Solutions Not Speeches? I've Got a Secret

The Clinton campaign is still trying to find its voice. We've been through Experience is Everything, Tough Enough and Ready to Lead on Day One. We've had a few bars of You Want My Human Side? Here's Your Humanity! thrown in for good measure. But none of them seems to have worked well enough to silence the soaring rhetoric of Change We Can Believe In.

So the Clinton camp has minted a shiny new mantra: Solutions Not Speeches. Barack Obama may have good ideas, his words may inspire you from Milwaukee to Dallas to Columbus to Philly and back, but Hillary Rodham Clinton is the one who has the solutions. It's what she does. That particular recipe for success is hers alone and she wants to be held accountable.

Let's have at it.

The Solutions mantra begs the question, "Huh?" We're hard-pressed to find an example of a major positive solution to a critically problematic issue here. We do remember the early '90s, when Hillary took on the wholly admirable task of finding a solution to the impending health care crisis. She headed the President's Task Force on National Health Reform. Many of us were thrilled. We'd voted Clinton, we'd gotten two wonks for the price of one, and we could see the handwriting on the wall if something wasn't done to rein in big pharma, greedy purveyors of insurance-for-corporate-profit-only and health care consortia who were (happily) in bed with the aforementioned.

She failed. There was no solution in sight. There were, admittedly, powerful forces at work against health care reform. But a significant part of the problem with the Clinton-led task force was this: The tenor of Hillary's process got plenty of attention--and much of it was not so good. There was an air of secrecy, of policy-making behind closed doors; there was an information blackout which fueled a right-wing argument that a secret cabal of policy wonks was about the business of plunging us headlong into creepy socialized medicine and depriving us of both quality care and our physician of choice.

Does that approach to solution seeking sound familiar?

Fast forward to 2001, to Dick Cheney's National Energy Policy Development Group. Like Clinton's task force, Cheney's was secretive, met behind closed doors and withheld information from the public.

His motives were certainly not the loftier ones of Ms. Clinton, but they shared a similar philosophy about the solutions game; a patronizing, paranoid exercise in furtive, convoluted power-play politics. It was politics as usual, characterized by a total failure to inspire public trust, to build consensus, to effect any positive change at all.

Had Hillary adopted the "Hope, Change and Transparency" Obama approach (not everyone outside your circle of wagons is your mortal enemy), maybe there wouldn't be 47 million Americans without health insurance today. Maybe Senator Obama has a point worth noting when he says "...all of us have proposed plenty of solutions in this race...The problem...is not a lack of good ideas. It's that Washington today is the place where good ideas go to die. They're the victim of petty partisan politics, point-scoring, and special interest influence that's out of control...the real question...is who can change that...and actually get something done?"

A nifty new campaign slogan changes nothing. A fruitcake is a fruitcake. Nobody really likes 'em, but hey, it's Christmas and it's what you do. Years ago Johnny Carson, joking about how hard, dry and inedible fruitcakes are, suggested there's only one of them in the entire world, no one wants it, so the same damn cake keeps getting passed around, year after year, until some fool will eat it.

Seems the Clinton campaign is this year's fruitcake. They keep re-packaging the thing as if putting a shiny new bow on top will make the cake easier to swallow.

America's response, with notable momentum behind it, is that we want something different . We don't want a "new voice" ad campaign and we won't be satisfied with changing the wrap and ribbon on the same old cake. We want a better recipe for finding solutions. One that works. We want a president who knows we need to change not only what's being done in Washington, we need to change the gnarled, negative, counterproductive way it's being done.

And that's no secret.

Comments

[newyorknewyork]

Love the fruitcake analogy Linda.
Great piece

[Chip51]

I always did hate fruitcake...

YES. WE. CAN.

As I listened to Obama's speech last night following yet ANOTHER larger-than-expected win, my heart was pounding ferociously in my chest. I believe in this man, in his WORDS, because I believe that behind those "mere words" is a man of action who will affect a positive change. I want my country back, and there is only one candidate with the conviction and political will to make it happen.

OBAMA '08.

[Pdubya]

both talking the talk, both not walking the walk. just more "feel good" politics, empty of substance and constitutional voting records.

shams.

[NoDrama]

I can see Obama leading us toward a much better place, not merely on the strength of his well-articulated, pragmatic plans and their bi-partisan appeal, but also by his vision. We won't get past all the divisions or challenges under his leadership, but we will move in the best possible direction.

[DANIELLECLARKE]

Obama is the only candidate to have released his tax forms. (neither McCain or Clinton have)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/15/opinion/15fri1.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin


Obama has released his earmarks. ( Clinton has not)
http://obama.senate.gov/press/070621-obama_announces_3/

Hillary Clinton reigns as the Queen of Federal Pork
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aXWIZU3DOyr4&refer=home

Obama was rated #1 in environmental policy by the League of Conservation Voters
http://presidentialprofiles2008.org/

Obama was right about Pakistan, back when Hillary was calling him "naive"
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/11/06/navarrette/?iref=mpstoryview

Washington Post gave Obama's economic plan an A- and gave Hillary's a C.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/22/AR2008012202614.html?hpid=opinionsbox1


Wall Street Journal preferred Obama's healthcare plan over Hillary Clinton's
http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB120234937353949449.html

Judge Obama by his legislative achievments, which are quite impressive, according to the Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/03/AR2008010303303.html

[DANIELLECLARKE]

Why Obama, Not Clinton?
Here are some of the reasons Barack Obama, not Hillary Clinton, is the change America needs.


http://thinkonthesethings.wordpress.com/why-support-barack-obama-not-hillary-clinton-comparison-compare-records/

[kroses98]

Unfortunately, Hillary Clinton's voice is so "shrill" that I cannot tolerate listening to her anymore. The more anxious she gets about her campaign, the "shriller" she sounds. I'm now having to "mute" the sound of my TV when she speaks! Forget it, Hillary, you cannot compete with Barack. He speaks in grand poetry. Your "solutions" are just "slogans." He is leading a "movement." You are running a race. In any other year, you might have won. But not this year. Not now! Our time has come to fight the fight of our lives, and we have to go with the one who can take us to "home base!"

[churchlady]

Shrill is such a sexist word. I've never heard a man's voice described as shrill.use "Opinionated" is another sexist word. Otherwise, I agree with you. She is yelling at us.