Humanizing Hillary
PLAISTOW, N.H.
SAY THIS about Hillary Clinton: The candidate is outperforming her campaign.
Of course, during a period in which that same organization has played both kindergarten cop and juvenile probation officer, drawing attention to Barack Obama's putative primary school presidential plans and his previously acknowledged high-school drug use, that's not saying an awful lot.
Crunch-time campaigns are a daily rhetorical duel conducted at long distance, something Bill Clinton was a master at. Covering him, you could watch his arguments evolve over the course of a day's events as he searched for the most effective way to respond to a rival.
As the Democratic front-runner, a caution-constrained Hillary Clinton has proved much less agile. But on Saturday, when she came to Timberlane Middle School, Clinton began to abandon her front-runner's demeanor and to make her case in a way that parried her principal rivals' arguments against her.
What you still don't get from her measured manner is much emotional excitement. That mattered less back when Obama was languishing in his listless phase, but the Illinois senator has recently pumped up his presentation to include several of the electrifying crescendos political audiences so love.
Clinton's lower-key performance still lacks such moments. I've long thought the most likely explanation is that she's afraid to hit the high notes for fear of being labeled shrill or screechy by those given to gender bias.
That's not it, says campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson. Rather, it's that his boss is a very private person.
"She is somebody who feels things very deeply but doesn't always show that," he contends.
Either way, beginning her Plaistow event with two women whose children had experienced severe (and in one case, fatal) health problems, women who offered heartfelt praise for Clinton's legislative efforts on behalf of families like theirs, helped establish an effective emotional connection.
As I've written before, the challenge for Clinton is to persuade voters that she would be a more effective change agent than her rivals. On Saturday, she made some important progress on that front.
Clinton began her remarks by talking about the work she had done for the Children's Defense Fund as a young woman, going door to door in New Bedford to find children with disabilities whose families hadn't enrolled them in school, and about the way that organization's efforts helped open the public schools to those kids. She also spoke of her time as chair of the Legal Services Corporation board, and said that in her own legal aid work she had represented people caught in abusive marriages and community groups whose neighborhoods were threatened by leaking toxic dumps.
Part of the effort to humanize Hillary, that biographical overflight had another obvious message: Despite the insinuation of Obama's campaign, she was not a hyper-ambitious careerist following a carefully charted path toward the presidency, but rather someone who had long devoted herself to seeking social justice.
Clinton then buttressed her credentials as a bipartisan problem-solver by citing her work with US Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, to extend military healthcare to National Guard and National Reserve members.
Most importantly, she offered a concrete example of where she would push for more dramatic change than would Obama.
"My American Health Choices Plan will give . . . every single American the right and the responsibility to have quality affordable healthcare," she said. "We are not going to leave anybody out. We are not going to start by conceding the Republican talking points that we can't have universal healthcare coverage. Yes, we can."
That, however, wasn't a point Clinton hit crisply enough. Here, she was still in name-no-names mode, a vestige of front-runner-itis. I'd bet that many in the audience weren't aware that her healthcare proposal, with its individual mandate, would be more comprehensive than Obama's, which wouldn't require that everyone have or buy coverage.
Clinton's bolder plan runs contrary to her reputation as a controversy-shunning calculator. As such, it's a completely legitimate issue to highlight, and rather than speaking elliptically or obliquely, she should spell out the differences.
In nearly every primary campaign, there comes a time when the early-state polls tighten or close to even. That's when the pressure intensifies, when the candidates must show what they are truly made of.
This campaign has now arrived at that point. And though Saturday's performance wasn't perfect, it was one that should give Clinton supporters confidence in their candidate's ability to stand and deliver.
Scot Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.
