Clinton Needs a Voice of her Own Unlike Hillary, Mr. Trump doesn’t know Obama-speak and doesn’t need deprogramming. Dorothy Rabinowitz
http://www.wsj.com/articles/clinton-needs-a-voice-of-her-own-1469661215
A lot can still happen at the Democratic convention, but nothing is likely to matter as much as Hillary Clinton’s look and tone, what she says—or perhaps more important—what she doesn’t say as she takes the stage Thursday night. Donald Trump, a man of iron predictability, faced no such test last week and delivered no surprises.
Not that there weren’t some striking moments in the glum enterprise that concluded in Cleveland, among them Melania Trump’s quickly famous speech. Also the contribution of Chris Christie, who functions periodically as the governor of New Jersey. Mr. Christie used his speaker’s spot to conduct a lengthy mock trial of Mrs. Clinton distinguished mainly for its unremitting tone of hysteria. It was a spectacle many Americans may remember should Mr. Christie become, as he apparently hopes, attorney general under Mr. Trump.
The Republican presidential candidate has one obvious advantage over Mrs. Clinton: He has never been in a position to absorb, as she has, the language, reflexes, certitudes, and high principles ready to be deployed on all occasions that are peculiar to the world of the Obama administration.
Not that Mr. Trump isn’t capable of embracing certain of the president’s views on America, first revealed in 2009 during Mr. Obama’s now-famous trip abroad to see heads of state and express regret for America’s offenses, known to history as the Obama apology tour. Those views of America as a nation in decline, virtually without allies, emerged ever more conspicuously during the president’s first term.
Last week Mr. Trump lashed out at NATO, then went on to argue that the U.S. shouldn’t be interfering in the business of other nations. And that we had so many failures of our own at home: Ferguson, the killing of police—so much. Who are we to tell the butchers and mass murderers of the world what to do?
Unlike Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump doesn’t know Obama-speak and doesn’t need deprogramming. He hasn’t absorbed the language that Americans recognize well after eight years. They have heard through all these years the nostrums, the reflexive high-minded oratory, that have come with every terror attack. They can hear it all over again in Mrs. Clinton.
Never was this clearer than in the days following the terrorist assault in Nice, when she described the attack as cowardly and vowed that we would never allow terrorists to undermine our egalitarian and democratic values. Such assertions always feel, and are, strangely off the point, which is the horror of the atrocity that has taken place.
The notion that terrorists are busying themselves trying to undermine our egalitarian values is odd, especially in light of the obvious fact that what they are trying first and foremost to do is kill us.
Mrs. Clinton, like Mr. Obama, seems to have divined the wishes of our enemies. Not only do they want to undermine our democratic values, they would, as she recently said of Islamic State, “love for us to be dragged into a ground war”—a perception highly appealing to a political administration now scarcely able to conceive of a circumstance dire enough to warrant American ground troops.
Mr. Trump addressed the cruel slaughter in Nice but had no more hard specifics to offer about what might be done than Mrs. Clinton did. He nevertheless managed a tone far more effective in its outrage—the voice of a leader in time of war. It helped, no doubt, that he felt no need to deliver warnings about the undermining of our democratic values.
In July alone, eight police officers were killed in high-profile shootings—five in Dallas during a Black Lives Matter protest and three more 10 days later in Baton Rouge. The day after the latter killings, as stunned citizens grieved—black Americans included, especially those who had seen in Dallas how the police officers had rushed to protect them from sniper fire without regard to their own safety—Hillary Clinton addressed a convention of the NAACP.
She began with a stern, clearly heartfelt, denunciation of the killing of police, then proceeded to her main focus—namely, a recital of the innumerable injustices visited on black Americans by the police. It did not apparently occur to her that it might be possible to mention to the NAACP the injustice, the fatal consequences, of the war that had been whipped up against police by activists portraying them as oppressors and murderers.
The planners of the Democratic convention included on their list of honored speakers a group of mothers—known as Mothers of The Movement—most of whose children died at the hands of the police. There was no opportunity, however, for a speech by any of the wives or parents of the slain police officers. The enraged officers of Philadelphia’s police union promised not to forget this slap in the face by the Democrats. Mrs. Clinton and company had evidently failed to grasp that following the dictates of political expediency, otherwise known as pandering, would in the end be more costly than doing what was right and just.
To win the election Mrs. Clinton will have to sway voters from across the political spectrum. True, huge portions of the electorate are appalled by the prospect of her opponent winning the presidency, which is to her advantage. But huge numbers of Americans are no less appalled by the possibility of a Clinton presidency that would in effect be another Obama term. All of which is the reason Mrs. Clinton will have to do her utmost to find a voice of her own.
She may well find one and perhaps even something of a political backbone. Enough, at least, to ensure that she resists pressures to move even further left than she already has to win supporters from Bernie Sanders’s sullen troops now brooding over their lost revolution. It will be an effort and not easy but it should hardly be too much for the candidate who may become the first woman elected president of the United States.
Ms. Rabinowitz is a member of the Journal’s editorial board.
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