Hillary's Speaking Style

I've been asked a lot of question recently about the relative oratorical skills of the presidential candidates (having just written a book on presidents and their speechwriters, I have become something of an expert).

Obama is easy of course: a rare talent, evoking a classic style of political speechgiving for which few contemporary politicians reach. Hillary Clinton is less easy to define. She aims more for a plainspoken wonkiness -- sort of a midwestern political nerd.

My friend and former colleague Anne Kornblut has an interesting piece in today's WashPo, however, that gives us a fine tour of the Mrs. Clinton's speaking style and stump speech.

The story has become a staple of Clinton's stump speech, a prime example of how, in a campaign year in which lofty phrases have taken center stage, she has rejected sweeping oratory -- "just words," as her campaign likes to accuse Democratic rival Barack Obama of offering -- in favor of a dramatic speaking style all her own.

In hushed tones, sometimes with palpable sadness in her voice, Clinton tells dark, difficult anecdotes picked up on the campaign trail. They often relate to health matters, culled from her conversations with voters, and are designed to illustrate a policy point.

Presidential candidates across the decades, from Ronald Reagan to Bill Clinton to George W. Bush, have honed the art of picking out stories to bolster a policy position in particularly human terms. Former senator John Edwards (N.C.), who left the Democratic race this year, often cited the stories of people he defended as a trial lawyer.

Personalizing speeches goes further back. During the Second World War, FDR would search for personalized anecdotes to bring the war home to his audiences. When Ike was making a television appearance to discuss the issues of the day he answered letters from average Americans (though, as I recount in White House Ghosts, in at least one case the letter was written by his staff and came from a fictitious housewife). Nixon liked to recall a sign he -- or a campaign staffer -- noticed at a rally on the 1968 campaign trail that asked him to "bring us together." He did bring us together in the end, though perhaps not in the way he intended.

Bill Clinton of course excelled at recalling the stories he heard on the campaign trail. After embracing adoring crowds he would recount to his campaign aides the stories he had heard. Knowing that the president would recall these same stories at upcoming campaign rallies, his staffers would mingle back out among the audience, trying to track down the stories and make sure he had the facts correct (invariably he did).

Mrs. Clinton's style has its drawbacks of course:

For Clinton, the approach seems to bring together her best skills, especially her ability to listen to voters she meets. In speeches that sometimes wear on and sometimes derail into deadening policy, sharing bleak stories can focus the audience's attention.

Alternating deadening boredom with heart-rending sadness? No wonder she's flagging.

Comments

[deb813]

She has a different accent and a different cadence for every speech she gives. It's not the words she speaks it's the phony way she speaks them. Who can believe a word she says when she says it differently every day?

[DennyCrane]

It isn't just her speaking style that's hurting her. It's the content. You can have a bad actor with a good script and no matter how bad the performance is, you can tell if the writing is good. The problem with Hillary is that she could be given one of Obama's speeches and she'd fail. Because she's untrustworthy. She can say all the right things, but knowing her history of lying, it doesn't ring true.

[Rescisco]

Speaking style matters to the extent that it communicates something (intended or not). Two individuals, Obama and Hillary for example, may say the exact same same thing with respect to substance, but their style differences may result in an audience hearing something completely different from each. I just returned from hearing President Clinton speak at a rally on my campus. It was vintage "policy wonk" Bill, with the coherence, the detail, the intellect, the inspiration, and the personal magnatism of President Clinton at his very best. It struck me that few, if any, in the history of our nation could match the masterful performance I had just observed. It struck me also that I would like a president who, even if his/her style was unimpressive, could master details, see the policy road ahead so clearly, and navigate the ship of state with such clear precision as evidenced in Mr. Clinton's mind (I am talking policy here). Whatever the style, and yes it is important in a contest of personalities, I really want smart above all else. Given the result of the past two elections, I am obviously in the minority.

[Pangaea]

Don't you also think that one of the reasons Senator Clinton is assailed for her speaking is that her remarks are being compared to Senator Obama's?

A timely example of this ":suffering by comparison" comes in the release of March fundraising figures. Clinton raised $20 million. That's alot of money, and if the only other candidate for president were McCain, eveyone would be marveling at her prodigious fund raising capabilities. But Obama raised 40 million, so the story changes - she isn't as effective as he is. What's wrong with her campaign?

A lot of the comments point at specific strengths and weaknesses in the candidates' oratorical styles, etc., and they are all points well taken. And to be fair, each candidate has had high and low points on the speaking stump.

However, if the final two candidates for the Demorcratic nomination were Hillary Clinton and Michael Dukakis, wouldn't her speaking style face less scrutiny?

[LoisG]

I find Hillary's speaking style to be brittle. Her tone and her ballistic finger pointing makes me cringe. Of course, all I see is what is on TV, and that might only be a hint. Nevertheless, she is not winning me over with either her style or her policys. I've heard it said many times by those who know her that Hillary is warm and likeable ...so mething like "If you speak to her alone, she's very warm and likeable" (or something to that effect). Well, I don't expect to ever be in the company of a President alone, so if she wants to win me over, she needs to let that likeability and warmth (and her honesty, trustworthyness and intelligence) come out whenever she speaks so that we all can hear the real Hillary. That just isn't happening for me. I was completely prepared to support Hillary. I'm a feminist too and I would love to see a woman become President, but I don't think Hillary is that woman.

[EspritDeVoltaire]

So what you're saying is her oratorial ability parallels her veracity? Perhaps this is a subconscious cry for help.

[MaineMike]

During the Texas debate, Obama was making a joke about the phrase "Get Real" used by Clinton in some of her speaches. There was a brief moment where Clinton was perhaps taken a little off guard and let out some true laughter. There was something incredibly real about it, and I felt like I was actually seeing the person inside the politician.

A vast majority of the time, however, when I see her on TV, she looks to me like she's trying as hard as she can to play the part in a way that is not natural or comfortable to her. As Colbert said "Like Doritos, she seams to be designed by consultants and focus groups."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vrh2WoKAmWg 5:25

http://www.comedycentral.com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?episodeId=164041 0:44

[Caringthinkingperson]

There are a couple of factors contributing to Clinton's speech patterns that translate into general insincerity, or I like to think a general malaise. You don't have to dislike her or consider her a liar to notice either. What is most notible about Hillary is that she is a cameleon.

The slang, and bad accents creep in when she deems the audiences sufficiently folksie. She, then, shifts back over to the more informed policy wonk we all know her to be when she feels that she is speaking directly to intellectuals or the press. The shift is so "audience specific" that it infers she has predetermined how we need to be spoken to. Whether this is a focus-group decision that has been coached into her, or an independant concept she has arrived at herself, the result is the same. We hear it as disingenuous. There has to be a fair amount of cynicism behind ethos that is so rehearsed.

When you come to the attempt at humor - it is so scripted that you know she is only going to be successful when the acting coach has been available. In her more tired moments, away from direction, it just falls flat. Just bad acting. When we hear her voice rising to the strident pitch we have come to resist we are hearing the entitlement that, after all of this time, just registers as anger. And thus is the main focus of her campaign - from beginning to end.

[PTTY]

Obama did not get lax in N. H. read below. Hillary lied in her mailings to Planned Parenthood just like she did in NAFTA/Canada Gate.

Trying to Heal a Rift in New Hampshire

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/01/18/trying_to_heal_a_rift_in_new_h_1.html

Three New Hampshire Democratic leaders who signed a letter two days before the state's primary at the request of Hillary Clinton's campaign, attacking Barack Obama as soft in his support for abortion rights, are asking Obama supporters in the state to put the rifts of the primary campaign behind them and praising Obama for being "strongly pro-choice."

The e-mail arrived in selected New Hampshire in-boxes shortly after a postcard from the Clinton campaign that attacked Obama for being "unwilling to take a stand for choice" mailed to homes.

The Clinton campaign has made the same charge repeatedly over the past year, including a couple weeks before the Iowa caucus.

The attack arrived much closer to election day, leaving the Obama forces scrambling to respond by rushing out an automated phone call on the evening of Jan. 6, two days before the vote.

Clinton won by two percentage points after trailing in the final polls by as much as 10 percent, thanks in large part to a last-minute surge in support from women.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/01/18/trying_to_heal_a_rift_in_new_h_1.html

[FreedomLoverX]

I disagree. Her speaking style is simple to define. it's called FAKE and LYING and grotesquely insincere. She changes accents more frequently than most people change their underware. In other words, the woman is a lying fraud.

"When the investigation was over, Zeifman fired Hillary from the committee staff and refused to give her a letter of recommendation – one of only three people who earned that dubious distinction in Zeifman’s 17-year career.

Why?

“Because she was a liar,” Zeifman said in an interview last week. “She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.”

[caj]

"Because she was a liar,"

To tell an untruth to the American public, then go on the telly and make a joke of the lie, is to show contempt for the truth and the intelligence of the citizens. To make matters worse, the word, "misspoke" is not the correct term to use in this case. A six-year-old child wouldn't get away with it. I would say that HIllary needs a long, long "time out."

[PioneerKing]

Sen. Clinton should take a page from her husband's play book and "...staffers would mingle back out among the audience, trying to track down the stories and make sure he had the facts correct (invariably he did)."
Last week Sen. Clinton told one of her whoppers invoking a pregnant waitress in Ohio. Sen. Clinton claims that a sheriff in Ohio told her about a pregnant waitress who was turned away from a hospital emergency room twice because she did not have $100 to pay to see an ER doctor.
In the 90's when Sen. Clinton first started telling this story the waitress was not pregnant, there wasn't any baby that died and the waitress did not die.
There wasn't any pregnant woman in Ohio that was twice turned away from a hospital emergency room whose infant died in child birth and the woman getting flown by airplane to Columbus where she dies 15 days later.
Sen. Clinton has embellished this story to the point of a super sized whopper.

[PioneerKing]

HILLARY'S STYLE IS CONDESENDING

[stonepier]

She can't do humor - she strays from the truth (I'm being kind) - she's stilted and unnatural. If I hear her say how "privileged" she is one more time i'm going to throw up. She doesn't seem genuine. She's just not a good speaker, and I think she knows it. And she knows that she's up against one of the most remarkable public speakers we've seen in at least a generation. In an effort to overcome this, she keeps changing her "voice" which just makes her seem more phoney.

[Desiderata]

Evita in full chin-raised profile
Margaret Hamilton in oratorical pitch.
She's melting, melting....

[OtayPanky]

I like her best when her inner Gollum takes over, myself.