some distinguished mourners, the president was seen walking along in a line of people, smiling and chatting...
...The moment his eye caught the camera, however, he was instantly transformed...
...When Like Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro, Bill Clinton loves to put his arms around people...
...Dwight D. Eisenhower was deeply affected by the death of John Foster Dulles, but picture Ike hugging Allen Dulles at Arlington Cemetery, or clasping Clare Boothe Luce to his bosom...
...That is because it all seems so obviously manufactured...
...The death of Ron Brown afforded many examples...
...or Hitler and youth, in 6o-year-old newsreels, in which bashful blonde girls and young men in uniform beam with delight at their leader's caress...
Vol. 29 • June 1996 • No. 6
