Clinton's attacks on Obama's oratory called into question

One of the sharpest tactics in Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign arsenal is to belittle the value of rival Sen. Barack Obama's oratorical skills, an attack strategy that Democratic observers say isn't smart and isn't working.

It is a line of criticism that Mrs. Clinton has used throughout much of her campaign, especially in debates with her rival, but one she is using more frequently lately as she attempts to counter the contrast between her nuts-and-bolts, "ready to go on Day One" stump speeches and Mr. Obama's soaring rhetoric that summons Americans to unite behind his agenda for change.

"Speeches don't put food on the table," she said last Thursday at a General Motors plant in Warren, Ohio. "Speeches don't fill up your tank, or fill your prescription, or do anything about that stack of bills."

"My opponent gives speeches. I offer solutions," she said.

It is a staple line in her campaign speeches in one form or another. "You can choose speeches or solutions. You can choose talk or action," she said in Cincinnati on Friday.

But some party strategists who have been involved in many presidential campaigns think the attack strategy is ineffective at best and self-defeating at worst because it seems to smack of a self-acknowledgement that Mr. Obama has better communications skills — a chief requisite for an effective presidency.

"I don't think it's a smart attack, unless she can make the 'all talk, no accomplishments' charge stick. Clearly, when good oratory is linked to action, it enhances the effectiveness of the action," said a veteran Democratic adviser who asked not to be identified.

Government scholars seem to agree, saying that oratorical skills are important attributes in a president seeking to lift up the nation, move it in another direction or build support for a reform agenda.

"The two most successful recent presidents are Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, who gave great speeches. They were really good at it, and that's one of the reasons they were successful," said Gregg Easterbrook, a governance studies scholar at the Brookings Institution.

"One of the main things we remember about Abraham Lincoln is his oratory. We don't remember the details of a deal he cut with the House Ways and Means Committee, but we remember his speeches," Mr. Easterbrook said. "You don't have to be a good speechmaker to be a good president, but it sure helps."

But Mrs. Clinton's repeated put-downs of Mr. Obama's speechmaking on the campaign trail have drawn growing criticism from pundits and pollsters — from liberals and conservatives alike.

When the New York senator was campaigning in early January in the Iowa Democratic caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, she said, borrowing a phrase from former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo, "You campaign in poetry, but you govern in prose."

"Clinton has not heeded her own lesson. She is campaigning in prose and has left the poetry to Barack Obama," Brookings Institution analyst E. J. Dionne Jr. wrote last month.

Conservative pollster Frank Luntz, author of a book on strategic words that appeal to voters in campaigns, told CBS News last week that he's "more than impressed" with Mr. Obama's oratory. "I've been mesmerized."

This blunt, almost brutal contrast in the speaking abilities of the two candidates is increasingly being highlighted in news accounts of their campaign events.

When Mrs. Clinton "speaks to large audiences, be it a rally with several thousand students or a fundraiser with well-heeled donors, she often sounds more like a senator than a presidential candidate — delivering wonky recitations of her policy positions instead of a raise-the-roof stemwinder," the New York Times reported on Super Tuesday.

Mr. Easterbrook finds her criticism of Mr. Obama's speeches ironic. "She is giving speeches to complain about someone giving speeches. She must think speeches are important, or she wouldn't be doing it all day long," he said.

Original here

Dick Morris Says Hillary Clinton lacks experience

Who was it that defined neurosis as repeating the same mistake again and again, and expecting a better outcome each time? That’s really what the Clinton campaign is doing in its post-Chesapeake primary strategy. Now Hillary defines Obama as the candidate who makes speeches, while she is the one who provides “answers” and “solutions.”

Why is Hillary embracing this new line? It’s not that she has any great record of solutions or answers of which to boast, but rather that she wants to highlight Obama’s lack of a legislative record. Once again, she and her campaign geniuses are making the same mistake they made when they decided to use the experience as their defining difference with Obama. It’s not that she had much, but they sensed an opportunity to highlight that he had even less.

Of course experience not only didn’t work. It backfired massively. By co-opting the experience tag, Hillary bought into the status quo and left Obama to be the agent of change. A candidacy that could have excited tens of millions of women, the first serious prospect of a female president, became merely a boring part of the status quo, shorn of its novelty.

Hillary’s claim to be the solution-person won’t work either for the same simple reason: She hasn’t passed any. If she were McCain, she could tout a long history of legislative success on key issues and herald her ability to pass bills and engineer progress. But she hasn’t done that. She hasn’t walked the walk so now she cannot talk the talk.

As a first lady, Hillary’s sole important legislative involvement came during the first two years of her husband’s presidency when she sought to pass her ill-conceived health care reform, an effort that failed so miserably that it cost her party control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years. Between 1995 to 1997, she was largely absent from the White House, traveling the world, promoting her best selling book and helping to raise funds. She never attended strategy meetings and her only intervention in the singular legislative achievements of Bill’s administration — welfare reform and the balanced budget deal — was privately to urge a veto of the former and to oppose the latter because it provided for a cut in the capital gains tax. Hillary returned to the White House in 1998 to oversee the defense to the Lewinsky scandal and the impeachment attempt, but the Clinton administration essentially folded its legislative efforts during those years and hung on for dear life. No portfolio of accomplishments there.

In the Senate, she has largely spent her time raising funds for herself and other Democrats (in hopes of attracting the votes of super delegates) and promoting her best selling memoir Living History. In part because of a lack of attention and also because of the Democrats’ minority status during much of her Senate tenure, she has passed very, very little of note.

Her legislative accomplishments in her first term in the Senate were almost entirely symbolic. She renamed a courthouse after Justice Thurgood Marshall. She passed a resolution honoring Alexander Hamilton and another celebrating the win of a Syracuse University lacrosse team. She renamed post offices, founded a national park in Puerto Rico and expressed the sense of the Senate that Harriet Tubman should have gotten a federal pension 150 years ago.

Her only actual legislation included one bill to increase nurse recruitment, another to aid respite time for Alzheimer’s care givers and another to expand veterans’ health benefits, a paltry output for six years’ service.

In her second term, she has spent full-time campaigning for president and has the worst attendance record of the three senators now still in the presidential race.

So who is she kidding? If she wants to hit Obama with a negative based on his inexperience and limited legislative record, she should go right ahead. But to pretend that she is the “solutions” and “answers” person while he gives speeches is absurd.

Views expressed in this column are those of the author, not those of Rasmussen Reports

See Other Commentary by Dick Morris.

See Other Political Commentary

Rasmussen Reports is an electronic publishing firm specializing in the collection, publication, and distribution of public opinion polling information.

The Rasmussen Reports ElectionEdge™ Premium Service for Election 2008 offers the most comprehensive public opinion coverage ever provided for a Presidential election.

Scott Rasmussen, president of Rasmussen Reports, has been an independent pollster for more than a decade.

Original here

Advertisment