I had not though of this comparison before but Jeff Greenfield makes a strong case that the Obama-Hillary contest is another example of the battle between the two cartoon heroes of Warner Brothers.
Bugs is at ease, laid back, secure, confident. His lidded eyes and sly smile suggest a sense that he knows the way things work. He’s onto the cons of his adversaries. Sometimes he is glimpsed with his elbow on the fireplace mantel of his remarkably well-appointed lair, clad in a smoking jacket. (Jones once said Cary Grant was his inspiration for Bugs. Today it would be George Clooney.) Bugs never raises his voice, never flails at his opponents or at the world. He is rarely an aggressor.
That’s Obama.
Daffy Duck, by contrast, is ever at war with a hostile world. He fumes, he clenches his fists, his eyes bulge, and his entire body tenses with fury. His response to bad news is a sibilant sneer (“Thanks for the sour persimmons, cousin!”). Daffy is constantly frustrated, sometimes by outside forces, sometimes by his own overwrought response to them. In one classic duel with Bugs, the two try to persuade Elmer Fudd to shoot the other—until Daffy, tricked by Bugs’ wordplay, screams, “Shoot me now!”
“Hmmm,” he adds a moment later in a rare bit of self-scrutiny. “Pronoun trouble.”
That’s Hillary.
It works for me. I do disagree that McCain is another Daffy. He is cool with reporters and quick with a quip. Bush was cool in the debates with Gore but who will be lucky enough to get another stiff like Gore, or Carter, as an opponent again ?
Anyway, it’s an interesting analogy.
Tags: Clinton, debates, McCain, Obma, presidential campaign