In quiet praise of pith and vinegar

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 2, 1996 | by Woody West

In this era of omnivorous media, the cultural preference for "nice" has hardened into dogma. Even if a public figure is seized by a justifiable homicidal rage, it is imperative that a smile strain his face while the TV camera or a reporter is near. Which is nearly always in big-league politics.

If a tantrum does erupt, the story's good for a week, while any slight distemper assures press attention. Let's you and him fight is the credo of the media, taking precedence over normal liberal predisposition.

There was President Clinton's testiness at a recent White House minuet: Several reporters asked about his repudiation of an administration pledge (which pledge isn't germane, routine as political rope-a-dope has become). The president sputtered and fumed and created a fuss.

Why is it noteworthy that a politician has a temper and probably is reasonable in losing it from time to time? It's because "nice" has become elevated to a character trait -- no matter how cloying, how artificial, how inappropriate.

One reason for the priority of "nice" is wide public disgust at the ubiquitous political consultants for whom winning is everything -- and a bit more. These technicians are often as thoughtless as Barbary apes about the ideas and principles that make this society distinctive. They subordinate the candidate himself to crafted image. The office-seeker thus is a manipulated product and there is less of the intimate personal political involvement that distinguishes genuine qualities of a leader from the brittle. But that's a screed for another day.

The mandatory-nice doctrine has been particularly enforced against Bob Dole. The raps against the GOP candidate are, with various emphases: that he is too old for the job (nonsense); that he lacks "vision" (a concept less important in our mega-government than knowing how the beast behaves); and that his campaign is limp (perhaps the San Diego climate will help).

There also are those in the party who fret that Dole is insufficiently ideological. The distinction made by William F. Buckley is useful here: One may be conservative but not a conservative, that is, one may possess conservative instincts without necessarily having a chiseled and coherent conservative philosophy Dole clearly is of this sort.

But the Kansan is most indictable, judging from the baying of the press pack, because he has a sharp tongue and a frequently mordant humor. Journalists say he has a "Rand" edge -- variously sarcastic, cutting, ironic -- though the New York Times prefers to describe him as "dour." The labels have haunted Dole for years. An intended inference is that he kicks puppies and pinches orphans.

There was, for conspicuous example, a recent dustup with a TV lady who smiles nicely while asking politicians on the right (never on the left) loaded questions. And it was news for days -- how Dole "again" had shown his dark side in supposedly sassing "America's Sweetheart," as the pressies christened Katie Couric.

What actually happened? First, her questions were intentionally tendentious. Okay, fine; Couric knew when she joined the circus that any resort to rational discourse quickly would get her bounced to a weather gig in Ottumwa. Second, Dole's response was neither uncivil nor coarse.

But he did not intend to be an anvil, and his responses were blunt. What's wrong with that? Surely we want an adult in the White House, someone capable of reaching sharply when a sharp reply is suitable. National figures should react with edge humor to dumb or malicious assaults. Whatever Dole's virtues and flaws, he is a man of dignity and can keenly express how goofy politics can be. "Humor is one form of moral emancipation," the philosopher George Santayana wrote, an observation that should give Dole's intrinsic vein of humor higher value.

In recent presidential politics -- with the exception of Ronald Reagan, a man of rare and real sunniness -- we have to go back to John F. Kennedy for wit in the White House, which could be razor sharp and on occasion cruel. Dole has similar swiftness, though less of the charm that Kennedy could so effectively mobilize -- and which he used to seduce the press.

For instance, on the stump the other day, Dole demonstrated political humor both shrewd and amusing. Referring to his wife, Elizabeth, and mindful of the disclosures that the incumbent first lady communes with spirits of the past, he said, "My wife is so talented that Eleanor Roosevelt is trying to contact her."

Obviously, one-liners aren't enough to energize a presidential campaign. It's true, too, that political humor can verge on cynicism that makes some citizens uneasy But we're big boys and girls out in Voterland, aren't we?

If Bob Dole would be Bob Dole, it could inject genuineness into a presidential season that has seen little of it. Humor and political savvy often travel together.