Corgan and Clinton

It's election night so naturally (just as the major networks are giving the New Hampshire senate race to Dick Swett) I head off for a Smashing Pumpkins concert. I'm as much of an political junkie as the next guy--I'm dying to find out how the Parental Rights Amendment fares in Colorado, and of course, what becomes of California's Proposition 215, the medical marijuana provision. Still, Billy Corgan only makes it to beantown so many nights a year.

I arrive at the Fleet Center and, soon after, the Pumpkins take the stage. Early in the set, one of them asks the crowd, "Did you vote today?" The alternateens and their older Generation X comrades respond with shrieking affirmation. But when Corgan responds, "we didn't," the crowd reaction is nearly as loud.

As the show proceeds, parallels between the concert and the political campaign crop up left and right. For starters, the show lacks a certain electricity, and it's hard to know whether the apathetic crowd or the band itself is to blame. The Pumpkins stick to a set-list full of their radio-friendly hits--the musical equivalent of sound bites. And as if they are trying to pound a message into their fans, they play exactly the same songs as they did at a New England stop earlier in the tour.

When Corgan has second thoughts about his promise to let members of the audience up on stage, he responds to the boos as Bob Dole himself might: "Dancing on the stage isn't a right, it's a privilege." Soon enough the show is over, and the band trudges off toward the next stop in the campaign, readying themselves for the next Pumpkins' rally.

When I get back to my room, adjusting to the fact that Clinton has been reelected is surprisingly nauseating. It's hard to pinpoint the source of my disgust; it's not his character or even his center-right approach that bugs me. The next day, I hunt down a transcript from one of the debates, and soon it's obvious. It's remarkable how quickly you forget Clinton's charisma when you see his words in writing.

The key to his campaign, I decide, was in not saying anything a rational human being could possibly disagree with. In the debate, his answers are dominated by unobjectionable statements: I say tonight I'm for opportunity, responsibility and community.... We have to...balance this budget while we protect Medicare and Medicaid and education and the environment.... We ought to help protect our kids from drugs and guns and gangs and tobacco.

And when an issue is too sticky to deflect--the future of entitlement programs, for example--he calls for the creation of a bipartisan commission. A bipartisan commission! The man is a walking bipartisan commission! If that's not enough, he has the nerve to say that "one of the responsibilities of growing older...is being able to tell people something they may not want to hear just because it's the truth." Statements like this are what makes Clinton Clinton. He's pragmatic enough to tell people exactly what they want to hear and yet he has the audacity to assert that he's not saying what he's saying because they want to hear it. Surprise of surprises, the conflicting desires of the electorate can all be reconciled.

Still, a cynical voice inside me suspects Clinton is no pioneer: Politicians have been refining the techniques he uses since before there were politics.

Hitting the books to test my premise, I find a volume of John F. Kennedy's collected speeches and leafing through it, a striking difference emerges between his approach and Clinton's: when describing his plans for the nation, Kennedy weaves in words like "costs," "disadvantages" and "burdens." "I believe we should go to the moon," he said during a May 25, 1961, speech. "But I think every citizen as well as the members of Congress should consider the matter carefully.... It is a heavy burden, and there is no sense in agreeing...that the United States take an affirmative position in outer space unless we are prepared to do the work...to make it successful."

Prepared to do work? Heavy burden? Come to think of it, Clinton uses that kind of language all the time. But only when he's talking about his beloved welfare bill.

Dan S. Aibel's column appears on alternate Wednesdays.