Yesterday, for the first time in this election cycle, I heard Hillary Clinton give a great campaign speech. Not a great policy speech, or “position-paper” speech, but a flat-out great campaign speech.
She took down her opponent by decisively and accurately enumerating his weaknesses and deficiencies. And she did it calmly and cooly, with humor, cleverness, and tremendous poise.
Like it or not, the race for the President of the United States is partly about which candidate is able to most effectively project a sense of power and command. That’s largely a result of the multiple roles a President plays in the U.S.: top military commander, most powerful agent for economic policy, and the nearest thing our country has to a regal figurehead.
Today Clinton hit those marks perfectly. She stopped acting like a policy wonk (although she really is a highly gifted policy wonk) and started to act like a President.
One of the two leading candidates for President is an actual expert, with deep knowledge of our government, our legal system and our economic system, and the other one is a highly gifted TV personality. Up until now, the TV personality had been grabbing the entire spotlight.
Perhaps the conversation is finally starting to shift from reality television to reality.