Hillary Clinton’s guide to wooing the masses tonight
It’s advice generations of parents have given third graders before a first performance on a field or in a recital: Be yourself. Don’t try too hard. Relax.
It may also be what Hillary Clinton — among the most experienced national political convention speakers — needs to do Thursday night when she accepts Democrats’ invitation to be the first female major-party presidential nominee.
She’ll give her best speech, experts say, if she doesn’t try to.
“When she tries to be too dramatic it doesn’t ring true,” says David Frank, a rhetoric professor at the University of Oregon who’s studied presidential speeches.
But tone and delivery is just part of Clinton’s challenge as she tries to meet the oratorical challenge of Donald Trump.
Her supporters want vision — “speak from the heart about what’s most important to her,” said Ed Coyle, 68, of Owings, Md., who’s at the convention. “She’s such a known quantity she doesn’t need to drive home her stand on every issue.” Her skeptics want reassurance. “We need to see her human side. We don’t trust her, and we need to see she’s not a robot,” said Sarah Burns, 66, a Bernie Sanders volunteer from Los Angeles.
She noted that in 2008 Clin- ton’s presidential campaign was revived when she showed another side of herself – choking up because of heckling at a campaign stop in New Hampshire.
Clinton also is caught between an historic occasion that demands lofty oratory and an electoral map that demands granular calculation. Her principal audience is relatively narrow: voters in swing states watching on TV.
Here are her challenges and opportunities.
SOME CHALLENGES:
She has trouble reading a big u audience. The naturals have an intuitive sense of a room — what people want to hear, when they’ll cheer, when they won’t. Bill Clinton has it; his wife does not.
Her strengths are irrelevant. Clinton is usually impressive speaking in high school gyms, before Senate hearings and small groups, venues that place a premium on her mastery of detail, passion for policy and personal warmth. An arena with 22,000 howling people is not her métier.
She’s not a natural self-promoter. Her critics would demur, but Ruth Sherman, a communications consultant and speech coach, says that in her five Democratic convention speeches, Clinton “was promoting someone else. It’s possible that, like many women, self-promotion doesn’t come easily. This is one big sales presentation.”
SOME SOLUTIONS:
Be conversational. Clinton admires Franklin Roosevelt; she chose a park named for him on an island named for him to kick off her campaign. She should avoid FDR-style oratory (“The only thing we have to feah...”) and imitate his radio Fireside Chats, where he reassured Americans during the Depression.
Be yourself. The temptation, standing before a big crowd on a historic occasion, is to shoot too high. “Fight that impulse,” counsels Patrick Maney, a Bill Clinton biographer. “Even if the audience feels a step let down, trying to be someone she isn’t won’t help her.”
Offer a vision. John Murphy, a University of Illinois communications professor, would tell Clinton to “tie all your wonky individual policies into a coherent theme.”
Don’t try to be Trump. Analysts emphasize how many rules the Republican nominee broke last week in a convention acceptance speech they called too long, too loud and too angry. Maybe he can get away with it; Clinton could not. And where he was more scripted than usual, she should be less scripted, and thus more relatable.
Maybe don’t even mention Trump. Maney says that to diminish his presidential opponents, FDR rarely mentioned them by name. For Clinton to return Trump’s fire without using his tactics would be good; to do so without even speaking his name would be better.
WHICH WAY WILL CLINTON GO?
Maney recalls a journal entry from Diane Blair, an Arkansas friend of Clinton who died in 2000.
After a conversation in the mid ‘90s, Blair wrote that Clinton told her: “I’m used to winning and I intend to win on my own terms. I know how to compromise. … I gave up my name, got contact lenses, but I’m not going to try to pretend to be somebody that I’m not.”
On Thursday, Maney says, Hillary Clinton should remember that promise.
“We need to see her human side. We don’t trust her, and we need to see she’s not a robot,”
Sarah Burns, Los Angeles-based Bernie Sanders volunteer