It was 10:31 p.m. and President Clinton’s State of the Union address, now 75 minutes old and in need of an oratorical version of euthanasia, had made its way to greenhouse gas pollution. If only he’d invited 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez to sit in the guest box.
“Hey, Cuba boy,” the anti-Castro zealots could scream. “You really want to go back to that commie island? You want to live where a bearded guy in green fatigues speaks for three and four hours at a time?”
Fortunately, Clinton was winding down and not threatening any of Fidel’s (indoor) speaking records. But that was not before the annual pageantry of the State of the Union played out.
Even if you were watching on television, you might have missed a good deal.
8:35 p.m. There’s an air of a 10th anniversary
college reunion as members of Congress get reacquainted with one another in the House chamber. Given the length of their latest, two-month vacation, it might as well have been a 10-year reunion, with probable stumbles matching names and faces.
8:40 p.m. The Joint Chiefs of Staff arrive, glad-handing many of the pols who control their purse strings. There’s much room up front because, incredibly, every member of the Supreme Court has found an excuse not to show (their own speeches, the flu, etc., with nine bona fide alibis being as likely as their overturning Brown vs. Board of Education).
8:42 p.m. The Republicans, only one year after glaring at Clinton as impeachment rolled on, seem a whipped bunch. Empty seats dot their side, some filled (for TV’s sake) by staffers and flunkies. Upon her arrival, the GOP gives Speaker Dennis Hastert’s wife, Jean, a loud ovation. Tonight’s show is low on celebrities, and the majority of the Republicans clearly don’t have much to cheer these days.
8:43 p.m. Rev. Jesse Jackson surfaces as a guest in the president’s box. He’s next to Washington Mayor Anthony Williams, a bow-tied apparatchik presumably not being rewarded for the city’s utter incompetence in dealing with Tuesday’s snowstorm. Fortunately, baseball great Hank Aaron and soccer star Julie Foudy, who’ll sit next to Chelsea, are there too.
8:47 p.m. Down on the floor, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. of Chicago has, as last year, commandeered a prized fourth-row aisle seat, perfect for pressing the flesh of the A-listers who amble by on their way to the more prized seats down front.
8:50 p.m. The new, improved Fighting Al Gore, making a rare local appearance during his days bustling around New Hampshire, arrives arm in arm with Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), 96, whose hair color, one that would baffle most salon owners, appears to be orange-strawberry.
8:54 p.m. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) waddles in, raising an obvious question: Along with pushing for a patients bill of rights, can we not start the new millennium by missing a meal or two?
8:55 p.m. The Grouch Brothers, namely powerful Texas Republican Reps. Dick Armey and Tom DeLay, who clearly would rather be home watching pro wrestling on cable, shoot the breeze. A year ago, they were in a State of High Sneer against the embattled Clinton. Tonight they know they let him get away.
On the Democratic side, a flurry of women are dressed in neon red. It works for Reps. Carolyn Maloney of New York and Eleanor Norton of the District of Columbia. For others, it only suggests a need to join the nearest Jenny Craig. Snappiest-looking female: Janet Langhart, wife of Defense Secretary William Cohen. Best-dressed guy: the at-times insufferably garrulous Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.).
9:02 p.m. Future Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) appears with daughter Chelsea (hey, is she ever at college?) and Tipper Gore. The ovation given Hillary is more subdued than a year before, suggesting the spouse-as-victim aura has diminished. This suggests that, if Bill really loves her, he’ll get caught cheating again, jacking up her numbers from the Bronx to Rochester and making mincemeat out of Rudy Giuliani.
9:06 p.m. The Cabinet, by tradition minus one (Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, in case the Russians or Chinese bomb), wends its way toward the House well. The members are led by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and Cohen, all in dark suits. Sartorially challenged Atty. Gen. Janet Reno is attired in a baggy purple outfit that may have been a loaner from Goodwill Industries.
9:13 p.m. Clinton, 12 minutes late, is here, and guess who’s at his side? Yes, it’s Strom Thurmond. If only Ted Kennedy got this much exercise!
Up in the speaker’s box, there is applause from either side of Jean Hastert, namely from former Minority Leader Bob Michel (R-Ill.) and Chicago Cardinal Francis George. (Hmmmm. It was only a few weeks back that Hastert and GOP leaders were accused of being anti-Catholic in the selection of a Presbyterian as new House chaplain.)
9:18 p.m. “We are fortunate to be alive,” declares a man whom, the Grouch Brothers believe, is lucky to still have his job.
9:20 p.m. When Clinton says, “The state of our union is the strongest it’s even been,” all the Democrats cheer, but only eight Republicans do.
9:26 p.m. As he discourses on cutting crime, paring the federal workforce and increased productivity, only Democrats applaud. If there ever was proof of his political legacy, moving his party to the center and appropriating the opposition’s favorite issues, this is it.
9:30 p.m. A call for “common sense” gun-safety laws brings only two Republicans, including retiring and moderate Rep. John Porter of Illinois, to their feet.
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9:31 p.m. A call for campaign finance reform brings only two Republicans, including Porter, to their feet.
9:50 p.m. In a surprise, the elder Jesse Jackson is not squirming despite going 35 minutes without speaking or being the center of attention.
10 p.m. Even as everybody applauds the father of a slain Columbine High School teenager, Armey keeps his hands at his side. Lighten up.
10:15 p.m. Chelsea and Foudy applaud Clinton’s call for WTO membership for China.
10:23 p.m. Cardinal George claps as Clinton mentions Pope John Paul II having urged rich nations to forgive debts of the poorest ones.
10:35 p.m. The president is doing his best imitation of the late Don “Mr. Wizard” Herbert. He is in full professorial mode, talking about the human genome, artificial retinas and microchips for spinal cord injuries. Then there’s a claim he seems totally beguiled by (and kept repeating during a recent 10-day European trip), namely how we are all, “genetically, 99.9 percent the same.”
10:36 p.m. Sen. Peter Fitzgerald of Illinois is one of two Republicans clapping at Clinton’s call for preventing genetic discrimination by employers and insurers. This suggests the other Republicans support genetic discrimination by employers and insurers, which could be a novel campaign issue for the GOP.
10:38 p.m. The elder Jackson has now gone nearly 90 minutes without grabbing a microphone. Not permitted to bring a cell phone into the press gallery, I am unable to call the Guinness Book of Records.
10:42 p.m. Hank Aaron is introduced. Dick Armey claps.
Three minutes later, mercifully, it is over.
Some reporters will refer to the president’s “soaring rhetoric” the next day. Indeed, there were impressive passages, and Clinton is as good at reading a speech as anyone alive. But, taken as a whole, the speech was a mess, less a bridge to the 21st Century than a grocery list for the century.
Jumbled and lacking a consistent and central theme, perhaps it was a metaphor for a distinctly frenetic administration given to a multitude of small-bore policies.
“All over the place,” a Cabinet member (who is not related to Chicago’s mayor) tells me on his way out.
“But the politics of applauding was interesting,” he said. “Madeleine (Albright) felt compelled to stand for every applause line. (Drug czar Barry) McCaffrey was more selective, only getting up for what he personally supported.”
“And the Joint Chiefs? Well, they really didn’t seem to have a clue.”