Alliteration Alert At The Airport

Tension on the Tarmac
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: January 28, 2012

Our Miss Maureen loves her some alliteration, starting right from the titillating title. Some days she tries to fit in as many fanciful phrases as she can. She starts by waxing nostalgic for the days when Clintons were campaigning.

But No Drama Obama saves his rare tempests for the runway.

Hillary had sent word that she wanted to talk to Obama. Standing in front of her plane, she apologized to him for the comments of her co-chairman in New Hampshire, Billy Shaheen, who had warned that Republicans would pounce on Obama’s confessions of cocaine and marijuana use.

But it's not until the middle of the missive that she really builds up a head of steam. Check out these cheeky chestnuts:

But Hillary did not like it, feeling she was being held in place and patronized, even “manhandled,” as her aide put it to a reporter.

Having rehashed a Hillary Clinton anecdote, Dowd turns to the newer tempestuous contretemps at an airport, the one with Arizona governor Jan Brewer.

The toxic dominatrix of illegal immigration, the woman who turned every Latino in her state into a suspect, was flustered and gesticulating at the president as he put his hand on her arm to chill her out.

Culminating in this colorful collage:

After his brouhaha with Brewer, dubbed “the dust-up in the desert,” he became a hero to the Hispanics he had gone West to court. They loved seeing their Cruella de Vil get dressed down.

Try saying any of those phrases three times fast. But it doesn't end there. The going is just getting good.

Everything is breaking Barry’s way, as Mitt and Newt rip into each other in vicious ads and debates like alligators going after house pets.

Romney was tutored in Florida by Brett O’Donnell, a new debate coach. Too bad he can’t find a conviction coach.

O’Donnell manned up Mittens and taught him how to pummel Newt in “moments of strength,” as the Republican strategist Alex Castellanos calls them.

The alliterative lilt is perhaps the most underestimated of Dowd's rhetorical reaches, but when she strikes her stride, nobody can hold a candle to her cadence.