Hill-A-Copter Down
LAST, JONATHAN V.
Hill-A-Copter Down Is Hillary the “change” Iowa wants? BY JONATHAN V. LAST Ottumwa, Iowa “You know, there’s a lot of talk about change in this election,” Hillary Clinton told a Des Moines...
...The crowds love it, although no one seems aware that she voted for No Child Left Behind...
...We borrow billions of dollars from them to give to the Saudis to buy oil...
...Our challenge is: How do we master that change and make it work for America again...
...These more mature voters may lack the intensity of Obama’s hip, Facebooked masses...
...She had run an error-free campaign, with the exception of one debate gaffe where she endorsed giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants...
...She haltingly read, “I know that . . . Hillary is . . . a . . . change-agent because . . . she has been doing this all her life...
...She used that formulation at the beginning of the change tour, but on day three she used a new one: “I’ve had a historian tell me that this may be the most diffi cult set of challenges since Harry Truman succeeded Franklin Roosevelt,” she said...
...But Barack Obama began rising in late August, and in the last week of November he passed Clinton in some polls...
...Her campaign banners now proclaimed “Hillary: the Change we Need...
...The world is always changing...
...And the people at her events were overwhelmingly older, with the median age probably between 45 and 50...
...Even the folks doing introductions were roped into the act...
...For most of the campaign she has tried to evade the question of Iraq, mentioning it only in passing...
...dubbed “The Middle Class Express,” which sounds like cut-price airline seating...
...While health care is the centerpiece of the new Clinton campaign, she still mentions a few other issues...
...And we weren’t successful the fi rst time, but you know what...
...Clinton still leads in some of the Iowa polls, and her crowds were large and supportive, if not overly enthusiastic...
...I’ve been a change-maker for 35 years...
...We are in debt to countries from China to Mexico...
...But on Caucus Day, January 3, Iowa’s three big universities will be on winter break, and young people will be distracted by parties and the Orange Bowl...
...One of her big applause lines is, “We are going to end the unfunded mandate known as No Child Left Behind...
...So much for “as quickly and responsibly as possible...
...Sure enough, day fi ve of the tour became Iraq day, where she claimed that ending the Iraq war would be her “top priority” as president, with the fi rst soldiers pulling out within 60 days of her inauguration...
...To this end she developed an effective tactic: Her standard line is to say that as president she will “bring our troops home from Iraq”—here there is always tremendous applause, but she barrels through it, quickly adding—“as quickly and responsibly as possible...
...She abandoned the lectern and took to striding back and forth across the stage, microphone in hand...
...In a daring display of brazenness, she attacked Obama for both fundraising improprieties and excessive ambition...
...in the fall she took a short tour aboard a bus Jonathan V. Last is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...And I learned a lot, because we were standing up for what was right...
...And there should be...
...In Ottumwa, the poor Ordinary American introducing Clinton had trouble delivering the hamfi sted text given to her...
...She hammered the change theme at every opportunity...
...By contrast, Clinton’s supporters aren’t going anywhere...
...I’m glad we tried...
...We keep track, because it started, last spring, us noticing that we had a lot of people in their 90s who wanted to caucus for us,” Hillary told one crowd...
...In another speech she said that acupuncture and other “nontraditional” medical practices ought to be covered by health insurance...
...When I was fortunate enough to go to Washington to be part of my husband’s team,” she says, “we tackled one of the hardest problems we have: health care...
...So Clinton made some changes...
...Clinton went out of her way to poke fun at her own age (60), presumably to draw a contrast with the 46-year-old Obama...
...On Iraq, however, Clinton really does seem to be changing...
...When in doubt, trot out Halliburton...
...Speaking about fiscal responsibility, she said, “We need to quit borrowing so much money from foreign countries...
...Clinton’s back-to-the-future type of change may be just their cup of tea...
...Clinton had been leading the polls here since the end of summer...
...Talking about the S-chip program, she claimed, “We’re fi ghting with George W. Bush who’d rather give no-bid contracts to Halliburton than give health care to American children...
...The “Hillary as Change-Maker” theme calls to mind George W. Bush’s response to a McCain surge early in the 2000 primary season: Bush reinvented himself as the “Reformer with Results”—and went on to win the nomination...
...Partly that may have to do with age...
...We have two wars: one to end, and one to fi ght and to win...
...Well the other day, we broke through the barrier—a 102year-old man is determined to caucus for us, and he’s asked his 81-year-old son to take him...
...So we started keeping our list of people in their 90s...
...There were other signs in Iowa that Clinton was lurching without thinking...
...New Hampshire cochair Bill Shaheen was trotted out to question the past drug use Obama himself had freely admitted in a memoir published 12 years ago—and was promptly jettisoned from the campaign when the attack backfi red...
...It was the fi rst time I’ve heard her openly reject the idea of victory in Iraq...
...Some took the form of nonsequiturs...
...In practice, it’s diffi cult, and sometimes impossible, to hear that important qualifi er...
...And while her speeches are mostly free of policy substance, she paused midway through her fi ve-day tour to roll out a few nanny-state proposals: a 90-day halt to home foreclosures, a fi ve-year freeze on rate adjustments for subprime mortgages, and federal assistance for weatherizing homes...
...Which is exactly what her campaign has done in Iowa over the last few weeks...
...Some people think you get change by hoping for it...
...The “change” campaign was rolled out during a five-day, 99county barnstorming tour which saw Clinton hopping from town to town in the “Hill-A-Copter...
...Which isn’t quite how it works, but never mind...
...and “Working For Change, Working For You...
...Yet, despite everything, it’s not clear that the campaign should be as panicked as it seems to be...
...The problem for Clinton is that she follows her call for change by citing a failure to bring change, her 1993 attempt at creating governmentrun health care...
...The dissonance is jarring—though, who knows...
...Everybody’s got ideas about change...
...During a four-minute stretch Clinton used the word change 15 times...
...This was not the fi rst ill-named vehicle on the Clinton campaign...
...Clinton even ditched the campaign’s theme song, Celine Dion’s “You and I.” And after months of promoting the idea of “strength and experience” on the stump, she pivoted to talk about her biography and the mantra of “change...
...BY JONATHAN V. LAST Ottumwa, Iowa “You know, there’s a lot of talk about change in this election,” Hillary Clinton told a Des Moines gathering of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees...
...Joined by President Clinton, Magic Johnson, retired general Wesley Clark, and other surrogates, Clinton remade her pitch to Iowans, in both form and substance...
...But I believe you get change by working really hard...
...You know, some people think you get change by demanding it...
...But you know, change happens, whether you do anything or not...
Vol. 13 • December 2008 • No. 16
