OPINION:
Hillary Clinton has been parading around this country giving stump speeches about why she should become the next president of the United States.
Each and every event is relentlessly dull.
Here’s a sampling:
“We’ve got to get the economy working for everybody, not just those at the top,” Mrs. Clinton said at an event in Ohio this month, repeating the phrase throughout her speech.
“So when I talk about creating new jobs in infrastructure, advanced manufacture, clean renewable energy, I also talk about creating more small businesses and small businesses that will grow and give people a chance to fulfill their dream and will be part of the basic bargain, who will be paid for the work that they do so they can stay in business,” she said.
In Detroit, Mrs. Clinton said: “We are builders, and we need to get back to building!” to cheering crowds. “So we’re making progress, none of us can be satisfied until the economic revitalization we’re seeing in some parts of Michigan reaches every community.”
She continued, “America’s best days are still ahead of us if we make up our minds to actually go out and make that happen.”
Earlier this summer, Mrs. Clinton said in New York, “It’s America’s basic bargain. If you do your part you ought to be able to get ahead. And when everybody does their part, America gets ahead, too.”
It all sounds so good. It’s just not saying much at all. And then its repeated, over and over and over again.
Can you imagine being on her press detail? Trying to carve out what the “news” is for the day? In the 30 to 40 minutes it takes to deliver one of these speeches, the press — along with her audience — are snoozing, working on autopilot.
Byron York, a columnist who has been following Mrs. Clinton on the campaign trail wrote: “Clinton’s speeches are boring. They don’t make much news.”
He then gave a brief synopsis of Mrs. Clinton’s stump speech: First thank everybody, then start off with creating more jobs and a rising income, go into infrastructure jobs and investment, then talk about revitalizing unions, then there’s the debt-free college promise, the promise of higher Internet speeds, the reminder that her GOP rival Donald Trump outsources his products and that he’s stiffed the little guy, and then go back to the need for technical education and how Mrs. Clinton can provide it given her resume.
There’s a few more hits on her Mr. Trump, but you have the basic idea.
EVERY SINGLE SPEECH.
And it’s strategic. It has been since the first day Mrs. Clinton hit the campaign trail to run for New York’s Senate seat more than 10 years ago.
“The strategy is to use words, not to pierce through the fog of voices and sounds in which we all live, but to add to the fog,” Peggy Noonan wrote in her book “The Case Against Hillary Clinton,” detailing Mrs. Clinton’s senatorial run. “She is using words to conceal, not to make clear but to confuse. She is not trying to communicate her thoughts, ideas, and plans; she is merely trying to communicate and impression with pictures.”
Mrs. Noonan then details how this strategy utterly confuses the press corps, who go to her events with camera-men and reporters, looking to make the nightly news. After a speech where Mrs. Clinton says nothing — because the media has dedicated resources to cover it — she’ll get her picture with a gold medalist, or talking to a teacher, or manufacturer who lost their job, with a short sound-byte of her speech.
The headlines, will read, “Hillary Clinton meets with Law Enforcement Officers,” with a picture of her standing next to a cop.
“We have to be clear-eyed about the challenges we face. We can’t ignore them and certainly we must not inflame them. We need to work together to bridge our divides, not stoke even more divisiveness,” Mrs. Clinton said at that event, which was pulled as a quote along with her picture with the officers.
(And please, reread that quote. What does it really mean? What are the exact challenges we are facing, and what are the solutions to help build the bridges? It’s all rhetoric).
But Americans will accept it, and say — “Well, looks like she’s doing her job, she’s getting around, campaigning. She looks competent. She says good things.”
Her style especially plays well against a bombastic, unscripted, aggressive businessman Donald Trump — who hands the press candy every time he opens his mouth without a teleprompter. Next to Mr. Trump, Mrs. Clinton both dodges media coverage, and comes off likable, perhaps even warm (did you see the picture of her holding the baby, she is a grandma after-all!).
“All of this reflects the Clintons’ longtime media m.o.; it is their own variation or twist on what they learned from watching Ronald Reagan in the 1980s,” Mrs. Noonan wrote. “Reagan spoke directly and consistently for 30 years about his philosophy and plans and positions. He used words not to create a fog but to cut through it, to make clear his stand on communism, on taxes, on foreign affairs and domestic issues. Everyone knew where he stood, and could back him or oppose him based on that knowledge. …
“Using pictures to communicate where you stand and why you stand there is honorable, and a necessary acknowledgement of the reality of mass media. But Mrs. Clinton uses stagecraft to hide and obscure philosophy and position, which is not honorable at all,” Mrs. Noonan wrote.
And nothing has changed in the years since she wrote them.
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