LITTLE ROCK — WHOEVER said there were no second acts to American lives, namely F. Scott Fitzgerald, couldn't have been talking about American life in general. For in the ever shifting world of the news, we go from one dramatic change of scenery to another. It's a bit like watching American weather. This week it's been a relief to go from the real world of Gustav and its aftermath here in Arkansas hundreds of miles inland-flash floods, downed trees, school closings, power outages and all-to the unreal world of another national nominating convention. Oh, the grand panoply and well-staged pandemonium full of hype and fury signifying . . . well, that depends on who's talking at the time and who's listening. Different perspectives make fordifferent opinions, but we've never given in to the relativist fallacy that all opinions are of equal value. Some speakers rail, others reason.
Fred Thompson, the former senator and prosecutor, is utterly convincing when he's praising the record of his party's soon-to-be presidential nominee. But he's got an easy case to make. Even the opposition has made a ritual of acknowledging John McCain's heroism before attacking him. ("I honor Senator McCain's record of service to his country, but . . . .") Who wouldn't want to salute John Mc-Cain's courage and character in uniform? And only the blindest partisan would try to dismiss his long experience in the U.S. Senate. His record there is one of remarkable individuality-the reason we're all so tired of hearing him described as a "maverick" is that the word seems unavoidable in his case-and yet he's also been capable of shaping bipartisan compromises that break congressional logjams. His unpredictable rebel streak, apparently a family trait, comes with a hard-earned, hardlearned ability to reach across the aisle to get things done. Case made.
Tuesday night it was hard to resist the thought that if only Fred Thompson had campaigned half so well for himself as he did for John McCain in this speech, he might be accepting his party's presidential nomination tonight. Indeed, at the beginning of this campaign so long, long ago, we would have chosen him and another long shot, a freshman senator from Illinois, as the dark horses most likely to win their party's nomination, but only one crossed the finish line. However different their styles, both men have an engaging way about them, but Mr. Thompson soon grew bored with all the folderol that goes with being a presidential candidate, while Barack Obama seemed to rise above it-even as he accommodated it. We still haven't figured out how he does it, but it's an impressive performance. The magicians, and Senator Obama certainly is one in his chosen field, call it levitation. It'll be interesting to see how he pulls it off against down-to-earth John McCain in their first debate.
American politics, it seems, is just full of second acts, as this year's presidential campaign has demonstrated. How strange: It is the Republican ticket in this election that begins to represent change while the Democratic one, with all its talk of change, and maybe only talk, begins to look a lot like the old liberal establishment. American politics, like America itself, is full of surprises. Listening to Fred Thompson go on, we think: Here he is in the supporting cast of this convention while John Mc-Cain, whom everybody counted out at one point, has the starring role.
Then, midway in his address, after he's got us convinced, Fred Thompson shifts gears, even personas, and delivers an old-fashioned Tennessee stump speech worthy of his origins. At that point Fred Thompson morphs into Arthur Branch, the self-consciously eloquent district attorney he used to play on television, spewing homespun maxims at script speed. And we're brought back to unreality. It's a national nominating convention after all, and it's not just a coincidence that theproceedings should be dominated by that huge telescreen telling us what to think, what emotions to feel, what music to respond to, at every moment. Surely only Disneyworld can match our major parties at what is now called people-moving, and not just physically.
FRED THOMPSON may have been the orator of Tuesday evening but Joe Lieberman, not surprisingly, was the thinker. To use a word that seems to have died with the old Greeks, the man is a rhetor-one who seeks not so much to rally the faithful as to persuade the unconvinced. Surely the most effective part of the evening came when Senator Lieberman, a soft-spoken independent in his soul long before he became onein name, asked his partisan audience's indulgence to say a few words to America's yetundecided independents and, yes, Democrats. By which he surely meant old-fashioned Democrats like himself, dedicated not just to fighting injustice at home but threats from abroad. They used to be called Scoop Jackson Democrats and, before that, Harry Truman Democrats. You know the species: The kind of Jacksonian Democrats who, throughout the long, twilight struggle known as the Cold War, drew the line against tyrants-and would not retreat.
Everyone knows the one big reason Joe Lieberman is supporting John McCain in this election: Because in the darkest hour in this new long, twilight struggle that has only begun, John McCain has refused to settle for anything less than victory, too. Or as he put it, explaining what seemed his quixotic support for a war that all the Wise Old Heads told us was lost, he'd rather lose a political campaign than for his country to lose a war.
And sure enough, John McCain's view-and Joe Lieberman's-prevailed at last, just as American forces are prevailing now, despite what the oh-so-sophisticated Joe Bidens once assured us was a losing cause. Why, it would take a "willing suspension of disbelief," Hillary Clinton told us at a crucial point in this struggle, to believe that General David Petraeus' new strategy would have a new result. Well, if she's not a believer by now, she's not reading the news out of Iraq, where Anbar has just been handed over to Iraqi control and al-Qaida, if anything much remains of it there, is but a bitter memory. Sometimes it pays to believe-in the armed forces of the United States of America. Not for the first time they are proving freedom's guarantor.
We stayed tuned long enough after Senator Lieberman's speech to hear a bunch of talking heads deliver the usual post-evening analysis and distortion. One of them speculated about what the senator from Connecticut had to gain by his words, how his appearance at a Republican convention would affect his committee chairmanships, his political career . . . They didn't understand. It's not his career that matters now to someone like Joe Lieberman in his old age; it's his country. It's all that is at stake in this struggle: Call it the West for short.
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It was an interesting evening all in all, with its ebbs and flows, its alterations between appeals to the heart and those to the mind, between the old shibboleths and reasoned arguments. Conventionwatchers Tuesday night got a kind of camera's-eye view of America's mixedup political psyche. But the convention's and the country's mind was clearly elsewhere-on a lady from Alaska we hardly know: Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin, Sarah Palin. She's the one everyone was thinking about while the speakers droned. Was she the Church Lady from the old Saturday Night Live reprised for our viewing pleasure, or our own Margaret Thatcher in the making? Just a one-election wonder à la Geraldine Ferraro, or the real thing? We're all about find out, Heaven help her.
Editorial, Pages 14 on 09/04/2008