One Last Thing: Casting Clinton in a 'Rocky' role

Elections are serious business, but let's take a moment to be unserious about a point of particular interest for Philadelphians. A couple weeks ago, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton started comparing herself with Rocky. She played the

Rocky

theme song at her rallies and told audiences: "When it comes to finishing the fight, Rocky and I have a lot in common. I never quit."

She's onto something, though not in the way she might think.

To be fair, the Clintons have come back for nearly as many sequels as Rocky Balboa did. Both franchises feel as if they've been part of the culture forever. And let's stipulate that Barack Obama is obviously Apollo Creed. Like Apollo, Obama is good-looking, charismatic, polished and smart. People are crazy for him. As Apollo's trainer tells him before the fight in

Rocky II

, "You're the Man. You're number one. The Champ, the best of all time. Girls love you - men, old people love you. Young people love you. You're the best." That's the general consensus on Obama, too.

And there's one other apt parallel: In his rematch with Apollo Creed, Rocky switches from being a southpaw to a righty in order to confuse Apollo and throw off his timing. Certainly, that's the equivalent of what the Clinton campaign has done since South Carolina.

But there's something not quite right about the Clinton-Rocky comparison. And if you meditate on the subject for a moment, the perfect comparison becomes clear.

Clinton obviously isn't Tommy Gunn, the young fighter from

Rocky V

who turns on Rocky after being trained by him. A nice parallel, by the way, for Bill Richardson. And while the nickname is irresistible, Clinton isn't the Fabulous Thunderlips - the pro wrestler played by Hulk Hogan in

Rocky III

. Thunderlips makes a big show of anger and savagery when he fights Rocky, only to turn on a dime afterward and reveal that his tough talk was just playacting. (John Edwards, anyone?)

So who's Clinton's real Rocky alter ego? Well, it's not

Rocky III

's Clubber Lang, played by Mr. T. Although it's a shame there isn't a Clubber Lang in the race. America could use another Mr. T, tossing out the occasional "I pity the fool" and telling reporters preprimary: "My prediction? Pain!"

But no, the Rocky metaphor for Hillary Clinton is clear: She's Ivan Drago, the Soviet boxer of

Rocky IV

.

Like Drago, Clinton is calculating and emotionless, a product more of laboratory science than organic growth. Drago was designed by the Soviet system to be a ruthless fighting machine. You could say the same about Clinton and the Wellesley of the '60s. In

Rocky IV

, Drago's Soviet handlers bill him as "the most perfectly trained athlete ever" and "the future," presaging the "inevitability" argument Howard Wolfson and Mark Penn were peddling on Clinton's behalf 12 months ago.

We never get a look inside Clinton's war room. She doesn't have her husband's exhibitionist streak. But think of the training facility Drago uses in

Rocky IV

: high-tech equipment with men in white lab coats studying him while making notations on their clipboards. It's easy to picture Clinton hooked up to electrodes, walloping a little padded machine while James Carville cackles about the amazing psi numbers she punches up with older Latino voters.

And Bill Clinton makes a fair Ludmilla (Brigitte Nielsen), Drago's beautiful, manipulative spouse who's always inserting herself into the action and demanding attention. If you'll recall, she does a lot of Drago's speaking for him. At one point, she even complains about the U.S. media's unfair treatment of Drago: "All I want is for my husband to be safe and to be treated fairly."

But the real clincher is Drago's attitude toward Apollo Creed's health, which roughly approximates Clinton's regard for Obama's political future. After laying waste to Creed, Drago famously croaks: "If he dies, he dies."

By the way, it's a testament to Dolph Lundgren (who has a master's degree in chemical engineering and was a Fulbright scholar - seriously) that he created such an iconic movie character with only a few bits of dialogue. His only other memorable line comes when he finally faces off with Rocky and tells the champ: "I must break you."

Which, incidentally, is a perfect distillation of the Clintonian worldview.