McCain at the Al Smith Dinner

John McCain gave a very funny speech at the Al Smith dinner, with excellent delivery, far, far above his usual standard, which had various pols in the audience of the white-tie affair, including Hillary and Obama, laughing delightedly. Why was McCain so good? I think it was because, apart from having such first-rate material (I wonder who wrote it for him), he was in his element. He himself helpfully named it for us: a roomful of “Manhattan Democrats.”

The speech was marred, however, when McCain gratuitously condemned the “cruel bigotry” of earlier American times when it was a scandal that a black man was invited to dine at the White House. How cheap and meretricious, especially in the midst of a humorous speech, to demonize past times in our country that had their own reasons for being the way they were. A patriotic liberal praises progress in equality without putting down the past. An anti-American liberal, such as McCain, uses any progress in equality as an opportunity to smear the past and demonstrate his own moral superiority to it.

McCain further marred things when he praised Obama in terms so warm and glowing that it seemed like an endorsement.

But that, my friends, shows the true McCain. Superficially he wants to win; deeper down, he wants Obama to win.

However, after those bad notes, the speech picked up with a brilliantly funny conclusion at Obama’s expense. What a country.

—end of initial entry—

Dale F. writes:

“Manhattan Democrats”—touche!

Unquestionably the bit about “cruel bigotry” marred his speech. But my father, also a fighter pilot, and of McCain’s generation, often expressed the same sort of naive anti-racism as does McCain. It was a product of the time, and not entirely without honor, if much too optimistic (an American fault—felix culpa, I hope). [LA replies: I don’t believe that most military veterans 30 years ago or even 20 years ago or even today would sound off on the “cruel bigotry” of America’s past in such a setting or any setting. They might refer to America’s past discrimination and say things are better now, they wouldn’t use the kind of emotionally charged language McCain used, language that has the effect of creating hatred for the American past. The farther we get from actual discrimination, the more we condemn and despise our whole past and thus lose any ability to love our country. The only “country” we can actually love is the universalist project.]

I’m less inclined to criticize McCain’s wishing Obama not luck, but wishing him well. To me that says something good about our country. And the video of Hillary laughing—genuinely, as it appeared to me, and Obama as well, made them human in a way that they have rarely seemed before. Should we be doomed to endure an Obama presidency, with all the ill that entails, it gave me a little hope.

Mark Jaws writes:

My mother in-law said to me this morning, “You should have seen John McCain he was so funny last night.” And I gave her the very same response that you just did, “Yeah, that’s because McCain was in his element—the leaders of the Democratic Party.”

James P. write:

McCain had to be completely out of his mind to consent to appear with Obama in a buddy-buddy joke session at the most critical moment in his campaign. It is yet another sign that he never seriously intended to win, and has always just been going through the motions. The best thing the Republican party could do at this point is dissolve itself—go away completely—and thus eliminate the pretense that there are actually two parties and that the whole “election” charade is not just a WWF wrestling match with a preordained outcome.

LA replies:

The Al Smith dinner takes place every year at this time, and in presidential election years the candidates always appear there. So there’s nothing wrong with McCain being there and giving a speech. The problem was his excessive praise for Obama which was a bit sickening and said to me that McCain wants his opponent to win. George W. Bush gave a very funny, very effective speech at the Smith Dinner in 2000 and outshone his opponent. He did not not praise his opponent to the skies as McCain did. He made amiable jokes at his expense. That’s why you do at these affairs. But once again Obama’s sacred colored status trumps the usual rules.

Look, instead of saying, “We’re screwed ‘08,” maybe we should say, “2008: Whoever loses, we win.” If Obama loses, we win, because we’re spared the traumatic experience of having America being taken over by a leftwing messiah of color and his America-hating wife, and of seeing liberals and blacks dance over what they see as the corpse of white America. If McCain loses, we win, because we’re spared the demoralizing experience of living under a so-called Republican conservative president whose two greatest political passions are his love for liberals and his contempt for conservatives, yet who will be loyally followed by most “conservatives.”

Elizabeth Wright writes:

You called McCain’s speech at the Al Smith dinner “cheap and meretricious.” Yes, and fawning and self-aggrandizing. Look at what a noble person I am.

This clip was played on almost every talk show today, and I could not listen to it a second time. It made me cringe. I had not considered it from the standpoint of inspiring further negative thoughts about this country’s past, but that sure is a good point. What sickens me about this kind of mawkish dribble from whites is that blacks have been saturated too much with these breast beating lamentations. We do not need to hear any more of it. I feel like shouting, Just stop it, already!

To whom was McCain directing these remarks? To fellow whites, of course. It’s whites who will give him brownie points for offering proof that he has moved from the darkness into the light. It is nothing more than using the subject of blacks as a tool to manipulate the feelings or behavior of other whites, while offering proof of what you call “moral superiority” over one another. It drives me crazy.

October 18

Dale F. writes:

You’re right that most veterans—certainly including my father—would neither have felt nor expressed hatred of the American past in the way McCain did in his remark about “cruel bigotry.” But something I think my father had in common with McCain was a hope for racial equality. Call it naive, as I believe it was, but it was heartfelt, it was widespread, and it was the motivating force behind the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

I’m trying to understand how we got here. How did well meaning people create a worldview that you have characterized—correctly, I believe—as suicidal? Where did we go wrong, and how can we make our way to better prospects?

I like your revised, more cheerful 2008 campaign slogan: No matter who loses, we win!

LA replies:

A brief answer is that liberalism in the 1960s changed from a belief that progress toward equality and freedom was compatible with America’s basic institutions and character, to the belief that America’s basic institutions and character were the main obstacle to such progress and had to be overturned. America thus became a bad thing. This idea is discussed in my January 2003 article, “The difference between liberalism and leftism.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 17, 2008 10:11 AM | Send