Michelle, not Barack, may have clinched it for Hillary
CHEERLEADING, talking to crowds and charisma are my three topics this week.
Cheerleading has a bad name. But what if a person, place or thing deserves your praise?
Cassius Clay said it’s not bragging if you can back it up. The same goes for cheerleading.
Last week, I found plenty to cheer about as I looked out at the world from my twin vantage points in Field’s coffee shop in Skibbereen and the Lifeboat cafe in Baltimore.
What makes West Cork work so well is a code that many writers have failed to crack. But it certainly has a special kind of social glue.
Some of the glue comes from a genetic can-do disposition rooted in a sense of history and a determination to reject the lethal legacy of the Famine.
But most of the glue comes from the way West Cork carries on a common conversation with itself to achieve a common purpose.
Like the visionary Ludgate Hub, brainchild of local hero John Field, backed by David Puttnam, Dee Forbes and Sean O’Driscoll of Glen Dimplex.
The Ludgate Hub is about digital. Alas, digital is a word that makes many readers recoil. So I’m going to simplify it in a way that will make geeks recoil.
Basically, you can rent a hot desk at the Ludgate Hub for €19 a day that gives you a speed of one gigabyte.
That’s so fast it gives Skibbereen a state-of-the-art stall in the global market. And it will change the town forever by attracting energetic entrepreneurs.
By some serendipity, in a week that saw Hillary Clinton nominated to run for the US presidency, the launch of the Ludgate Hub last Friday was dominated by strong women.
One of them was Minister Mary Mitchell O’Connor. Like Hillary Clinton, Mary draws misogynistic flak.
But I’m no snob and I like her bright persona and I admired the way she spoke fluently without notes.
So did Grainne Dwyer, the local livewire who runs the hub, and Anne O’Leary, of Vodafone, who was central to the project.
Like Hillary Clinton, all three women can talk comfortably to a large crowd. As it’s a rare skill, I have no hesitation in giving them all three cheers.
*** Cheerleading carried too far, however, corroded much Irish media coverage of the US presidential campaigns.
The reverential treatment of Hillary and Bill Clinton meant that important issues were not addressed.
Conversely, the tendency to treat all Trump supporters as right-wing religious maniacs did nothing to explain why he is close to Clinton in the polls.
Be clear: I am a huge supporter of Hillary Clinton — but not of Bill Clinton, whose flyblown charisma always left me cold.
Be clear: I believe Trump is a blow-hard, blustering clown — but a clown whose painted face conceals bad intentions.
But while Trump pollutes American politics, many of his supporters are jobless or Rust Belt, blue-collar workers who feel betrayed by the Washington elites.
RTE reporters should remember that Hillary Clinton is not running in Ireland. And if she were, they would pour scorn on her pro-Israel position.
Like most of the liberal media, RTE reporters were excessively impressed by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama’s speeches.
As someone who has written speeches for Mary Robinson and David Trimble, I think I can tell gilt from gold.
Bill Clinton’s speech was gilt. Seduced by his saccharine charm, his media cheerleaders failed to notice two things.
First, as always, it was really about Bill not Hillary. How clever he was to pick such a clever girl.
Second, it did not humanise Hillary as his admirers assert. If he wanted to do that he should have found an elegant way to apologise to her for not being faithful.
But that would have made him look bad, and Bill cannot bear to look bad.
Barack Obama’s speech also fell far below his normal high standard. Like Clinton’s speech, it was more about Obama than Hillary.
You don’t have to be a militant feminist to wonder if male politicians are able to talk about a spouse, or a woman politician, without bigging themselves up.
But Michelle Obama’s speech was a model of how to support someone without making it all about you.
‘Michelle Obama’s “Mother of Dragons” speech gave Hillary aerial protection by tackling the problem of trust’
What a speech. Pitchperfect, emotionally intelligent, moving but never maudlin.
She affected her audience in a way that Bill Clinton did not — indeed one of the biggest responses he received was when he praised her.
Michelle’s ‘mother of dragons’ speech gave Hillary the aerial protection she most needed by tackling the problem of trust.
Last month, a CBS News poll revealed that 67pc of American voters believed Hillary Clinton was not trustworthy.
Michelle Obama did not just say “I trust Hillary”. She stood it up by entrusting her beloved daughters to Hillary Clinton’s political care for the next four years. Like this.
“This election, and every election, it is about who will have the power to shape our children for the next four or eight years of their lives. I am here tonight because, in this election, there is only one person who I trust with that responsibility: our friend Hillary Clinton!”
Many people, both in America and here, felt that Michelle Obama seemed a bit stroppy about race at the start of her sojourn in the White House.
But while not a fan of her husband’s feeble foreign policy, I was always a fan of Michelle’s righteous anger against racism.
The more I study the story of race in America — in which the Irish played a prominent racist role — the more I to believe that Lincoln let the Confederacy off too lightly.
Michelle’s generosity to Hillary set the stage for Bernie Sanders to make a similar generous gesture.
By backing Hillary, he proved he was an old-style socialist and not a petulant and vain Trot like Corbyn.
Unlike his supporters, Sanders did not hesitate when forced to choose between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.
Looking back over the tenure of President Barack Obama, Michelle’s reference to his grace and decency were richly deserved.
Decency has become a rare commodity in American politics. Political civility is his legacy and the loss of it has driven America mad.
But for me, the main lesson of the American presidential election is the danger of what I call dark charisma: the power to persuade mass democracy to take the wrong road.
Hitler had that dark charisma. Erdogan in Turkey has it. Haughey had it for a while but luckily it turned out to be fake.
And in Britain, Brexit showed that Boris Johnson has its anaemic first cousin: politically pointless charm.
Hillary Clinton lacks dark charisma. But she does not lack bright charisma, the charisma of character.
As her competent but not compelling acceptance speech showed, Hillary is still somewhat stiff. She still has to keep a hard face against the haters.
But I believe that President Hillary Clinton will finally be able to relax and show her real face.
Behind the brittle mask is a warm woman who has not lost her progressive mojo.
I predict she will be as popular as her husband — and a far better president.