No Mention of Clinton in Philly

PHILADELPHIA, Aug. 2, 2000 -- -- He has tormented the GOP for eight long years. He is despised by the party faithful. He symbolizes everything George W. Bush is running against.

Yet his name is rarely invoked in the convention hall where Republicans are gathered in that most partisan of political gatherings — a national convention. He is President Bill Clinton.

And so it’s indeed peculiar that the titular head of the Democratic Party — particularly one as loathed by party loyalists as the current commander-in-chief — has received such scarce mention.

Bucking the Bashing Tradition

Both parties traditionally dedicate the second night of their four-day conventions to bashing the opposition — prominent party members take to the podium to assail the other party.

“This speech is a lot like a Bill Clinton promise,” New York Rep. Susan Molinari joked in her keynote address at the 1996 convention in San Diego. “It won’t last long and it will sound like a Republican talking … Americans know that Bill Clinton’s promises have the lifespan of a Big Mac on Air Force One.”

Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson even called Clinton a “draft dodger” in the war on poverty, for his refusal to sign Republican-backed welfare reform legislation.

“A few years ago, when I suddenly found myself president,” said former President Gerald Ford on the first day of the 1996 RNC convention, “I said I was a Ford, not a Lincoln. Today, what we have in the White House is neither a Ford, nor a Lincoln. What we have is a convertible Dodge! Isn’t it time for trade-in?”

This year, however, at the direction of their “compassionate conservative” nominee-to-be, Republicans are doing their level best to project a nicer image.

Rhetorical Allusions

One result of that rhetorical retooling is that until vice-presidential nominee Dick Cheney took the podium on the convention’s third evening, Clinton’s name had yet to pass the lips of a single major prime-time speaker.

But with a wink and a nod, many of the major players have alluded to the GOP’s favorite whipping boy and the attributes they so detest. And it is those veiled references that draw the strongest applause from the delegates, alternates and guests crowded into the jam-packed First Union Center.

“Pictures are one of the most compelling stories of this campaign,” said first lady hopeful Laura Bush on Monday night. “Moms and dads and grandparents … hold out pictures of their children and they say to George, “I’m counting on you. I want my son or daughter to respect the president of the United States of America.”

The governor’s wife never explicitly mentioned the “man from Hope,” but the mere implication that the current resident of the White House was not worthy of the “respect” of sons and daughters across the land was enough to draw cheers and a rousing round of applause from the crowd.

“It all begins with integrity in the Oval Office,” said Bush“s foreign policy adviser, Condoleezza Rice, on the second night. “George W. Bush is a man of his word. Friend and foe will know that he tells the truth.”

Rice’s reference to the president’s adventures with the truth did not go unnoticed by the partisan crowd. Nor did 1996 nominee Bob Dole’s remark that the Texas governor would “restore honor and civility to our public life.”

The two biggest headliners of the evening, former candidates Elizabeth Dole and Sen. John McCain, also took passing shots at the man most Republican revile as “Slick Willie.”

“[Bush] is determined to bring civility to the public square and restore pride in our leaders,” said Mrs. Dole. “ He will put an end … to the name-calling that tarnishes our trust and alienates so many real people whose real problems can never be solved in a focus group or soothed by a spin-doctor.”

“Cynicism is suffocating the idealism of many Americans, especially among our young,” said McCain. “And with cause, for they have lost pride in their government. Too often those who hold a public trust have failed to set the necessary example.”

Of course, Clinton is not a candidate this year — it is Al Gore who will square off against Bush in the general election. But the vice president has also gone virtually nameless.

The closest any of the major speakers have come to bashing Gore was when Mrs. Bush took a dig at his so-called school days on the campaign trail:

“George’s opponent has been visiting schools lately,” she said Monday night, “and sometimes when he does, he spends the night before at the home of a teacher. Well, George spends every night with a teacher.”

Sign Control?

The vast majority of the hand-painted signs provided for the delegates to wave for the cameras during the proceedings carry innocuous, noncontroversial messages like “Librarians 4 Bush” or “Bush and Cheney: Perfect Together.”

But one volunteers said there were some painted signs with harsher messages like “No More Lies.” But why did few if any of those make it onto the convention floor?

“There were suggested phrases,” the volunteer explains. “They [convention planners] are wanting to keep it positive.”

On the Floor, Breaking Silence

Speakers at the podium may stop short of uttering the name of their party’s arch-rival, but many on the convention floor certainly don’t.

Among people like Glenda Beyer, a 57-year-old school teacher and convention volunteer from San Antonio, Texas, the intense dislike, even disgust, is palpable.

She tells a story about what happened when a picture of Mr. Clinton was shown to a group of fourth and fifth graders during a lesson on the presidents at the height of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

“They started booing our president,” she says. “I will never ever forget that. It was absolutely spontaneous … and that’s when I thought, things have got to change.”

Michael McDaniel, 49, is the Indiana state GOP chairman and the head of his state delegation.

“Clearly, he’s one of the most dishonest men to ever hold the job,” he says of Clinton. “He disgraced the office by the way he conducted himself in the Lewinsky affair … That’s a bad example for America.”

Charles Clay, a 49-year-old lawyer from Marietta, Ga., is also heading up his state’s delegation.

“Everybody know’s what’s occupied the White House for the last eight years,” he says. “It’s sad for the country … The social fabric, a sense of standards, a sense of decency, a sense of a code of behavior is less solid [because of Clinton].”

Tonight, as he accepts the vice-presidential nomination, Cheney is expected to call for the ouster of Clinton and Gore by saying: “What are we to make of the past eight years? I look at them and see opportunities squandered … [It] is time. It is time for them to go.”

That relatively tame rhetoric is a far cry from four years ago in San Diego where the opposing candidate was derided as a “draft dodger” and his inner circle as, in Dole’s words, “a corps of the elite who never grew up, never did anything real, never sacrificed, never suffered and never learned.”