Clinton’s task
The Democratic nominee needs to convince voters she is not a product of a broken status quo but an agent of a brighter future
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s gave an astonishingly ominous, menacing and dystopian jeremiad to the nation at the conclusion of his party’s convention Thursday night. After his daughter, Ivanka, had done a masterful job of portraying her father as a caring, compassionate, optimistic, can-do leader, the vision of Mr. Trump channeling a less subtle version of Richard Nixon circa 1968 was all the more jarring. But as over the top as it may have been, the speech directly targeted real anxiety many Americans feel at a time of mass shootings, terrorist attacks at home and abroad, and the assassination of police officers in Dallas and Baton Rouge. As Democrats prepare to meet in Philadelphia Monday to nominate Hillary Clinton for president, it presents them with the challenge of addressing the fears Mr. Trump is seeking to exploit but also the opportunity to provide the kind of hopeful vision Americans have always craved in their leaders.
The next day, Ms. Clinton announced her selection of a running mate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine. By traditional measures, he’s a good choice. Mr. Kaine is a moderate from a swing state who brings executive experience (he is a former mayor and governor) as well as knowledge of military and foreign policy issues from his time in Congress. He is certainly qualified and meets the test of being plausibly ready to be president should tragedy strike. The first rule of vice presidential selection is do no harm, and he won’t.
Yet we can’t help but worry that as a symbolic and political matter, choosing sends the wrong signal. It’s not necessarily that we’re looking for someone of the Bernie Sanders wing of the party — for example, we are more in agreement with Mr. Kaine (and, for that matter, Mr. Trump’s running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence) on trade issues than we are with either of the candidates at the top of the parties’ tickets. It’s that his selection plays into the image of Ms. Clinton as a cautious, calculating, traditional politician at a time when the electorate is demanding precisely the opposite.
In choosing Governor Pence, Mr. Trump went against type. If he is criticized as an impulsive candidate, disdainful of the established mores of presidential campaigns (including some bedrock principles of his own party), selecting a sitting governor with impeccable credentials as a social conservative showed that he is not completely divorced from the ordinary rules of politics.
Ms. Clinton has precisely the opposite problem. Many of the young voters who animated the Sanders campaign (and who delivered resounding victories in the last two elections for President Barack Obama) view her as a leader of yesterday and an avatar of the status quo. House Speaker Paul Ryan put it well in his convention address Tuesday night: “Here we are at a time when men and women in both parties so clearly, so undeniably want a big change in direction for America, a clean break from a failed system,” he said. “And what does the Democratic Party establishment offer? What is their idea of a clean break? They are offering a third Obama term brought to you by another Clinton.” That, not all the chants of “lock her up,” might have been the most damning critique of Ms. Clinton the Republicans delivered.
We aren’t expecting that Mr. Trump will be proven right in his boast Thursday night that Mr. Sanders’ supporters will be joining his “movement” en masse. More likely, they simply won’t show up on Election Day — unless Ms. Clinton can convince them she is more than a repackaging of the same ideas we’ve been deadlocked over for the past generation.
“Elections are about the future,” another Clinton has frequently observed, and this year’s Democratic nominee now must convince the American people that she can deliver a brighter one than the harsh, almost authoritarian vision her opponent sketched out Thursday. Ms. Clinton only has a few moments when she can be assured of commanding the attention of the entire nation — when she introduces her running mate, when she addresses the convention and when she debates Mr. Trump. She can’t let any of them go to waste.