The Comeback Kid Came Back

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One
thing that I have learned about Bill Clinton having followed him since 1992, is
that you can never count him out.

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Marcus
Tullius Cicero was the greatest orator of his time. He was such a gifted
speaker that history now remembers him by one name: Cicero. He introduced the Romans to Greek
philosophy and became an incomparable orator and very successful lawyer. In 63
BC he delivered the Catiline Orations which exposed to the Roman Senate, the
plot of Lucius Sergius Catilina and his friends to overthrow the Roman
government. These orations are still used by law school professors to
illustrate the power of persuasive words. As gifted as Cicero was, he
eventually ticked off too many of the wrong people and went from being hallowed
to hated.

On
Wednesday night at the Democratic Convention in Denver we saw Cicero revived in
the person of President Bill Clinton. Prior to his wife's run for the
presidency, Bill had been hallowed and hailed in the African-American community
as the first black President. We embraced and elevated him to a level that no
white politician had enjoyed since President John F. Kennedy. Then like Cicero
he went from hallowed to hated when he reached in his back pocket and played
the race card. When you play the race card, the joker is wild and you never
know how you will be judged in the end. Suffice it to say that a very large
segment of the black community went wild on Big Bill after his intentional
gaffe leading up to the South Carolina Primary. Counting the writer of this
blog as one of those who went wild on a man whom we had let into the family, we
were left speechless by the words of a man who admitted during his attendance
at the last Congressional Black Caucus of his tenure as President, that the
"African-American community had covered his ‘you know what' when the
Republicans came after me during my impeachment."

We
understood that Bill could not separate his wife Hillary from Hillary the
candidate and as a result he went overboard on more than one occasion. We were
mad at Bill! Yet, we knew that he wanted to come back home. There is a powerful
line in the movie Gladiator where Lucinda, daughter of murdered Emperor Marcus Aurileus,
says to Maximus "make us believe again in the dream that was once Rome." In the
black community we wanted Bill to make us forgive him and believe in him again.
Boy, did he on Wednesday night!

One
thing that I have learned about Bill Clinton having followed him since 1992, is
that you can never count him out. Look at the Washington Post's summation of
the resurrection of Cicero on Wednesday night "He started and stopped three
times before the crowd quieted enough to let him speak, and those several
minutes, while eating up the time allotted to him — which he was destined to
ignore in any case — served to remind everyone that for all of the controversy
that seems to swirl around him, in and out of office, in and out of the
campaigns, he still holds an uncommon place in the modern Democratic pantheon
as the party's only two-term president of the postwar era."

Cicero
wooed and won the crowd. Proximo, the gladiator hustler, in the movie Gladiator
told Maximus, "Win the crowd and you will win your freedom." Bill freed himself
from his blatant blunders and gruesome campaign gaffes on Wednesday night. He
won the black community back with his conciliatory and concessionary
salutations towards Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama. The crowd
cheered him on. Cicero spoke of unity and moving forward as one Democratic
Party. He ran through his record and ripped the Republican record and reminded
us that Obama is the only choice in this election. His most brilliant line was
when he said ""People the world over have always been more impressed by
the power of our example than by the example of power." Can you say Bill
Clinton lovefest?

Again, I turn to the Washington Post to
capture Cicero Clinton, "It is the most repetitive theme of Clinton's political
life: that he always finds a path to redemption when he is down, and in many
ways he proved that again with this speech. And he might also have accomplished
something larger and less self-centered — by doing all he could to bring Obama
up at the same time." I must concede that Bill cannot be kept down. He always
manages to find his way out of the ditch and back on to the right path at the
right time. Cicero was at his finest moment on that stage. Even his haters had
to love him but for those moving moments.

The comeback kid came back in a bigger
and better way. He set Obama up nicely for tonight. Obama must give the speech
of his life. Cicero has set the table.

By the way the real Cicero made a bad political
move later in life when got the Senate to name Mark Anthony an enemy of the
state because Octavian and Anthony reconciled. After making up, they posted a
proscription throughout Rome which was a list of their enemies. Each enemy was
hunted and killed. Guess whose name ended up being prescribed? Cicero's! He hid
as long as he could but he was found on December 7, 43BC. When he was captured
and about to be decapitated, his supposedly last words were of great oration "There
is nothing proper about what you are doing, soldier, but do try to kill me
properly."

Big Bill was removed from the black political
proscription list. He does not have to be hunted because the comeback kid has made
another comeback.