Former Pres., Impressive Orator Unheeded

By Connect Mason Convergence Director Lars Garvey Laing-Peterson

At the moment [9:45 pm], with 88% of the vote accounted for, Barack Obama has won the Virginia primary. CNN is showing Hillary Clinton at a rally in El Paso, Texas, the former First Lady having turned her sights away from the Chesapeake contest she was rumored to have lost even before the polls opened today. While this may have been a generally accepted idea to many in the Old Dominion early this week, it was not so apparent last night in the Johnson Center where former President William Jefferson Clinton spoke to students, faculty and the press on behalf of his wife.

“What a way to end this campaign,” Bill Clinton announced, his eyes sweeping over the sizeable crowd there to greet him. From this moment on, Clinton spoke passionately for almost an hour – my first time reference had his arrival on stage at 9:51, heralded by Springsteen (as was Reagan in the 80s, and hasn’t he played a significant role in this Election Year?), and his final remarks at 10:47, whereupon he exited to the Police exclaiming that “every little things she does is magic.” Unfortunately, I don’t think Sting had losing the Potomac vote in mind when he crafted that song.

Bill Clinton talked of his wife as “the best change-maker I know,” adopting the rhetoric of the Obama camp, though spinning it through her years of experience in the White House and in the Senate. Former President Clinton even gave himself a well-deserved pat on the back with reference to the economy: “I think the 90s were pretty good myself,” he said smiling, the crowd responding well, laughing in the face of a possible recession.

After making every lofty promise that is expected of a presidential candidate (or their surrogate) with respects to the economy, Bill Clinton then entered into the heart of Hillary’s campaign: health care. While quoting numerous statistics – the most alarming of which was the apparent claim that 30 cents of every health care dollar is spent shuffling paperwork – and promising that taxing the wealthiest 1% in American (of which Bill Clinton admitted to being a part of, saying he would gladly pay his “fair share”) would help to supplement Hillary’s universal health care plan, there was not much in the way of concrete reassurance that this plan, arguably the cornerstone of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, could truly be afforded and implemented. While paperwork may eat a decent amount of our health care money, the electronic filing system that would replace all of this paper cannot be cheap to implement – this would require hiring data input people, training our hospital’s and private doctors’ staff on how to properly utilize the new software and so on.

But campaigns are not won by boring an audience with the readings of 600+ page documents outlying the minutest details of every promise. No, you must promise Americans what they don’t have, and pray that you can deliver on a third of what you proclaimed so loudly from the harshly lit pulpits you stood upon across these United States.

Education played a large part of Bill Clinton’s speech, though little was surprising. He denounced No Child Left Behind, claiming after the expected shouts and applause that this condemnation was one of the surefire lines to garner praise, and talked of making college more accessible and affordable to all Americans who want to continue their education beyond the high school level. The only truly interesting bit of rhetoric here was Hillary’s hope to allow students who later enter into the lives of public servants to be able to have their loans paid through the service they provide to this country.

Global warming and Iraq came up, as they had to, but if you have picked up a newspaper in the past three months, you could have given the same speech – though, to be fair to Bill Clinton, I doubt seriously if you would have been able to put so much enthusiasm behind those words.

The former President closed with a story about a New York City fireman who worked part-time as a gold caddy to supplement his family’s income. Asking quite forcefully to speak with Bill, this fireman relayed his personal feeling that Hillary Clinton recognized well before the Bush Administration that the rescue workers, whose heroism on 9/11 will stand as a significant moment in American History, may suffer serious health issues because of the dust and debris from the collapse of the towers.

“This is the person I have known since I was a young man,” Clinton said proudly of his wife shown in this light.

Bill Clinton was impressive to see, and all of the praises lauded on him as a public speaker are well deserved. A presidential candidate could not ask for a better mouthpiece.

That said, I voted Obama.