Musing on Huck’s appeal, Jon Schaff cites a line I used recently at a speech about music in New York:

It was Mark Steyn… who pointed out that the great songwriter E.Y. Harburg (you’ll know him as the man who wrote the lyrics to “Over The Rainbow”) argued that “music makes you feel a feeling, words make you think a thought, song makes you feel a thought.” Political rhetoric is similar to song. Inspiring rhetoric marries those two appeals to both the head and the heart.

It hadn’t occurred to me that Yip Harburg’s line had wider application, but Mr Schaff is probably right. A candidate has, in a sense, to make his platform sing rather than just put it out there on a briefing paper. Another old Tin Pan Alley line comes to mind here: As Jule Styne (composer of “Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!”) used to say, “Without the rendition, there is no song.” That’s part of the problem with the Romney campaign: When we chaps look at the sheet music coming off the fax machine from the Mitt press office, it sounds great. When he puts it up on the stand and starts to warble, it’s less so.

Judging from my mail, those who like Huck say they like him because he’s the “most human”. If he is, as his Christmas message suggests, a “cultural warrior”, he’s a sunny one. We’re not talking Pat Buchanan at the ‘92 convention, or Pat Robertson, or Jerry Falwell. If he is “the Evangelical candidate”, he understands the vernacular of political discourse better than most. And, unlike our chum David Frum, I’m very skeptical that voters will opt for the mercurial Rudy over Huck’s sunny disposition. You want a great combination of singer and song, but at a time when the conservative coalition finds it hard to agree on what the big number should be you can’t blame voters for going for the most appealing singer.

Okay, that’s way too extended a metaphor…