That Rascal Mark Twain Gets Smarter Each Primary Season: A Southern Strategery for the DNC

CorpGovActivist

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Sun Jan-27-08 12:47 PM
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That Rascal Mark Twain Gets Smarter Each Primary Season: A Southern Strategery for the DNC

Edited on Sun Jan-27-08 12:50 PM by CorpGovActivist

�Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself.� - Mark Twain.

I imagine that - given the opportunity to extend and revise his remarks - Twain might add a special classification for Members of Congress running for President.

He might add an even more specialized category for such candidates who venture South of the Mason-Dixon Line with a bevy of Beltwayers, a knot of New Yorkers, and a troubadour troupe of tricky-penned scriveners who don't have "the ear" for the idiomatic handshakes of an audience they've never really respected.

Don't get me wrong. I lived "up North" for 8 years. I got to know quite a few New Yawkers and New Englanders and Bawstonians that I think are smart, wickedly funny, progressive, and all-around decent people. With enough time, members of different regional subcultures can learn to find the commonalities in the byways and backpaths of their respective cultural imprints.

But time is not a luxury that the compressed timeframe of this primary season affords any candidate.

http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/onstage/whittier.html">At the Whittier Dinner Speech in Boston, a young Mark Twain was made to feel mortified for daring to "sass" some famous literary luminaries of his day. The rebuke he received left a mark, judging by his account of it years later.

He ventured into a foreign culture, and gave a speech that would have had people in an audience more familiar to him howling with laughter. But the missed nods and winks in the speech - cultural handshakes unknown to the audience - left it falling flat.

Chances are, a good-hearted ribbing of Twain from Whittier, given somewhere in the South of the day, may well have fallen equally flat.

The point is: at least one of the candidates is competing in states in which there is an expectation that - when you get walloped on the field - you graciously concede defeat to the opposing side. Many of these communities are depicted aptly in Friday Night Lights: places where the biggest social event each week is the Friday night football game, and where good sportsmanship still means something.

Self-deprecating humor can help, as long as a kernel of truth lies at the heart of it. "I really stunk up the field tonight, folks, but as ya'll know, you gotta pick yourself up, dust yourself off, watch the game tape over the weekend, and suit up to take the field again next week. And that's exactly what I plan to do heading into Tsunami Tuesday."

In 30 seconds or less, a rapport is established, and the audience is more apt to extend you a hand to help you stand up from the field.

(Oh, yeah, after a hard tackle, you help the other guy up in these places.)

"When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years." -- Mark Twain

In other words, he eventually realized that the advice he'd been receiving all along was sound. Some candidates just aren't open to good advice.

My prediction for this week? A few gaffes (mostly from one campaign in particular) to give the Whittier Speech a run for its money.

- Dave