The perfunctory nominee, and Obama-as-Clinton

In 1996, I was still teaching school when Kansas Senator Bob Dole was made the Republican Party's nominee for president. Despite the wide field of Republican hopefuls that year, I remember that Dole's coronation wasn't a surprise. Republicans usually crown whoever is next in line, and Dole was next. (Sure, Dan Quayle made the case that he was next in line, having been Poppy's seat-warmer, but Danny was as short-sighted as he was spelling-challenged. The Republican Party line is very, very deep, and Bob Dole had been waiting his turn since 1976.)

As the summer wore on, I remember watching Dole at one event after another, earnestly chasing what he must have known wouldn't ever be his. Kids today may not remember it, but this was pre-Viagara Bob Dole -- war hero and Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole. And regardless of what the wingnuts were saying about Bill Clinton at the time, the country had turned a corner and was leaving Poppy's recession in the dust.

The Clinton economy was good in 1996. And the Bill Clinton of 1996 was, of course, pre-Monica Bill Clinton. (Sure, the actual deeds themselves had occurred, but the outing of them, and the ensuing scandal and the Keystone-Kop impeachment, hadn't happened yet.) This Bill could afford to be, and was, a magnanimous Bill, praising Bob Dole at every turn for his service to the nation, thanking him for his leadership in the Senate. One sometimes thought that Bill might, if he saw Dole in the grocery store, or at a gas station, or in the airport, he might run right up and engulf Dole in a big ol' Bill Clinton bearhug, camera bulbs a-poppin'.

There was nothing that Dole could do. He was the standard-bearer for his party; he couldn't give it back even if he wanted to. He'd even resigned his seat in the Senate to run this race, tired as he was of the churn -- and probably of Newt Gingrich's hogging of the agenda, the light, the airtime, the oxygen. It was his turn, dammit.

And taking his turn, he'd had the atrocious luck to reach into history's hopper and draw Bill Clinton as his opponent. Against a weaker soul, Dole might've stood a chance. But Dole himself seemed to know when he stepped out onto the election-year stage that he didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of beating Bill Clinton. Yet the nomination was his, and if this was the best he'd ever get from a life spent in politics, well, this was his mountaintop. So he took his applause, night after night; he listened to one introduction after another, from little machine bosses to grand high poohbahs, and he stepped to the podium, night after night. He glad-handed the party chairs and the committeemen. He made his phone calls to ask for money. The one thing he probably never did was to harbor, in Bob Dole's heart of hearts, illusions of winning.

And for all that, magnanimous Bill called him out on election night, thanking him for this and that, and the other, and you just had to feel sorry for Dole. It sure seemed that Bill did, for a minute. And, just a short while later, Bill called him to the White House to collect a presidential medal of some sort.

That was 12 years ago now. As many as 20 percent of the folks voting in this year's primaries hadn't graduated eighth grade by that year's election night. It's ancient history.

I watch John McCain's appearances on CNN nowadays and wince a little. I wonder if he's much in touch with Dole these days, getting advice on which restaurants are best in little out-of-the-way towns and cities in America's corners and throughout the flyover. They have much in common, whether they're in touch or not.

McCain has the same look in his eye that Dole had. To be fair, it's the same look that ol' Mike Dukakis had in 1988, running against Poppy. It's a look of resignation, the look Tricky Dick had during the Alice-in-Wonderland speech he gave to announce his departure, the "my mother was a saint" speech. It's the look of a man who stared into the abyss too long, slipped off his perch and is falling into it -- and is wondering when he'll feel the landing. I don't think I ever saw it in Al Gore, even at the end of the 36 days in Florida, after the Republican Supremes validated Katherine Harris and snatched his presidency from him. And I don't think I ever saw it in John Edwards in 2004, deep in October, well after John Kerry had taken to the Epsom salts, satisfied with his parachute back to the Senate.

Now that I think about it, I don't think I ever saw it in Jimmy Carter in 1980 either, despite the mounting evidence that a landslide was coming. I think Carter had faith that Americans would recognize his quality in the clutch -- and if not, that it was God's will, and that was sufficient.

But McCain has the look. Each time he says "my friends," it's as if he understands, in his core, that he's already joined Nixon at the Mad Hatter's tea party and the Dormouse is passing out sugar cubes. Dukakis declined. Dole never RSVP'ed. Alice is expected soon.

For a man who has spent the last 30 years in Congress, McCain doesn't read the teleprompter very well. His delivery is stilted, choppy, halting. He gets to the end of some lines and thinks it's the end of a sentence, so he gives the last word the appropriate emphasis, then realizes too late that there's still a bit of sentence left to go. And he soldiers on. It's embarrassing, sort of.

And for someone who has immersed himself in foreign policy, especially entwined his fate with the Bush War on Iraq, his confusion over Sunnis and Shiites, and between al Qaeda in Iraq and "al Qaeda in Iraq," is evidence of something significant. In 2000, the trajectory of political leadership that McCain had adopted might, for right or wrong, have led to relevance, whether or not he could have defeated Gore. But after such a commanding lead in the earliest states, McCain ran into Atwater-Rove Buzzsaw Politics in South Carolina. Bush's machine suckerpunched him with whispers about children of questionable heritage. Dazed, he never recovered, lost his compass. Now, blinking into the klieg lights and tangling Sunnis with Shiites, and slipping gratuitous mentions of Iran into his errors, he proves that wherever McCain might've been in 2000, McCain isn't really here now. He's passing through, with Joe Lieberman whispering in his ear.

All of which leaves Barack Obama to play, with irony that Greek tragedians would declare too far-fetched to write into their plays, the Bill Clinton of 1996. Magnanimous. Praising McCain for his service to country, his leadership to the Senate. But -- leaving more unspoken than speaking it aloud -- the time for McCain's worldview has passed. Obama, while managing other matters too, must play the same game that Bill played, knowing that the presidency is his and that the Republicans' perfunctory nominee can't take it away, but showing appropriate respect to a man who once did something, who once mattered, and who might have been relevant if not for the reckless and petulant George W. Bush, who spun McCain out of his lifetime achievements with the same malicious ease that he sold America into economic bondage.

For the next six months, McCain must pretend he doesn't realize that he's the perfunctory nominee in question. If the last few months are a guide, it appears that the old warhorse is a poor actor. He knows, and he's unable to hide it.