I was listening to a radio talk show last week, during which the host ran a clip of someone talking about how Hillary Clinton, after her 17th campaign relaunch, needed to "forge a message" that would resonate with voters of different types and backgrounds, in order to get elected.
So let's set aside the fact that the election is pretty much only about Florida, Ohio, Nevada and 2-3 other states that have a chance of going either way. Let's talk about "forging a message."
When exactly did any candidate "forge a message" that meant anything in the context of governing or even leadership? I'm not talking about slogans like that hopey-changey thing that Obama used, or "Morning in America" or any of those others. Those are slogans; they're just words. I'm talking about an actual message.
Now I remember back to the Eisenhower administration, born during the Truman administration. I remember Ike, and the ten presidents since. When was the last time that there was a cohesive, themed governing philosophy associated with a president? Maybe Ronald Reagan? I mean, it's hard to say someone did or did not have a message, until you define what a "message" actually is.
We give credit to Reagan and say that he ran on the idea of returning government (and capital) to the people, and hiring Cabinet secretaries and department heads to go out and do just that. So don't you have to credit Obama with having the message that we are no different from Uruguay or Sierra Leone, morally equal to Russia, and that he would do everything possible to minimize the footprint of the USA on the planet? That's an execrable message, but it was a message, and he certainly has followed it.
But here's the important thing -- Obama didn't run on that message! No; he ran on that hopey-changey thing that was meant to imply that he would open the Treasury and give everyone money and jobs and phones and stuff. He never actually said that explicitly, but a bucketload of people inferred that, enough to make him president twice.
Obama was elected on an assumption, not a message. He didn't need a message. George W. Bush certainly didn't have a unifying message the first time around and Bill Clinton's might have been "I'll leave your wife alone if you elect me." OK, maybe that was a slogan.
You get the idea? It's not about "message", it's about -- or should be about -- philosophy of government, the role of the Federal presence in the USA, the role of the USA in the world. It should be about those things, because those are what govern the president's judgment in hiring his Cabinet, in leading his legislative initiatives, in dealing with the world.
It should be about those things, which the Democrats cannot win on, because they consistently fail at it. So it will be about abortion and gay marriage and minimum wage hikes and transgendered Martians and other irrelevancies. It will be about those things because the Democrats and their flunkies in the press will keep it about those things (I'm looking at you, George Stephanopoulos).
Hillary Clinton would only need to "forge a message" for the purpose of winning an election, but no message will help her. Quite the contrary, Democrats and the left specifically need not to have a message, because messages are unifying.
Hillary does not want unifying of anything. She needs the Democratic voting blocs all to vote for her even though they have internally opposing views -- multiple victim groups compete for the same benefits; unions are innately bigoted; the immigrant Latinos take jobs from black citizens; affirmative action towards females disadvantages male Latinos, blacks and gays; trans-racial weirdos like Rachel Dolezal take racial preferences away from -- what, "cis-racials?" (pardon my M.I.T. chemistry minor kicking in); and the list goes on.
So it is interesting that all the advisers hollering for her to "forge a message" will likely be pushed aside by the smarter advisers, quietly telling her to eschew the message and just toss out a good slogan.
Because there is no message out there that represents what Hillary Clinton would be as president. That president would, of course, be the same politically-motivated, insanely egocentric person that the Secret Service couldn't wait to write about and tell stories about -- the same person so convinced that she is above the law, that she would plan to hide her communications as Secretary of State by setting up a home-guarded email server the day of her confirmation hearing.
No message needed, Hillary. Just wave your gender around and try to ride it back to the White House.
Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
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