Double Take:Hillary Clinton has made a video based on The Sopranos, but Bertie doesn't need such tricks, writes Ann Marie Hourihane
A complex and ruthless man, surrounded by shady male accomplices, and lit by lightning shafts of charm. An affectionate family. An organisation which has grown so old in power that it has sort of forgotten why it went into the business in the first place, although it still finds it fun. Over here that's just another day with Bertie, but in America they have to make this stuff up.
In order to connect with the American voters, Hillary and Bill Clinton are imitating television characters. All our Taoiseach has to do is turn up on Miriam O'Callaghan's chat show in his shucks-I-was-just-passing kind of way, and pretend to be an ordinary guy. This was a remarkable performance - far more assured than Hillary will ever manage. You just gazed at the screen and smiled, like a mother watching a ballet class. Because Bertie understands the Irish people much better than Hillary will ever understand her own. We like to think of ourselves as too darn complex for categorisation, but Bertie seems to have the key to us, hidden under some breeze block somewhere. He has it, and he'll never give it back. Maybe he'll leave it to the twins, and so we will be under Fianna Fáil well into the next century. That's what power means.
Hillary Clinton's short campaign video is a spoof on the final episode of the television series The Sopranos. It's a two-hander, and Hillary's co-star is her husband, Bill. Unsurprisingly, Bill is much better at this acting lark than Hillary. He has a sort of Stan Laurel subservience about him. Hillary has ordered him carrot sticks and says, "I'm just looking out for you." Bill looks convincingly crestfallen.
The video was presumably conceived to show the lighter side of Hillary. Her latest biographer, Carl Bernstein, says that she is very funny. It is always a little unsettling when people start to reassure you about a powerful person's sense of humour.
But The Sopranos was also unsettling, even for those of us who regarded it as the most perfect thing on television. It's kind of disturbing to think of all of us respectable pillars of the community escaping every week to a macho never-never land where you get to control the pole dancers, the restaurants and the bin collection - and to kill your business rivals as well. If you stared too long at The Sopranos you sometimes found the Sopranos staring back at you. God, it was enjoyable.
It was very game of Hillary to make the video, in which she takes the part, as far as I can tell, of Tony Soprano. ( I haven't seen the final episode yet, or even, as far as I can help it, read about it.) Whether it was advisable is another question.
The American people have never liked Hillary - remember the New York firefighters booing her at a fundraising dinner for their comrades who died in 9/11? Tony Soprano would really hate her. There is an earnestness about Hillary that she can never shake.
Even sitting in the unremarkable banquette seating of an ordinary diner, as she does in this video, Hillary looks as if she is the only person who has turned up on time for a meeting. When she opens the menu she looks like she's scanning the agenda. Even though the soundtrack at this point consists of a female singer crooning "Just a small town girl/Living in a whole new world", it just doesn't wash.
And this is terribly unfair. Hillary is a lifer in politics, a serious person devoted to public service. Her husband may have been the greatest political talent of his generation (discuss), and even smarter than his formidable wife, but he was also a total chancer and quite possibly a compulsive liar. And he could charm the birds out of the trees. We loved him.
Hillary and Bill are a real-life soap opera. Their marriage difficulties have been broadcast and dissected by millions. They are the JR and Sue Ellen of politics, even though Dallas was so very long ago. It is Bill who has the most interesting line in the video, when he says, "Everybody in America wants to know how it's going to end." That might not be true. A lot of Americans don't bother voting and presumably the question of who becomes president will make very little difference to their lives.
Meanwhile, Hillary's rivals are mobilising. Last week, Barack Obama's campaign office had to release a statement denying that it had anything to do with a song released by a sexy young woman entitled Baby, I Got A Crush on Obama. Which seems to imply that Barack Obama is so cool that he doesn't even have to manufacture his own publicity.
In Ireland we have given up wondering how our real-life version of The Sopranos is going to end. Perhaps it will never end, and Bertie will go on, in a series of repeats, into infinity: the show that never gets cancelled.
And Hillary - poor, deserving , conscientious Hillary - her series will never get beyond the pilot.