AMES, Iowa — Hillary Clinton and John Edwards held dueling
events here on New Year’s Day, and though they drew comparable
crowds of a few hundred people, Edwards seemed to be gaining steam
in the final days before the caucuses and Clinton showed the
strains of a long, already drawn-out campaign.
Speaking at the Gateway Hotel, Clinton’s vocal chords sounded
worn out, her voice was faint and she spoke in a hushed tone during
several parts of the speech. Though she is never a graceful orator,
when her campaign was at full strength in the fall, she at least
had a tightly focused message for her stump speech. On Tuesday, she
meandered for more than 45 minutes in a speech that lacked a
climax, and she gave long-winded answers when she opened the floor
to questions.
The first question she took was on immigration, and she was
still answering it six minutes later when I had to leave to see
Edwards. By contrast, Edwards seemed to be hitting his stride at a
speech at Iowa State University and was much more efficient —
speaking for 25 minutes, and packing about 5 or 6 questions in the
next 15 minutes, before wrapping things up so he could head off to
another event.
Clinton’s closing argument can be summed up in her line that,
“Some people think you can get change by demanding it, others think
you can get change by hoping for it — I think you get change by
working hard for it every single day.”
Despite her limited track record of tangible accomplishments,
Clinton wants voters to believe that she has been fighting
successfully for change for 35 years. She says that during the
1990s “we” turned a deficit into a surplus and noted that she and
her husband “tackled” health care — something that even FDR, Harry
Truman, and LBJ were afraid to touch.
“We took it on, and we weren’t successful, but I’m proud we
tried,” she recounted. Here she was, highlighting a colossal
failure in an attempt to make an argument that she has been
successful at bringing about change.
At times, Clinton speaks not merely as if she were co-president
during the 1990s, but as if she were actually running the country.
“I was deeply involved in the Northern Ireland peace process,” she
boasted. “I actually went to Northern Ireland more than Bill
did.”
EDWARDS’S PUGILISTIC populism (which John Tabin captured
brilliantly last week) is an absurd spectacle to witness in
person. I’ve never heard so much macho talk coming from an adult
since I used to watch the WWF as a kid.
His closing argument is that, “I will fight for you with every
fiber of my being,” and he spent the speech explaining why we
needed a fighter, why he is itching for a fight, and why he can
kick the butts of corporations because his father taught him to
stand up to street toughs when he was a young boy. (I kid you
not.)
During his speech, he recounted the story of a 17-year-old girl
who died because her insurance company resisted approving payment
for a liver transplant. “And people say to me, that what I’m
supposed to do as your president, is to sit at a table, and
negotiate with those people?” he asked indignantly.
“Let me say this very clearly: Never! It will NEVER happen when
I am President of the United States!”
His heroic intransigence is especially silly coming from a man
who wants to reengage with Iran and North Korea. So, if you’re a
communist country that runs gulags and starves millions of its own
people, a leading state sponsor of terrorism, a nation that
threatens to wipe Israel off the map, vows “Death to America,” and
supplies Iraqi insurgents weapons used to kill American soldiers,
Edwards wants to chat. But meeting with an insurance executive is
simply beyond the pale.
Unlike Barack Obama, whose message of change and inclusiveness
would translate well in a general election, both Clinton and
Edwards will face obstacles should they get the nomination.
Clinton’s problem is that too much of her support is tied to her
being the wife of Bill, which may be enough for her to win among
Democrats who are nostalgic about the 1990s, but will not do much
for her among a broader electorate that is more ambivalent.
Edwards’s anti-corporate message is simply too tailored to winning
the votes of angry liberals in Iowa to play on the national
stage.
Philip Klein is a reporter for The American
Spectator.
