Hillary's change in tone
Posted: Friday, January 18, 2008 2:57 PM by Domenico Montanaro
From NBC/NJ’s Athena Jones
SANTA BARBARA, Calif. -- Clinton took the long view Thursday night. She looked past the Nevada caucuses two days away, past the South Carolina primary a week later, past Super Tuesday, the convention and even past Nov. 2008.
In a speech to a room filled with mostly college students, Clinton imagined aloud what America could look like a generation from now and asked the audience to help her make it a reality.
"I want you to imagine what you want our country and our world to look like in, say, 25 years," she said, joking that while it may seem like a long time to the college students in the crowd, it's like the "blink of an eye to some of us.
"In 25 years, I hope that we'll be in a more peaceful and prosperous world where more people feel that they have a stake in their own future. Where their voices are heard and listened to by the leaders of the countries in which they live. That we will have tackled the big global challenges that confront us from global terrorists to global warming to global epidemics."
The speech was in stark contrast to what audiences were hearing just a few weeks ago from a senator who has admitted that she sometimes gets too "wonky." Whereas the focus on the stump in Iowa and New Hampshire often seemed to be on long lists of the problems America faces and were sometimes described as "downers" by the journalists assigned to cover them, Thursday night Clinton laid out an optimistic vision for the future that drew sustained cheers and applause from the young audience.
She spent less time talking about "change", or at least used the word "change" much less frequently than she did on the stump in the final days in Iowa, when Hillary as change-agent was the running theme. Tonight "the future" seemed to have replaced "change" in the stump speech motif and it will be interesting to see how this new theme evolves.
"Starting on January 20th 2009, we've got to jumpstart the future. We've got to move forward with a commitment to solving our problems," the senator said. "If you're willing to make that journey into the future with me we will make history together."
The senator imagined an America that would no longer have a carbon-based economy, where there would be more locally produced food and greater transparency in government, where teachers would be among the most respected citizens, the immigration controversy would be a thing of the past because comprehensive immigration reform would have been achieved and where universal healthcare would have been in place for at least 20 years so that students at a school like this one studying the year 2008 would look at one another and say "what's an uninsured American?"
Not surprisingly, some of her biggest applause came when she spoke of an America where there would be no financial hurdles to any motivated person who wants an education.
The speech wasn't all positive. Clinton talked about the challenges presented by the war in Iraq, her concerns about the state of the U.S. economy and addressed her critics, but the overall tone was a lot less gloom and doom and a lot more inspirational sounding than in the past. One wonders if she's trying to take a page out of Barack Obama's playbook.
During the question and answer session, Clinton was asked how she felt about Obama and she seized on the chance to draw a distinction between her management style his, reiterating her argument the president has to be both the CEO and the COO of the country.
"I think he has already made and will continue to make important contributions to America and to our future, but I see the presidency differently than he does. You know, he gave an interview a few days ago in which very honestly said 'look, he doesn't think it's the president's responsibility to manage the government," she said. "I think the president has to run the government and manage the economy and has to be held accountable."
And a week after her chief opponents, particularly John Edwards, set out to paint her as a symbol of the status quo, (In a shout out with Clinton supporters at one New Hampshire polling place, Edwards and Obama supporters could be heard chanting "Hey, hey, Ho, ho. Status quo has got to go!") Clinton answered her critics by redirecting the attack toward Republicans.
"There's a lot of talk in this election about the status quo well the status quo is what George Bush and the Bush Republicans have done to our country. The status quo is accepting that we can't be energy independent, accepting that we can't do anything about global warming, accepting that our healthcare system is dysfunctional and we have to live with it, accepting that our education system can continue to be buffeted by No Child Left Behind and all these other government programs that don't do a thing to help anybody. You know, America is never about the status quo. America is always about the future," she said.
When asked by one young person what she would have youth do, Clinton talked about the importance of being part of the effort to fight global warming and having healthy habits.
