July 28, 2004

BY NEIL STEINBERG SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

Opening shot

"Bill Clinton was a great president,'' my wife announced at dinner Monday night. I looked up from my rigatoni. I knew she was just giddy at the prospect of hearing him speak later that night at the Democratic Convention, and considered letting it pass. But the boys were there.

"Could you,'' I asked, "explain the logic behind that sentiment?"

She said: "He presided over a period of great prosperity.''

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By that standard Calvin Coolidge was a great president.

"If Bill Clinton was great,'' I said, "what was Abraham Lincoln -- super-great?"

She surprised me by yielding the point. Married readers will realize how rarely that happens. But only for a few seconds. Then she returned to the fray.

"Bill Clinton is great....'' she said, "compared to the current president.''

I went back to my rigatoni.

Live! On stage!

Last week I dismissed the convention as mere theater. That was a mistake, and not just because it led to an angry confrontation with our Washington reporter, Lynn Sweet (well, she was angry; I was more stunned). Having tuned in, I can see that while it may indeed be theater, it sure isn't mere.

My family gathered in to watch the Clintons -- we even let the boys stay up late. I don't know what your impression of Hillary Clinton is, but in my lingering 1990s hangover I thought of her as a cross between Madame Nu and the Bride of Frankenstein.

Instead we got this bubbly lady with apple cheeks, smiling and buoyant and wearing a banana yellow pants suit. She was ease itself, not even shunning the issue of health care, her great failure, but instead bravely returning to the ramparts. That takes guts.

"She might become the first woman president,'' my wife told the boys. No arguments came to mind. And Bill Clinton was even more impressive. Smart, witty and memorable. "Strength and wisdom are not opposing values.'' What a great line, and the slyest shot at George Bush I've heard (most Democratic attacks have the subtly of a thrown brick). I'm sure the paladins were gnawing on their sofa cushions up in Kenilworth. But it jolted us wavering Dems like a fire bell in the night.

Sweetness

I shouldn't allude to my exchange with Lynn Sweet without elaborating. It was my fault. She had come home to the Mother Ship from our Washington office last week, and I could immediately tell she just wasn't brimming with her usual warmth vis-a-vis a certain longtime colleague.

"Whatsa matter Lynn,'' I called out at her, jollily as she strode by, "don't you love me anymore?''

She rounded on me, eyes ablaze. "How can you dismiss the convention as theater when you haven't studied the schedule?'' she said, or something similar -- I wasn't taking notes -- "Do you know all the relevant meetings? Have you done any analysis?''

Of course not. "Happy is he,'' the saying goes, "who didn't have to go to hell to see what the devil looks like.'' I tried to say something light and soothing, but she didn't buy it.

I felt crushed, as if, over tea with a beloved aunt, she had tossed a cup of jasmine in my face and bolted. I've been playing grasshopper to Lynn's ant for 17 years, and adore her: She's sharp and she knows everything and really cares about politics. Who else takes this stuff seriously enough to march into my office and upbraid me over my latest ethical or professional lapse? She was a great hostess when I was in Washington last year, introducing me to the National Press Club, where the drinks are cheap and well-poured, and slipping me into the White House so I could lay eyes on George and Laura Bush. I tell you, I lose more friends this way. I'm going to end up all by myself, tossing cards into a hat.

Pot shots

*The networks did the Democrats a favor by limiting their live coverage to an hour a night -- that way, people who tune in get the cream and nothing more. I watched C-Span earlier in the day when the convention opened to a half-empty hall. It was like watching public access cable. I half expected a bunch of second-graders to come out and sing, "How Much is That Doggy in the Window?''

*I hate to sound like Ann Coulter. But TV coverage of the audience at the Democratic convention reminded me of the bar scene in "Star Wars.'' Every time the cameras turned to the crowd they focused on an Eskimo or a Pacific Islander or a senior citizen wearing Bozo glasses and a floppy hat. The Democrats are the party of inclusion, so why couldn't TV include a few of us white guys in neckties, just for novelty's sake?

Parking lots, lots of parking

As someone with a taste for esoteric books, I snatched up a copy of the newly published Lots of Parking: Land Use in a Car Culture, written by a pair of University of Illinois professors, John A. Jakle and Keith A. Sculle.

Their basic thesis is hard to argue against -- that while the free and open road is celebrated in story and song and critiqued up and down, nobody bothers much about parking, even though it has reshaped our landscape as much, if not more, than highways.

"American geography has been totally reorganized around motor vehicles and the need to park those vehicles,'' said Jakle, whose previous books with Sculle include studies of gas stations, motels and fast-food restaurants -- subjects which, of course, led to parking.

"We realized that our emphasis was on objects and not paying sufficient attention to geographical space,'' he said.

I gathered my courage and told the professor that some people might view his chosen field as, well, somehow obscure.

"I guess it is an obscure topic,'' he said. "But it's also fundamental and essential in America today. It's something so common, we usually don't choose to think about it seriously. We don't see it, but it's everywhere.''

Sort of like politics.