Hillary’s Origin Story, retold
Bill Clinton tells Millennials where Hillary came from. Liberal activism.
Bill Clinton filled in the story for Hillary. Young people see Hillary only after she became a very powerful woman — activist First Lady, US Senator, Secretary of State, world-class celebrity. Anyone under 40 came into the Hillary movie in the middle, missing the backstory opening scenes. Those scenes are important to show because it gives viewers/voters a narrative for understanding their current motivation.
Opponents try to show the politician has bad motives. Republicans say Hillary and Bill are shakedown artists, using political celebrity to raise money for themselves with charities just being a sham. This story works best if it starts with Hillary in the White House, a powerful woman attempting to exercise political power even though she was not elected. Democrats show “Made in China” tags, talk about Trump “university”, and talk about Trump as a playboy inheritor of a fortune to show that Trump is a spoiled brat bully con man hypocrite, pretending to care about America when in fact he is completely self serving and doing the over-hyped sales jobs he has done all his life, this time on the voters not the hapless victims of Trump University.
If politicians not create their own origin stories then the opposition will create ugly ones for them. Nearly every candidate did it as part of their opening remarks in New Hampshire Town Hall meetings:
Carly presents herself as a lowly secretary in a realty office, who through dint of hard work and by way of a single year in law school, which she hated, she became a great CEO.
Cruz was the son of a broken home, reunited thanks to his father’s conversion to Christianity, made great by the grace of God.
Christie was the son of Sicilian mom whose family was forceful and direct, which made him the blunt US Attorney able to prosecute terrorists.
Trump was mentored by his father, educated at the world’s greatest business school, and handed the company in his early 20s in order to build it into the great empire that it is now.
Hillary, in New Hampshire, did not mention her middle class to Wellesley origins but instead borrowed her mother’s history as young teenager on her own, saying that poverty and work ethic was Hillary’s touchstone.
Something very special. Bill Clinton told the story of young Hillary. He positioned Hillary as the awe-inspiring object of his affection, the woman too good for him, someone who rejected his marriage proposals twice. Rachel Maddow criticized this portion of the speech, but I think incorrectly. She said it was too long and that no one cared about their courtship, a courtship that necessarily had Bill describing Bill, not Hillary, and therefore once again inserting himself awkwardly into her political narrative. I disagree. He was putting Hillary on a pedestal, the distant object of quest. A question in the minds of voters for a second dose of Clinton is whether this is the step down or the step up. He was positioning Hillary not as a watered-down version of Bill-the-President, but as the improvement, the one harder to get. Bill was the warmup act. Hillary is the headliner.
Lifelong liberal activist. He then listed her long involvement in Legal Services, in Children’s Defense, in de-segregation, in the variety of liberal causes that consumed her during her 20s and 30s when she was the struggling political outsider. Bill menitioned her first house: the 1,100 square foot little brick house. This, too, was useful. Newcomers to Hillary know her only as a person making $200,000 speeches and living in big houses in tony NY neighborhoods. She used to be poor and struggling. They had a mortgage: $175 a month. Bill Clinton positioned Hillary into the same role as the disaffected young Sanders activists: liberal, struggling, outside the establishment looking in, and poor.
Hillary for Change. And Bill said she was effective in making changes. Hillary has been generally locked into the role of “establishment” and more of the same-old thing. Bill Clinton attempted to change that. She has been making change. Hillary is a reformer. Hillary means new and improved.
Republicans for 35 years have been critical of Hillary-the-liberal-activist. It is part of why hating-Hillary is the one unifying theme for Republicans. The problem for Hillary is that Republicans believe she is a liberal but liberal progressives do not. They think she is a moderate and maybe even a neo-hawk conservative, not better than a Republican.
Bill Clinton attempted to remind Democrats of what Republicans know: Hillary is a lifelong liberal agent of change. It is why Republicans fear her and why Sanders voters should feel OK about supporting her.
Aside: I was at Yale in grad school in History when Bill and Hillary were at the Law School. I had breakfast every morning in the Law School dining area. NY Times, 10 cents. Coffee with refills, 10 cents. Bagle and cream cheese, 15 cents. I would love to tell you great stories about them, but we never met that I know of.
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