‘Hope’ hard to find this time around
Test for uninspiring Hillary: Show folks her sunny side
PHILADELPHIA — How did it happen? How did the party of “hope and change” come here to nominate the most distrusted candidate ever chosen by a major political party?
That’s not mere hyperbole. A recent New York Times/ CBS poll found 67 percent of voters say Hillary Clinton is “not honest and trustworthy.” (Not that Republican nominee Donald Trump fared much better, scoring a 62 percent “not honest and trustworthy” rating on the same poll.)
What’s the deal? Was it just Hillary Clinton’s “turn” — a reward for being on the political landscape so long she seems like a living, breathing Mount Rushmore?
That’s the kind of behavior the Republican establishment always engaged in — that is until what was left of the Republican establishment was laid to rest in Cleveland last week.
OK, so the hope and change thing of 2008 didn’t work out quite as planned — and that was even before the nation’s first African-- American president had to be reminded that Black Lives Matter. And it was before cops were being slaughtered in the streets of Dallas and Baton Rouge. And before innocent Americans lost their lives to Islamic terrorists — many radicalized right here during this grand new era of “hope and change.”
Eight years ago everything seemed possible. Everything seemed so fresh and new. Democratic primary voters had picked the brash young senator from Illinois whose stirring rhetoric made folks forget his exceedingly short resume. Even U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, looking at the choice between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, both Senate colleagues, endorsed right after the 2008 Iowa caucuses because, as he put it in his memoir he knew Obama “had the capacity to inspire.”
“I felt myself lifted — with a renewed optimism for my country,” he wrote.
And on the opening night of the Democratic Convention that year, already diagnosed with the malignant brain tumor that would claim his life one year later, with his still booming voice Kennedy said, “For me this is a season of hope — new hope for a justice and fair prosperity for the many, and not just for the few — new hope.”
And he spoke of a candidate who “will close the book on the old politics of race and gender and group against group and straight against gay.”
What became of all that sunny optimism? What became of that enduring “dream” that Kennedy
first invoked on a night much like tonight at the 1980 Democratic convention and returned to as a theme in 2008. And why does it today seem more like a nightmare? Of course, Kennedy was an unabashed partisan, but he wasn’t a divider. He got things done by reaching across the aisle. He got the Children’s Health Insurance Program through a Republican Congress (and if you want to know how he did read it Nick Littlefield’s splendid book “Lion of the Senate”). But inspiration and optimism seem to be in short supply this campaign season. The party that once cheered the aspirational rhetoric of Ronald Reagan has settled on a standard-bearer who has taken the GOP for a walk on the dark side. Not that there has been any shortage of personal invective and fearmongering on the part of Democrats. Elizabeth Warren, who now holds what we still call “the Kennedy seat” in the U.S. Senate and who will address the convention on this opening night has been tweeting up a storm in recent days, apparently trying to get under the rather thin skin of Donald Trump. He “models himself on an insecure narcissist whose lies & schemes embarrassed our country. Figures,” she wrote, comparing Trump to Richard Nixon. “Thin-skinned bully” is among the kinder things she has called Trump, adding “Seriously, I could do this all day.” OK at least points for humor there.
Hillary Clinton has never been accused of being an inspiring candidate. Barack Obama’s famous, “You’re likeable enough, Hillary,” kind of sums it up. But she has an opportunity to reach a little higher here this week, maybe even show her sunny side. That is, assuming she
has a sunny side.