The Evolution of a Politician

Sunday, 27th April 2008

Mike Crowley highlights Hillary Clinton's changing style:

April, 1993: "We need a new politics of meaning. We need a new ethos of individual responsibility and caring. We need a new definition of civil society which answers the unanswerable questions posed by both the market forces and the governmental ones, as to how we can have a society that fills us up again and makes us feel that we are part of something bigger than ourselves."

April, 2008: [E]very speech she gave in Indiana on Friday and Saturday had the same topic sentence. “My campaign is about jobs, jobs, jobs and jobs,” she said, always to thunderous applause.

From a political point of view, it seems Hillary has learnt something. Of course, I suspect Hillary still believes what she said in 1993. Then again, just as troublingly, Barack Obama and John McCain would each be happy to waffle on about "a new politics of meaning" and how government can - god help us all - "fill us up". But such is the sort of guff that politicians on the campaign trail - never knowingly under-bashful as it is - feel compelled to promise. And, once again, it smacks of the particular form of megalomania that should disqualify from office anyone who has the audacity and presumption to seek it.

Filed under: Clinton (97 more articles) , McCain (55 more articles) , O Tempora, O Mores (182 more articles) , Obama (355 more articles)