Almost Madam President : Why Hillary Clinton 'Won' in 2008 9780739133736, 9780739133712

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Almost Madam President

LEXINGTON STUDIES IN POLITICAL COMMUNICATION Series Editor: Robert E. Denton, Jr., Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University This series encourages focused work examining the role and function of communication in the realm of politics including campaigns and elections, media, and political institutions.

TITLES IN SERIES: Governing Codes: Gender, Metaphor, and Political Identity, By Karrin Vasby Anderson and Kristina Horn Sheeler Paving the Way for Madam President, By Nichola D. Gutgold Maryland Politics and Political Communication, 1950-2005, By Theodore F. Sheckels Images, Issues, and Attacks: Television Advertising by Incumbents and Challengers in Presidential Elections, By E. D. Dover Democracy as Discussion: Civic Education and the American Forum Movement, By William Keith Picturing China in the American Press: The Visual Portrayal of Sino-American Relations in Time Magazine, 1949–1973, By David D. Perlmutter Lottery Wars: Case Studies in Bible Belt Politics, 1986-2005, By Randy Bobbitt Post-9/11 American Presidential Rhetoric: A Study of Protofascist Discourse, By Colleen Elizabeth Kelley Making a Difference: A Comparative View of the Role of the Internet in Election Politics, Edited by Stephen Ward, Diana Owen, Richard Davis, and David Taras Seen and Heard: The Women of Television News, By Nichola D. Gutgold Nuclear Legacies: Communication, Controversy, and the U. S. Nuclear Weapons Complex, Edited by Bryan C. Taylor, William J. Kinsella, Stephen P. Depoe, Maribeth S. Metzler Conditional Press Influence in Politics, By Adam J. Schiffer Telling Political Lives: The Rhetorical Autobiographies of Women Leaders in the United States, Edited by Brenda DeVore Marshall and Molly A. Mayhead Media Bias? A Comparative Study of Time, Newsweek, the National Review, and the Progressive, 1975-2000, By Tawnya J. Adkins Covert and Philo C. Wasburn Navigating the Post–Cold War World: President Clinton’s Foreign Policy Rhetoric, By Jason A. Edwards The Rhetoric of Pope John Paul II, Edited by Joseph R. Blaney and Joseph P. Zompetti Stagecraft and Statecraft: Advance and Media Events in Political Communication, By Dan Schill Almost Madam President: Why Hillary Clinton “Won” in 2008, By Nichola D. Gutgold

Almost Madam President Why Hillary Clinton “Won” in 2008

Nichola D. Gutgold

LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC.

Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Plymouth, UK

Published by Lexington Books A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 http://www.lexingtonbooks.com Estover Road, Plymouth PL6 7PY, United Kingdom Copyright © 2009 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gutgold, Nichola D. Almost madam president : why Hillary Clinton “won” in 2008 / Nichola D. Gutgold. p. cm. — (Lexington studies in political communication) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7391-3371-2 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7391-3372-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7391-3373-6 (electronic) 1. Presidents—United States—Election—2008. 2. Political campaigns—United States. 3. Clinton, Hillary Rodham—Language. 4. Communication in politics— United States. 5. Women presidential candidates—United States—Language. I. Title. JK5262008 .G88 2009 324.973'0931—dc22 2009016008

⬁ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Printed in the United States of America

For Geoffrey

Contents

Acknowledgments

ix

Foreword by Marie Cocco

xi

1

Introduction: The Presidential Bid of Hillary Rodham Clinton

1

2

Logging on for Your Vote: The Internet Announcement Speech

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3

Speaking for Herself: The Campaign Speeches

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4

Debating It and Debating It Again: The Many Debates of the Primary

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The Many and Varied Media Messages

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5

Conclusion: Not Madam President; Madam Secretary

97

Bibliography

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Index

115

About the Author

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vii

Acknowledgments

This project gained traction with the help of several wonderful people. Marie Cocco, syndicated columnist of the Washington Post Writers Group, inspired me to think about the important contributions that Hillary Clinton continues to make by expanding the sphere of rhetorical options for women. She graciously wrote the foreword for this book. To my esteemed colleagues, especially the terrific library staff, particularly Steph Derstine who has researched and written about Hillary Clinton; Judy Sandt, Kathy Romig, and Dennis Phillips. I appreciate the copyediting skills of Allison Goodin and Dawn Lennon, as well as the support from Lexington Books, especially Joseph Parry, Mathew McAdam, Lynda Phung, and Rebbeca McCary. And of course, my true safety net and my biggest supporters, my dear husband Geoff and my incredible children Ian and Emi. You make it worthwhile!

ix

Foreword Marie Cocco

When Hillary Rodham Clinton launched her campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, she faced unique challenges. Clinton would be the first woman to enter an American presidential race with the portfolio political gatekeepers deem crucial to success: Name recognition, a national fundraising apparatus, and success in winning two terms as Senator from New York—where politics is played rough and media coverage can be even rougher. Still, the split-screen image of Clinton that had developed during her years as first lady was superimposed upon her candidacy. Her intelligence and abilities were unquestioned. Yet a deeply negative attitude toward her ambition—often depicted as unseemly calculation—persisted, not among Democratic voters who favored her in every early poll, but among media figures who are powerful arbiters in presidential campaigns. On this treacherous terrain, Clinton sometimes was less than sure-footed. She was forced to “humanize”—and feminize—herself in an effort to warm up her image and engage women voters who she knew would form the base of her support. Simultaneously—and like all women candidates for high office—she had to present herself as tough. She was a “fighter” she would say again and again, someone with the steel spine of a potential commander-in-chief. Complicating Clinton’s task was the emergence of Barack Obama—as charismatic and effortless in style as Clinton can be plodding in hers—as the first African American with a genuine chance at winning the presidency. History eventually will provide a fuller account of the factors that led Clinton, who started the campaign as the clear frontrunner, to lose the nomination to Obama. Yet it already is evident that a sexist and often hostile media xi

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environment enveloped her from the start. Months before the first caucuses were held in Iowa, the subject of Clinton’s cleavage already had undergone a biting analysis in the Washington Post, with writer Robin Givhan describing a hint of cleavage beneath Clinton’s business jacket as “like catching a man with his fly unzipped. Just look away!” Likewise, the New York Times analyzed her robust laugh as a “cackle,” a term associated with witches. These were early indicators of more negative framing of Clinton on sex-based terms that was to come. Clinton ended the primaries respected for her stamina and the dignity she showed later in campaigning for Obama. The lessons of her candidacy will be studied by every woman in the future who tries, once again, to break that highest and hardest glass ceiling. Marie Cocco Syndicated Columnist Washington Post Writers Group

1 Introduction The Presidential Bid of Hillary Rodham Clinton

“Now, on a personal note—when I was asked what it means to be a woman running for president, I always gave the same answer: that I was proud to be running as a woman but I was running because I thought I’d be the best president. But I am a woman, and like millions of women, I know there are still barriers and biases out there, often unconscious.”1

On January 20, 2007, Senator Hillary Clinton announced that she would seek the Democratic nomination for president. Hardly a surprise, many pundits and historians speculated for at least a decade that Hillary Clinton had presidential aspirations. Most Americans realized that Hillary Clinton was angling for a White House bid when she ran—and won—a Senate seat in 2000. In 2002, the sardonic New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd asserted that Hillary Clinton’s work in the Senate is evidence of a future White House bid. In her column titled, “Can Hillary Upgrade?” she noted, “although many Americans assume she is too polarizing a figure to ever get elected, the former first lady has been shrewd and pragmatic in how she has handled herself in the Senate.”2 In 2003, the Clintons’ colorful pollster, Mark Penn, was measuring Hillary Clinton’s presidential appeal, with an eye toward the 2004 election. Polling suggested that her prospects were “reasonably favorable,” but Clinton herself never seriously considered running. Instead, over the next three years, a handful of her advisors met periodically to prepare for 2008. They believed the biggest threat was John Edwards.3 In 2005 Amy Sullivan wrote in Washington Monthly Magazine: “Over the last five years, Clinton has developed into perhaps the most interesting politician in America. She has a reputation for bipartisanship in the Senate, forming partnerships with some of her most conservative Republican colleagues, 1

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including Senator Bill Frist, Republican from Tennessee, Senator Rick Santorum, Republican from Pennsylvania, and Senator Sam Brownback, Republican from Kansas. She has quietly, but firmly, assumed a leadership role in her own caucus. And she has shown vision and backbone in a party that is accused of having none.”4 What is remarkable isn’t that she ran for president. What is remarkable is that she almost won, making her the first woman in the United States to be a front runner candidate for the presidency. And though “almost” may not be good enough to put a candidate in office, it is more than we can say for any of the other women who ran for the United States presidency. Since scant attention has been paid to women who have made bids for the presidency in the United States, it is important to create a lasting memory of Hillary Clinton’s historic and unprecedented vie for the White House. According to Marie Wilson, president of the White House Project, “Regardless of political affiliation, Ms. Clinton did a huge service for women across America by normalizing women’s leadership on a scale we have never before seen. Now women can see themselves as real competitors for all levels of political leadership.”5 This writing shows that in her bid for the presidency, Hillary Clinton’s gender was not the first factor noticed, as it was with all other female presidential candidates. When Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination, he agreed to allow Hillary Clinton’s name to be placed into nomination at the Democratic National Convention in August 2008, acknowledging her significant contribution to the democratic process and her achievement in the race. Larry Scanlon, political director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, said: “She sought to be the first woman nominated for president. She came up a little short, but she made it easier for the next female candidate to get the brass ring. Many in the Democratic Party would like to celebrate that. I think that they should celebrate that.”6 Since America is heralded the world over as a beacon of freedom and opportunity it is perplexing to note that America hasn’t had a woman president. If we travel to Argentina, Chile, Finland, India, Ireland, Liberia, and The Philippines, we may catch a glimpse of Madam President, at least on television or in the newspaper. And women are prime ministers in Germany, where Angela Merkel leads; Michele Pierre-Louis runs Haiti; Helen Clark is prime minister of New Zealand. In Moldova, Zinaida Greceanii leads; in Mozambique, there’s Luisa Diogo as prime minister; Yulia Tymoshenko runs the Ukraine. That women can lead well has been proven time and again. Margaret Thatcher’s impressive management of the United Kingdom’s role in the Falkland Island War demonstrated her leadership. As prime minister of Israel, Golda Meir maintained a difficult coalition at home, while negotiating abroad with the hostile Arab nations and the United States. Mireya Mosoco leads Panama, and at the beginning of 2006

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3

Liberia inaugurated Africa’s first woman president, and Chile elected the first woman leader in Latin America who didn’t rise to power on her husband’s reputation. In about thirty other countries women serve as president or prime minister. In the United States, however, we have yet to break that proverbial “glass ceiling.” Not enough to shatter it and bring it down, Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency did put 17,493,836 million7 cracks in that ceiling. Her bid for the presidency also offers an instructive opportunity to analyze the rhetoric of a woman whose trajectory and constraints are unprecedented in the United States. Given America’s very nervous relationship with women and power and the “Hillary Hate”8 that has practically been a national pastime since Hillary Clinton became first lady, the media and the public braced for a presidential bid like no other. During her eighteen month bid, there was non-stop commentary about Hillary Clinton on the Internet, late night television, and on the news and parody-news shows. All the commentary forced the world to think a lot about how we feel about women—especially a former first lady that has been called “The Lady Macbeth of Little Rock9“—who make a bid to be the leader of the free world. Everything from the necklines of her clothing, dubbed “Cleavage-gate” in the press; and her laugh, called “the Clinton Cackle” by the media; the Apple-computer commercial inspired homage that lives on YouTube; her tear-up in the New Hampshire diner; the post–South Carolina primary when former President Bill Clinton compared Barack Obama to Jesse Jackson; Hillary Clinton’s Bosnia trip exaggeration; and the political cartoons—one that had her searching for delegates on Mars—the media and Hillary Clinton are well acquainted. In a campaign season teeming with symbolism and imagery and firsts, there was no shortage of ways to interpret the presidential bid of Hillary Clinton. And it lives on, because everyone in this campaign age has YouTube immortality, and this book also serves to preserve it. As Shawn Parry-Giles astutely observes, political imagemaking is a product of the complex intersections of a candidate’s own rhetoric, the discourse of a candidate’s political enemies, and media narratives. Consequently, the portrait available to the voter in news media is rarely an “accurate” reflection of the candidate, but it is, nevertheless, the candidate’s public persona.10 The public persona of Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid is political rhetoric rich in a narrative style, multi-tasking, feminine style, media savvy, and stamina, and this book endeavors to tell the rhetorical story of the 2008 presidential bid of Hillary Clinton.

SO LET’S TALK. LET’S CHAT.11 The day of Hillary Clinton’s presidential announcement arrived on January 20, 2007. Seated on a stylish sofa in a well-appointed room, the former

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first lady and Senator of New York invited Americans watching her Internet announcement to “have a conversation.”12 She promised that her bid was serious and that she was “in to win.”13 She was immediately a front runner for the nomination. Never before in American history had a woman been a front runner in a presidential race. She ended her message with, “So let the conversation begin. I have a feeling it is going to be very interesting.”14 And, indeed it was, since Hillary Clinton’s historic bid confronted the obstacles facing women in politics head on. Catalyst, a group that studies women’s economic advancement, notes the double bind of women leaders. In the report, the oldest stereotypes are revealed again in the newest research: When women act in gender-consistent ways—that is, in a cooperative, relationship-focused manner—they are perceived as ‘too soft’ a leader. . . . When women act in gender-inconsistent ways—that is, when they act authoritatively, show ambition, and focus on the task—they are viewed as ‘too tough.’ . . . they might be acting leader-like, but not lady-like.15

Hillary Clinton had a tough job to counter the double bind of being a woman leader. It was especially daunting for one who was the first feminist first lady, and the press never stopped analyzing Hillary Clinton’s style. The New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd is described by Media Matters for America as an “influential” columnist, and the organization has reviewed her columns about Hillary Clinton since the beginning of 2007. They found that Dowd frequently characterized Hillary Clinton as masculine, while portraying Barack Obama and John Edwards as feminine. Beside characterizing Clinton as masculine, Dowd often portrayed the New York senator and former first lady as domineering, having called her “Mommie Dearest” and “mistress Hillary.” In contrast, Dowd often compared Barack Obama to a child, calling him “boy wonder” and “the Chicago kid.”16 Asked in a 2007 Pew Poll “who comes to mind when the word ‘tough’ is said—Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards,” 67 percent picked Clinton, 14 percent said Barack Obama, and 7 percent said John Edwards. As political scientist Barbara Burrell pointed out, “at least early in the campaign Hillary Clinton seemed to be passing the ‘tough test’ for presidency.”17 Indeed, as the first woman in American history to compete so closely for the nomination for president, Hillary Clinton has come closer to shattering the glass ceiling than any woman before her. After eight years in the White House as first lady and as senator from New York, she was one of America’s top Democrats and one of the most famous women in the world. All of these factors may have helped to move her presidential bid along in ways that her sisters who also sought the highest office did

Introduction

5

not have on their sides. Other prominent women who ran for president include Margaret Chase Smith, Republican senator from Maine who made it all the way to the Republican National Convention in 1964. The “unbought and unbossed” New York Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, in 1972 made her announcement with optimism when she said, “I have faith in the American people. I believe that we are intelligent enough to recognize the talent, energy and dedication, which all Americans, including women and minorities have to offer.”18 In 1988, Colorado Congresswoman Pat Schroeder became a presidential candidate when Gary Hart dropped out shamefully after his marital infidelity was widely reported in the press that he encouraged to follow him. When she shed tears in her emotional withdrawal speech, the media and critics were quick to assert that women are just too emotional to lead the nation. The articulate and thoroughly Southern-styled Republican Senator from North Carolina, Elizabeth Dole dipped her toe into elective politics for herself in 1999 with a nine-month exploratory bid for the presidency. As a well-spoken surrogate for her husband’s presidential bids throughout the 1980s and when Bob Dole won the Republican nomination in 1996, observers often asked why she wasn’t running. An impressive Washington power figure, though never an elected official until she won a Senate seat from her home state in 2002, Elizabeth Dole served as secretary of transportation in the Reagan administration and secretary of labor in the George H. W. Bush administration. In 1999 she stepped down from her presidency of the American Red Cross to test the presidential waters. Citing the unprecedented fundraising ability of George W. Bush, she dropped out. In 2004 the one-term Democratic Illinois Senator Carol Moseley Braun, elected in 1992, the so-called “Year of the Woman” was promising to be a “fiscal hawk and a peace dove” as president when she briefly brought her ebullient style to the all-male group of contenders. These five women represent the better known women presidential candidates, and according to political scientist Jo Freeman, twenty-one women have run for president in general elections from 1964–2004.19 What these twenty-one women share with each other is non front-runner status. As the first woman to run a non-symbolic campaign for the presidency— meaning that she actually had a chance to win—Hillary Clinton had to manage herself in a way that would strike the right chord with the American people. She had to be strong enough to be taken seriously and friendly enough to be likeable and she had to employ all the available means of persuasion to make her case. Like Ginger Rogers, she had to do “everything Fred Astaire [or the male candidates] did, but she did it backwards and in high heels.” She had to press on—and she did—in the face of harsh criticism and calls for her to step down. Faith Winter, national field director for

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the White House Project, and herself an elected official, noted that “For the first time in our nation’s history, we witnessed a viable woman candidate for the highest office in our country, and millions of Americans supported her with their vote. The shift that her candidacy made on the nation’s political psyche was profound, and I doubt that we will ever have a presidential race again where women aren’t serious contenders.”20 Communication scholar Karlyn Kohrs Campbell describes the rhetorical style of Hillary Clinton: “Her tone is usually impersonal, disclosing minimal information about herself; her ideas unfold deductively in the fashion of a lawyer’s brief; all kinds of evidence are used, but personal examples are rare.”21 Had Hillary Clinton managed to communicate her haecceity in a way that would resonate with voters and win over her detractors? Post-campaign, the Atlantic Monthly asked the searing question: “What went wrong?” Why, in fact did Hillary Clinton’s front-runner status slip away from her? The short answer, the magazine concluded, is: “Clinton ran on the basis of managerial competence—on her capacity, as she liked to put it, to ‘do the job from day one.’ [But during her bid] in fact, she never behaved like a chief executive, and her own staff proved to be her Achilles’ heel.”22 When Hillary Clinton’s race for president was finally over in June 2008, and she endorsed her close rival, Barack Obama, Marie Wilson, president of The White House Project, called Barack Obama the “girl” in the race,23 since she asserted that Clinton’s style was more masculine than that of the deep-voiced, tall and slim Senator Obama. Wilson deftly noted that, “The 2008 campaign has been an interesting experiment in gender roles, as Barack Obama’s leadership style, oft-touted as feminine, has been largely instrumental in shaping his popularity.” 24 Dee Dee Myers, former White House press secretary noted: It seems that not just her policies but often her approach also tilt masculine. And that may help explain why voters have yet to fall in love with her: in a world where people have different expectations for women, she pays a price for showing us her steel spine more often than her soft heart. But no one questions her toughness.25

And what’s more, Hillary Clinton has been both helped and hurt by her husband’s oversized political image. When Bill Clinton left his humanitarian work to campaign for Hillary Clinton’s campaign, his free-wheeling style of criticizing the media and Barack Obama left many wondering about his legacy. His somewhat less than presidential–like behavior called attention to Hillary Clinton in unflattering ways. After her presidential campaign was over, Hillary Clinton emerged as the new dominant political force in the Clinton family, ultimately being tapped to serve as secretary of state in the Obama Administration. Serving as secretary of state is an impressive post for anyone, but for a former first lady the ability to move from

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supportive spouse to a cabinet position requires rhetorical elasticity never before stretched by an American woman. All men and women have both masculine and feminine communication traits. And Hillary Clinton’s communication style is as masculine as Bill Clinton’s is feminine. As charmingly as her husband is able to weave a tale and get the audience in the palm of his hand, regardless of the question he is fielding, Hillary Clinton is lawyerly and direct. But is she able to get the audience to “feel her pain”? Her few moments of revealed emotion during the campaign made headlines and had some pundits suggesting that her tear-up in a New Hampshire diner on the eve of the New Hampshire primary caused her victory. Hillary Clinton is tough on issues, but tender about her personal side. Hillary Clinton has had to prove that she is “man enough” for the presidency, a point that made her less likeable, at least early on in the campaign. Her tendency to communicate in a masculine style made her less sympathetic as a first lady. This book shows that Hillary Clinton adopted a more feminine style as a communicator during her presidential bid than she utilized in her speech as a first lady. Hillary Clinton was a modern first lady that exerted her power like no other first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt. Since the Roosevelt administration, women in society have moved far beyond the role of helpmate and homemaker that was usually conferred upon them. Still, Hillary Clinton’s co-president approach to the role was unacceptable to a majority of Americans. The role of first lady has not kept pace with the role of modern woman. While women routinely hold important positions in the workforce, the stereotypical constraints that keep the first lady in a small sphere of traditionally female roles make more politically active first ladies unpopular. For this reason, it could be that Hillary Clinton was the most unpopular first lady ever. According to Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, “no prior presidential spouse has occasioned the kinds of attacks that have been directed at Hillary Rodham Clinton.”26 The rhetorical elasticity needed to transition from vilified to elected is worthy of note. Dutch communication scholar Geert Hofstede’s observation of feminine and masculine cultures is especially important to the prospects of a woman American president. Hofstede notes that “femininity stands for a society in which social gender roles overlap: both men and women are supposed to be modest, tender, and concerned with the quality of life.”27 Masculinity, on the other hand, “stands for a society in which social gender roles are clearly distinct: men are supposed to be assertive, tough, and focused on material success.”28 The United States ranks relatively high on measures of masculinity, at sixty-two on Hofstede’s scale, compared to a world average of fifty.29 Tall and imposing men who are leaders can afford to wax nostalgic about their experiences as fathers. Once President John F. Kennedy stopped conducting

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presidential business in a meeting when his young daughter, Caroline, unexpectedly entered the room. He even read passages from her book to her, in front of high level White House staff. Yet former Governor of Massachusetts Jane Swift was sharply criticized, when, pregnant with twins, she took time away from governing to care for her ill child. Critics pounced that she should be home with her child instead of running the state. This masculine identity with leadership contributes to the old fashioned notion that only men should lead the country. All around the world there are women prime ministers and presidents. Yet, in America, it has been more than twenty years since the only woman in United States political history, Geraldine Ferraro, has been a candidate on a major party ticket, when in 1984 Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale selected her as his running mate. At age sixty, Hillary Clinton was poised to make history as the first woman in the United States to win the Democratic nomination for president of the United States and she was the indispensable candidate for American women who have been slowly changing, if not seizing control of, the Democratic party itself. In this youth obsessed and male skewed American culture when many women are resigned to the idea that they must retreat to the background, Hillary Clinton fashioned a presidential campaign that was more successful than any woman before her. Was it something in the tough-love household of Hugh Rodham and the encouraging Dorothy Rodham that positioned young Hillary Clinton to harness the confidence and strength of her convictions to become one of the most fascinating public figures and transitional women leaders of our time? How do we nurture leadership in young girls and what enlivens a girl’s ability to imagine herself in charge? Did Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president make girls see their future as leaders more clearly? Research has revealed significantly different patterns of vocational development at work in adolescent boys versus adolescent girls. In a study in the 1970s, it was concluded that girls who are choosing a career are influenced by what they believe boys think is appropriate feminine behavior, and that girls do not feel rewarded by their peer groups for intelligence and achievement.30 Other studies conducted in the 1980s found that in contrast to boys, girls are faced with decisions about how they will combine family and work before choosing a career. Because of these conflicts, girls have historically chosen lower prestige and more stereotypically feminine careers than have boys.31 According to Nira Danzinger, the career expectations of adolescent boys are greatly influenced by ability, academic achievement, and opportunity, while those of adolescent girls are influenced mainly by class background and parental expectations.32 McManon and Patton pointed out that career preferences are formed early in adolescence and, for both girls and boys, are heavily influenced by gender role socialization, one of the earliest

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and thus most powerful forms of socialization. The strength of this socialization often creates a narrow, gender based range of career options.33 In the 1990s Carol Gilligan and Lyn Mikel Brown wrote about the loss of adolescent girl’s perception that she could achieve untraditional occupational goals and how parents could socialize their daughter not to lose the confidence that they exhibited as young girls.34 In 2002 Cary M. Watson echoed the importance of focusing on adolescent girls’ development with respect to career goals by stating that gender, achievement level, age, and school environment are all factors that may influence an adolescent girl’s career choice. He found the results of a study aimed at determining whether or not adolescent girls expected to achieve as much as adolescent boys. He discovered that adolescent girls actually eclipsed boys in their expectations of career choices.35 This finding would seem to bode well for the concept of a woman president. Of equal importance then would be what girls see women accomplishing, whether it is in her own home or in the media; how girls see women seems paramount to a girl’s ability to envision a life of achievement for herself. Two Notre Dame political scientists, Christina Wolbrecht and David Campbell, studied the political aspirations of adolescent girls in twentyseven nations. Girls in countries that had more women in elected office were more likely to envision themselves as voters, activists—and candidates— when they were adults.36 Karlyn Kohrs Campbell noted that women who came across as leaders were so unusual in America, that she termed it “oxymoronic,” but with an increase of women in politics in America, American voters would be able to recognize a woman leader as something possible.37

GROWING UP “GIRL” IN AMERICA “There is no training manual for first ladies,” Hillary Clinton wrote in Living History. And there is certainly no training manual for women presidential candidates. Gail Sheehy notes in her Vanity Fair article, “Hillaryland at War,” “nobody knew how to run a woman as leader of the free world.” And the confusion about how to grow up ‘girl’ in America has some contradictions that can leave any girl who is pondering her future—even one less groundbreaking than becoming the first woman president—more than a little confused. The official Hillary Clinton for President website stated, “The promise of America was very real as Hillary was growing up. She learned that no matter who you are or where you’re from, if you worked hard and played by the rules, you could provide a good life for your family.”38 She also learned that NASA didn’t accept applications from girls and that changing her name

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to Clinton would be required to gain acceptance as the governor’s wife. In her presidential concession speech on June 7, she noted that parents “lifted their little girls and little boys on their shoulders and whispered in their ears, ‘See, you can be anything you want to be.’” To be sure, girls everywhere were watching Hillary Clinton almost win the Democratic nomination for president. Thirteen-year-old Ann Riddle from Mayfield, Ohio, had even used her Disney World savings that she’d been stashing away for two years to instead travel to Pennsylvania and volunteer in the Hillary Clinton for President campaign. Perhaps Ann Riddle saw in presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton the same plucky, girlhood determination that she recognizes in herself. A hallmark of Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid rhetorical style is a girlish confidence that in most females gives way to teenage awkwardness and self consciousness. So now that Hillary Clinton is not the nominee, what is the “take away” message for the girls who watched and dreamed that one day they, too, could run for president? These girls have grown up being told that they can do anything, but do they really believe it? A. O. Scott writes in the New York Times, “[as a girl] everything you do is subject to intense and often contradictory scrutiny from the grown-up world. You are exposed to a barrage of mixed signals from parents, friends, teachers, television advertisements, even the stuff you play with, and your response to those signals becomes grist for expert hand wringing and opinion mongering.”39 In a focus group of ten girls, ages eleven to fourteen, the subject of a woman president was discussed. Participants noted that “the only reason there hasn’t been a woman president yet is because not enough women have tried to be President.” “Only Hillary Clinton has run,” said several participants. When they were shown examples of other women presidential candidates, such as Shirley Chisholm and Elizabeth Dole, none of the girls had heard of those women or had read about them in newspapers or in history books. Asked if they thought that they could be president, the girls said, “yes” and “if I got better grades,” and tried really hard. Several girls noted that “women would make better presidents because they are smarter and they know how to do more things.” When asked how they know this, girls said, “because our mothers are able to do a lot.” The lack of women role models in history books is a considerable problem for girls who are studying politics in school.40 That Hillary Clinton’s close race for the Democratic nomination for president should be noted in history books is important to how Hillary Clinton’s presidential race is perceived by girls. With so many glass ceilings shattered, we take for granted that little girls know they can grow up to be whatever they want. But according to a study in Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, one in four children believes it is illegal for women and minorities to hold the of-

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fice of president. And one in three attribute the lack of female, African American, and Latino presidents to racial and gender bias among voters. The same study also found that girls who attributed the lack of female presidents to discrimination were more likely to report that they could not really become president, even if they were interested in doing so.41 “[Children] have seen [the Presidents] all over the media, on posters, in classroom history books,” said author of the study Rebecca Bigler, “yet no one ever explains to them why they have all been white men. There is never a conversation about that so children start to come up with their own explanations.”42 It will be important to the perception that women do run and compete well for the highest office. Kathleen Krull, author of the children’s book, Hillary Rodham Clinton: Dreams Taking Flight, and other authors of books about important female historical figures, understands that it is imperative to frame Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid in a positive way. She hopes that children retain after reading her book, “That girls can do anything, and it’s thanks to women who paved the way before them.” The fact that Clinton didn’t win the nomination is disappointing to be sure. But when I wrote the ending to this book, the nomination was still up in the air, so I worded it carefully to clarify that no matter what happens, she’s succeeded in making a difference. Or, as she more eloquently pointed out in her concession speech, “this particular glass ceiling now has about 18 million cracks in it.”43 In 1972, Patsy Mink, a Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, entered the race for president in January and used her strong antiwar reputation to make an impressive showing in the Oregon primary, finishing eighth. But even those who were active in Shirley Chisholm’s presidential race in 1972 have a scant memory of Mink’s presidential effort and her New York Times obituary from September 2002 fails to mention her presidential bid. Some of the women who have made exploratory bids and those who have actually run for president are not recognized by many historians, rhetoricians, and political scientists, as well as the press. This book aims to contribute to the literature on women and the American presidency, and specifically the communication during the presidential bid of Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2008.

THE GROWING LITERATURE There have been many books about Hillary Clinton, and this one focuses most intently on her presidential bid. In 2007, Susan Goldberg published Madam President (Guardian Books), which imagines a Hillary Clinton presidential win and chronicles some of the important features of her eighteenmonth bid. Gil Troy wrote a compelling read, Hillary Rodham Clinton: Polarizing First Lady (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006) and Sally Bedel Smith, in her book, For Love of Politics: Bill and Hillary Clinton: The

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White House Years, (New York: Random House, 2007), offered a look inside the political and personal choices of Hillary Clinton in a lengthy and well documented account that traces her life and political aspirations. Hillary Clinton’s biography, Living History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003) begins with her childhood, college years, introduction to politics, and her courtship with Bill Clinton. She tells of life on the campaign trail, her troubled tenure as leader of the President’s Task Force on National Health Care Reform, meeting with foreign leaders, and her work on human rights. Colleen Elizabeth Kelley wrote a lengthy Burkean rhetorical analysis of Hillary Clinton’s role as first lady in The Rhetoric of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. The New York Times investigative reporter Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. wrote Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton (Greenwich, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001). Regina G. Lawrence and Melody Rose are authors of Playing the Gender Card? Media, Strategy, and Hillary Clinton’s Run for the White House (Lynne Reinner Publishers). Recognizing the increase of women in the political arena have prompted Brenda DeVore Marshall and Molly A. Mayhead to edit two volumes: Telling Political Lives: The Rhetorical Autobiographies of Women Leaders in the United States and its companion volume, Telling Political Lives II: The Autobiographies of International Women Leaders (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008). Several books examine women’s leadership and the women’s movement, themes that emerge in this book. Two books which discuss women and the United States Presidency are: Marie Wilson’s Closing the Leadership Gap; Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World (New York: Viking, 2004) and Gail Collins’s America’s Women: 400 Years of Dolls, Drudges, Helpmates and Heroines (New York: HarperCollins, 2003). Glenna Matthews’ insightful and comprehensive book, The Rise of the Public Woman (Oxford, 1992), documents the difficult trajectory women in public have faced. Marie Wilson’s book more closely examines some of the specific concerns of women’s road to the White House, although her book focuses on her efforts as White House Project president, and Collins’s book is more of a general history book about women’s progress. Other books focusing on women political candidates have influenced this project. They include: Erika Falk’s insightful Women for President: Media Bias in Eight Campaigns (University of Illinois Press, 2007); Linda Witt, Karen M. Paget, and Glenna Matthews, Running as a Woman; Gender and Power in American Politics (New York: The Free Press, 1995); Brenda DeVore Marshall and Molly A. Mayhead, Editors, Navigating Boundaries, the Rhetoric of Women Governors (Westport: Praeger, 2000); Catherine Whitney, et al, Nine and Counting; The Women of the Senate (New York: Harper Collins, 2000); and Kim Fridkin Kahn, The Political Consequences of Being a Woman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996).

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These books focus much less on the presidency and more on the political experiences of women in elected office: Clift and Brazaitis’ Madam President: Shattering the Last Glass Ceiling (New York: Scribner, 2000), and the updated version; Clift, Eleanor and Tom Brazaitis, Madam President: Women Blazing the Leadership Trail (New York: Routledge, 2003) and Robert P. Watson and Ann Gordon, editors, Anticipating Madam President (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003) deals with many of the leadership issues facing women in their quest for the White House. Lisa M. Burns confronts many of the press issues facing first ladies in her book First Ladies and the Fourth Estate: Press Framing of Presidential Wives (Northern Illinois University Press, 2008) and Dee Dee Myers, former White House press secretary addressed many of the issues of a woman president and Hillary Clinton’s bid in her book, Why Women Should Rule the World (New York: Harper Collins, 2008). Lawrence Rifkind wrote an article that appeared in The Social Science Journal, “Breaking out the circle: an analysis of the gendered communication behaviors of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Netanyahu” that examines the unique rhetorical constraints that independent, career-minded first ladies face.

SCOPE OF THIS BOOK In chapter 2, the Internet announcement speech on January 20, 2008, will be examined. An Internet-savvy approach, “with a little help from modern technology,” Hillary Clinton began her “conversation” by holding online video chats via her interactive website. Her carefully constructed website, Facebook, and MySpace pages added to the conversation that Hillary promised, and they excited many voters enough to chat with the candidate and to post comments. Senator Clinton quickly emerged as the formidable front-runner, raising millions of dollars and leading in both state and national polls. In an ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted in December 2006, she was supported by 39 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, well ahead of her nearest competitors—Barack Obama with 17 percent support; former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., with 12 percent; and former Vice President Al Gore, 10 percent.44 In chapter 3, the speeches of Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency will be analyzed. Long before her bid for the presidency, Hillary Clinton has drawn attention for her public speaking. As communication scholar Anne F. Mattina points out: “Rodham Clinton’s public image remains a contested site among scholars, the press, and the American public.”45 Her Wellesley commencement address—the first ever by a member of the student body—was excerpted in the 1969 issue of Life magazine. As First

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Lady in 1995, she spoke in Beijing, China, at the Fourth United Nations World Conference on Women. She forcefully advocated against cruelty against female babies, a speaking event described as something “not the kind of assignment normally entrusted to first ladies.”46 As a presidential candidate, her mantra that she would be “ready on ‘day one’” attempted to accentuate her experience as a former first lady and as a second term senator. She didn’t shy away from attacking the Bush administration: “It’s easy to give a speech about restoring the middle class, but it is hard to actually do it. We’ve been here before with a president who leaves the economic cupboard bare on Election Day.” Her feminine rhetoric is obvious in such emotional lines as: “I’m offering a lifetime of experience, but more than that, I’m offering my heart. I love this country, she told her audience on January 9, 2008, in Virginia, in anticipation of the Virginia primary.47 During her presidential campaign, it was interesting to note the evolution of the Hillary Clinton who came onto the national scene in the early 1990s as a lawerly, deductive speaker and had become a warm, interpersonal, charismatic politician who won over voters with her ability to connect to them and identify with their middle-class roots. She spoke of her abiding faith in the Methodist religion, her deep patriotism, her blue-collar roots, and her kinship with the firefighters of New York when she helped the city respond to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. She spoke of her experiences as a daughter, a wife, and mother and she described the obstacles she faced as a woman working in fields dominated by men. She was popular with women—particularly bluecollar women—who saw something of themselves in her tenacious spirit of pressing on, even in the face of obstacles. She spoke of the devastation of Katrina, the economic difficulties the nation faces, and how she would bring an end to the war in Iraq. In chapter 4, the role of debates in the primary process will be addressed. Hillary Clinton is a skilled debater and this chapter shows that she was able to deftly defend her positions and demonstrate her impressive knowledge of issues. This chapter will consider the debating techniques of Hillary Clinton. During the presidential campaign of 1984 when Geraldine Ferraro made history as the only woman to compete on a national ticket, the press noted the fine line a male candidate must walk in order to communicate effectively with his female opponent. The rules included: do not patronize her, do not stand too close to her, do not overpower her so as to not look as though he was “beating up” on a girl. In the race for the Democratic nomination for president, those rules seemed moot. No male opponent could overpower Hillary Clinton, and the debates of the campaign were some of her finest moments. After the October 2007 Democratic candidate debate in Philadelphia, the press accused Hillary Clinton of wanting to play it both ways: her camp claimed she was “piled on” because she is a woman

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by her six male opponents (and two male moderators). Then she said, “I don’t think they’re picking on me because I’m a woman; I think they’re picking on me because I’m winning,”48 in a news conference at the Capitol after filing paperwork to appear on the New Hampshire primary ballot. “I anticipate it’s going to get even hotter, and if you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen. I’m very much at home in the kitchen,”49 she said. When Hillary Clinton appeared for her next debate she claimed to be wearing an “asbestos pantsuit” to indicate that she had an impermeable layer. In the wake of the ninety-minute debate on the campus of South Carolina State University, Hillary Clinton forcefully advocated an end to the war in Iraq, and she also came across as strong on national defense. Asked what she might do in the event of a hypothetical terrorist attack, Clinton responded, “If we are attacked and we can determine who was behind that attack, and if there were nations that supported or gave material aid to those who attacked us, I believe we should quickly respond.”50 In contrast, Barack Obama seemed unsteady at times. In contrast to Hillary Clinton’s aggressive response when asked the same question about a hypothetical terrorist attack, Obama said, “The first thing we’d have to do is make sure that we’ve got an effective emergency response.” He continued his answer by discussing the quality of intelligence and the need to not “alienate” the international community.51 In the heat of the primary, after the razor thin close Super Tuesday results, Hillary Clinton challenged Barack Obama to five debates. In the first debate that featured the last two Democrats standing—Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama—Hillary Clinton did most of the talking. The debates showcased her expert, lawyerly, deductive reasoning. This chapter draws upon the research of Dailey, Hinck, and Hinck who argue that “for candidates in debates, advancing one’s case or refuting an opponent’s case effectively, might affect how an audience views the content of the claims for office.”52 What was notably intriguing about the primary debates was the unique formats utilized. Social networking sites, special interest groups, political websites as well as the mainstream print and electronic media outlets all sponsored the debates. That the Internet allows viewers to access these debates long after they are over makes them political artifacts unlike debates in the past. The participatory nature of some of the debates allowed voters to ask questions of the candidates and created in some cases a more casual communication occurrence than is usual for presidential debates. In chapter 5, the many and varied media messages of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign are considered. As Betty Friedan famously said, the media coverage of Hillary Clinton is “a massive Rorschach test of the evolution of women in our society,”53 and Hillary Clinton, too, has described herself as a Rorschach test.54 There has been nonstop commentary on Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid on the Internet, late night television, and on

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the news and parody-news shows. Some were clearly sexist (The Facebook Group, “Hillary stop running for president and make me a sandwich”); some cruel (Rush Limbaugh’s aging woman remark); some hilariously funny (Saturday Night Live bits); and some serious and important (the nuances of her healthcare reform; her stance on the Iraq war; the economy). All the commentary forced us to think a lot about how we feel about women— especially a former first lady that has been called “The Lady Macbeth of Little Rock” who makes a bid to be the leader of the free world. Everything from the necklines of her clothing (Cleavage-gate); and her laugh (the Clinton Cackle); the Apple-computer commercial inspired homage; the (alleged) cry; the post–South Carolina primary where Bill Clinton compared Obama to Jesse Jackson; the Bosnia trip exaggeration; and the political cartoons (one had her searching for delegates on Mars) was fodder for commentary. In a campaign season teeming with symbolism and imagery and firsts, there was no shortage of ways to interpret the presidential bid of Hillary Clinton. And it lives on, because in this global, electronic, twenty-four-hour media world, everyone has YouTube immortality. How Hillary Clinton managed the media in the campaign is also worthy of consideration. She cancelled a photo shoot that would have placed her on the cover of Vogue magazine though as first lady she proudly posed as the first first lady ever to appear on the cover. As a presidential candidate she participated in the Saturday Night Live parodies that made fun of her to show, perhaps, that she can take a joke. She even referred to her own preference to wear pantsuits by calling herself and her legions of women followers members of the “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pantsuits.” She had become comfortable with the press, even though the press never hesitated to criticize her in ways no other candidate seems to have endured. In the conclusion, “Not Madam President: Madam Secretary” the important historical significance of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign will be assessed. She navigated a difficult gender terrain that directly confronted the challenges that women have faced in their bids for elective office. John McCain noted: “The media often overlooked how compassionately she spoke to the concerns and dreams of millions of Americans, and she deserves a lot more appreciation than she sometimes received. As the father of three daughters, I owe her a debt for inspiring millions of women to believe there is no opportunity in this great country beyond their reach.”55 Barack Obama noted: “Senator Hillary Clinton has made history not just because she’s a woman who has done what no woman has done before, but because she is a leader who inspired millions of Americans with her strength, her courage, and her commitment to the causes that brought us here tonight.”56 Language has limitations. Referring to Hillary Clinton, or any trail-blazing person, as a “first” causes them to seem like novelties. While the language is,

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indeed, limiting, there is simply no other way to describe the groundbreaking efforts of this leader. Indeed, it could be said that Hillary Clinton put the “ first” in first lady, and not just because of her close bid for the presidency. She was the first student at Wellesley ever to give a commencement address; the first first lady to lead a major health care reform initiative; the first first lady to seek elective office; and the first woman elected to a state office in New York. When she ran for president she got nearly 18 million votes, and a roll call vote at the Democratic Convention, which isn’t a historic first (Margaret Chase Smith in 1964 and Shirley Chisholm in 1972 both had roll calls at their party’s conventions). But Hillary Clinton’s Roll Call Vote was unique because party officials feared she could change the outcome of the convention with her unprecedented support. Hillary Clinton didn’t win the nomination, but what she won is a victory for women in America that extends far beyond one presidential cycle. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, by being seen and heard in their history-making campaigns have likely inspired many with the notion, as Hillary Clinton put it, “See, you can be anything you want to be.” On December 1, 2008, Barack Obama named Hillary Clinton secretary of state. Many saw the appointment of Hillary Clinton as an effort by Obama to create a “team of rivals” in the tradition of Abraham Lincoln. Upon taking office, Hillary Clinton called it “a great adventure“57 that no doubt will offer more opportunities for the richly diverse and colorful story of Hillary Clinton’s political life and communication style to be considered. This is the rhetorical story of her 2008 presidential bid.

NOTES 1. Hillary Clinton’s remarks in Washington, D.C. June 7, 2008, www.hillary clinton.com (accessed July 3, 2008). 2. Maureen Dowd. “Can Hillary Upgrade?” The New York Times, October 2, 2002, A27. 3. Joshua Green. “The Front Runner’s Fall,” The Atlantic Monthly, September 2008, www.atlantic.com (accessed August 12, 2008). 4. Amy Sullivan. “Hillary in 2008?” The Washington Monthly, July/August, 2005. www.washingtonmonthly.com (accessed August 20, 2008). 5. Marie Wilson. Letter to the Editor, The Washington Post, August 11, 2008, A14. 6. Peter Nicholas. “Hillary Clinton’s Name to be Placed in Nomination,” Los Angeles Times, August 15, 2008, www.latimes.com (accessed August 15, 2008). 7. “Obama’s People,” The New York Times Magazine, January 18, 2009, 114. 8. Garry Wills. “A Tale of Two Cities,” New York Review of Books, October 3, 1996, 12. 9. Daniel Wattenberg. “The Lady Macbeth of Little Rock,” American Spectator, August 1992, Volume 25, Issue 8, 25.

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10. Shawn J. Parry-Giles. “Mediating Hillary Rodham Clinton: Television News Practices and Image-Making in the Postmodern Age,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 17 (2000): 205. 11. Video transcript: Presidential Exploratory Committee Announcement, www .hillaryclinton.com (accessed July 3, 2008). 12. Ibid. 13. Ibid. 14. Ibid. 15. “The Double Bind Dilemma,” www.catalyst.com, July 2007 (accessed August 15, 2008). 16. Media Report to Women, “Influential Columnist Emphasized Gender Traits in Candidate Coverage,” Volume 36, Number 3, Summer 2008. 17. Barbara Burrell. “Likeable? Effective Commander in Chief? Polling on Candidate Traits in the ‘Year of the Presidential Woman,’” PSOnline, www.apsanet.org, October 2008. 18. www.chisholm72.net/campaign_an.html (accessed July 5, 2008). 19. Jo Freeman. “The Women Who Ran for President,” www.jofreeman.com/ politics/womprez03.htm (accessed March 13, 2009). 20. Heather Lurie. “How Has Hillary Clinton’s Bid Affected Women in Politics?” The Denver Examiner, August 5, 2008, www.examiner.com (accessed August 13, 2008). 21. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell. “The Discursive Performance of Femininity: Hating Hillary,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 (1998), 3. 22. Joshua Green. “The Front Runner’s Fall,” The Atlantic Monthly, September 2008, www.atlantic.com (accessed August 12, 2008). 23. Marie Wilson. “Leading Like a Girl for Men Only?” www.huffingtonpost .com, April 15, 1998, www.huffingtonpost.com (accessed July 5, 2008). 24. Ibid. 25. Dee Dee Myers. Why Women Should Rule the World (New York: Harper Collins, 2008), 125. 26. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell. “The Discursive Performance of Hating Hillary,” Rhetoric & Public Affairs, 1:1, 2. 27. Geert Hofstede. Cultures and Organizations: Software of the Mind (London: McGraw-Hill, 1991), 14. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid. 30. Peggy Hawley. “What women think men think: Does it affect their career choice?” Journal of Counseling Psychology, 18, 193–99. 31. Jacqueline S. Eccles. “Why Doesn’t Jane Run? Sex Differences in Educational and Occupational Patterns,” in RD Horowitz and M.O’Brien (eds.), The Gifted and Talented: Developmental Perspectives (251–95). American Psychological Association, Washington, D.C. 32. Nira Danzinger. “Sex Related differences in the aspirations of high school students,” Sex Roles, A Journal of Research, September 1983, 683–84. 33. Mary McMahon and Wendy Patton. “Gender differences in children’s and adolescents’ perceptions of influences on their career development.” School Counselor, 44, 368–76.

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34. Carol Gilligan and Lyn Mikel Brown. Meeting at the Crossroads (New York: Random House, 1992). 35. Cary M. Watson. “Career Aspirations of Adolescent Girls: Effects of achievement level, grade, and single-sex school environment,” Sex Roles, A Journal of Research, May 2002, 323–42. 36. Christina Wolbrecht and David E. Campbell. “Do Women Politicians Lead Girls to Be More Politically Engaged? A Cross-National Study of Political Role Models.” A paper presented at the 2005 American Political Science Association Conference, September 1–4, 2005. 37. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell. “The Rhetoric of Women’s Liberation: An Oxymoron Revisited,” Communication Studies 50 (1999): 138. 38. www.hillaryclinton.com (accessed April 11, 2008). 39. A. O. Scott. “A Girl’s Life,” The New York Times, June 29, 2008, www.nytimes .com (accessed August 15, 2008). 40. Focus Group conducted by Nichola Gutgold, June 2008. 41. Rebecca S. Bigler, Andrea E. Arthur, Julie Milligan Hughes, Meagan M. Patterson. “The Politics of Race and Gender: Children’s Perceptions of Discrimination and the U.S. Presidency.” Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, Vol. 9, No. 9, 2008. 42. “Mom, Can Girls Be President?” The White House Project, www .whitehouseproject.org (accessed October 30, 2008). 43. Paul Crichton. “A Conversation with Kathleen Krull,” Simon and Schuster Publishing, www.kathleenkrull.com (accessed March 2, 2009). 44. Kate Snow, Eloise Harper, and Ed O’Keefe. “Hillary Clinton’s Historic Bid Falls Short,” June 4, 2008, www.abcnews.go.com/politics/vote/2008/story/4705151 (accessed July 7, 2008). 45. Anne F. Mattina. “Hillary Rodham Clinton: Using Her Vital Voice.” In Molly Meijer Wertheimer, editor, Leading Ladies of the White House: Communication Strategies of Notable Twentieth Century First Ladies (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005), 217. 46. Carl Bernstein. A Woman in Charge (New York: Knopf, 2007), 436. 47. www.hillaryclinton.com (accessed June 1, 2008). 48. Elisabeth Bumiller. “Clinton and Opponents Tangle Over Attacks on Her,” The New York Times, November 3, 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/11/03/us/ politics/03campaign.html?ref=politics (accessed August 16, 2008). 49. Ibid. 50. South Carolina Democratic Debate, MSNBC, April 27, 2007, www.msnbc .com (accessed August 15, 2008). 51. Ibid. 52. William O. Dailey, Edward A. Hinck, and Shelly S. Hinck. Politeness in Presidential Debates; Shaping Political Face in Campaign Debates from 1960-2004 (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), 6. 53. Quoted in Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Beyond the Double Bind: Women and Leadership (New York: Oxford Press, 1995), 22. 54. Hilary Stout. “Hillary Clinton Looks to Her Strange Role: Gender Rorschach Test,” The Wall Street Journal, September 30, 1994, A1.

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55. “McCain Continues the Courtship of Women Voters,” Huffington Post, www .huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/03/mccain-continues-courtshi_n_105017.html (accessed March 5, 2009). 56. “Obama Clinches Nomination,” ABC News, June 3, 2008, abcnews.go.com/ Politics/Vote2008/story?id=4987177 (accessed March 5, 2009). 57. Mark Landler. “Appointing Emissaries, Obama and Clinton Stress Diplomacy,” Gainsville Sun, January 23, 2009, www.gainsvillesun.com/article2009.01/23 (accessed February 1, 2009).

2 Logging on for Your Vote The Internet Announcement Speech

“I’m in, and I’m in to win.”1

In 1996 Hillary Clinton met Bernadette Chirac, wife of French president Jacques Chirac. She was impressed with her, and was perhaps taking notes about how Mrs. Chirac had managed her multiple roles as both presidential spouse and an elected official. Since there were no women in America who had been first lady and then an elected official—until Hillary Clinton won a senate seat in 2000—Mrs. Chirac offered Hillary Clinton a glimpse of how it could be done. Hillary Clinton said, “Bernadette is an elegant, cultured woman who since 1971 had been a local elected official from a constituency in the Correze region. She was the only presidential spouse I knew who had been elected on her own. I was fascinated by the independent role she had carved out for herself.”2 It isn’t surprising that Hillary Clinton admired a woman who was both a successful first lady and an elected official, since she was angling for the same trajectory. In the United States, the roles of first lady and elected official could not be more different. While Robert Watson notes that first ladies regularly fulfill both private and public roles,3 first ladies who use their white glove pulpit for controversial issues are often judged harshly by the public. The promise that Bill Clinton made on the campaign trail for the presidency, that voters would “get two for the price of one” was not what voters bargained for. Though there have been a few exceptions, for example, former first lady Betty Ford became a champion for breast cancer awareness and post her White House years, drug and alcohol recovery, Hillary Clinton had a rough first ladyship when she wielded power that made much of the American public uncomfortable. 21

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Most notable that was her work on the healthcare initiative made her an unelected policymaker. This raised the ire of those who may have preferred her to stay in a small sphere of influence more akin to a traditional woman’s role. As Lawrence Rifkind wrote, “Hillary Clinton’s activist first ladyship suggested that the role of being married to a head of state places a woman in an inevitable quandary making it difficult to fulfill public expectations. As a result, the role of first lady has a complex, psychological component that leads the public to criticize presidents’ spouses.”4 As Karrin Vasby Anderson notes, Hillary Clinton was aware that when she enacted a more traditional role her popularity rose. In Living History she recounts an encounter with Clinton advisor James Carville that occurred shortly after a trip to Nepal where she and Chelsea were photographed atop an elephant. She explains, “when we got back to Washington, James Carville remarked: ‘Don’t you just love it? You spend two years trying to get people better health care and they tried to kill you. You and Chelsea rode an elephant and they loved you!’”5 Colleen Elizabeth Kelley notes that “Mrs. Clinton and her husband have received steady criticism for presenting themselves in a way that some believe to be unprecedented for a president and his spouse: as political as well as marital partners.”6 As first lady Hillary Clinton served as a spokesperson throughout America and the world when she ardently attempted to gain support for universal healthcare. She spoke about children’s and women’s rights and she repeatedly defended her husband against several incriminating charges. As the equally educated political spouse of her husband she met with criticism for her public role, yet she could not deny her political acumen. Lisa M. Burns aptly notes that “the question of women’s ‘proper’ place in political culture is as relevant today as it has been during any historical period.”7 No stranger to rhetorical situations that demanded agility, her skills would be tested in a way they never had before. Clearly, Hillary Clinton had to launch her presidential bid with careful consideration of all the available means of persuasion. How would Hillary Clinton reintroduce herself to the American people, not as first lady, but instead an elected senator in her own right and strike the right balance between powerful policymaker and populist “every woman” who is likable enough to win their vote? How would she highlight just enough of her first lady experience to create an ethos that demonstrates leadership without dredging up details of Clinton White House drama that many Americans would just as soon forget? Would accentuating her feminine side win over voters or was that only a side of her that people wanted to see when she was first lady? When she ran for the Senate while finishing up her duties as first lady, Hillary Clinton faced similar exigencies as a public speaker and a public figure. She successfully fulfilled the need to meet the people of New York, not as a

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celebrity first lady, but as a political powerhouse in her own right. She managed that and became thought of as a political figure who would fight for New Yorkers’ needs. She not only won a Senate seat, but she won reelection to the Senate in 2006. Originally labeled a “carpetbagger” for running for Senate from New York, a state she never lived in, former first lady Hillary Clinton was not only successful in her bid, she was a popular senator. How did she do it? One of the ways she got to know New Yorkers and allowed them to get to know her was not by talking, but by listening. Hillary Clinton embarked upon a “listening bus tour” of all parts of New York after her entrance into the Senate race. She made it her goal to visit sixtytwo counties in the state of New York, spending time with New Yorkers, talking to them in small-group settings according to the principles of retail politics. To announce herself as a presidential candidate Hillary Clinton did the electronic version of a listening tour, one that would be aided with “a little help from modern technology.”8 The announcement speech for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign will be examined using the methodology of political feminine style as developed by Bonnie Dow and Mari Boor Tonn in their 1993 article. According to Dow and Tonn to exhibit feminine style rhetors must do three things: First, they must use personal experience to back up claims. Second, politicize the personal and third, they must exhibit the ethic of care. Political feminine style allows speakers to bring their private experiences to the public sphere and they cite their own lived experience as evidence of effective leadership.9 Dow and Tonn claim that this technique offers the potential to create a counter-public, feminist arena that acknowledges women’s experiences and knowledge. This announcement speech embodies feminine political rhetoric.

HILLARY CLINTON FOR PRESIDENT: THE INTERNET ANNOUNCEMENT On Saturday morning, January 20, 2007, the world learned that Hillary Clinton does, indeed want to be president of the United States. The New York Times noted that “one reason Mrs. Clinton chose to make her announcement on a Saturday morning, when the political world is usually in slumber, was to dominate the news cycle, her advisers said, and contrast herself vividly as a leader with President Bush before his State of the Union speech on Tuesday night.”10 Seated comfortably on a sofa in her well-appointed living room, Hillary Clinton’s announcement for presidency personified the feminist credo, “the personal is political.”11 Seeing a politician in a personal environment is not unusual. Increasingly, politicians have become more familiar to us by

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appearing on late night comedy programs, and talk shows. Television has made politicians more like celebrities who are likely to present themselves as likeable, popular figures. The Internet creates a multiple effect of exposure because of the rebroadcast of the announcement on television, as well as the repeated play on YouTube and other websites. The Internet as a forum for the announcement makes sense in this political age and Thomas Friedman has noted that the Internet is “pervasive, unavoidable and indispensable.”12 By making an Internet announcement Hillary Clinton could attempt to capture the youthful demographic more likely to log onto their computers rather than turn on their televisions. According to Joe Trippi, author of The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, The Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything, using the Internet for the Howard Dean presidential campaign in 2004 was a way to “engage Americans in real dialogue.”13 Her utilization of the Internet further strengthens the argument that Hillary Clinton knew that she needed to employ all the available means of persuasion during her presidential bid. Hillary Clinton never gave the traditional speech of announcement so common for political candidates that placed her in front of a flag on the Capitol steps. Instead, she relied solely on this brief, less than two minute Internet announcement to get her message to the masses. Hillary Clinton’s utilization of feminine political style is well suited for a first lady who has been seen in the context of her home—the White House—since voters would recognize her within the context of a domestic environment. For a former first lady who wishes to become an elected official, appearing in a soft, home setting is particularly astute since it allows her to blend her private sphere of influence as America’s first lady and hostess into the image for which she angles: public official. Though Hillary Clinton had used feminine political rhetoric as first lady and in her first effort to gain elected office when she became Senator from New York, she had become more comfortable with her style as she made her first entrée in presidential politics. The setting itself for Hillary Clinton’s announcement speech, her living room in her Washington, D.C., home, melded her personal life into her political aspirations. The two other front-runner contenders for the presidency, Senator Barack Obama and Senator John Edwards, chose much less personal settings. Senator Obama announced his candidacy in Springfield, Illinois, outside, in front of the Old State Capitol and invoked the words of President Lincoln. Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards—trying to make a visual point of the “two Americas” he spoke of in his campaign—stood outside in the Ninth Ward of New Orleans in front of a group of young people who worked with him to restore a home after Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city. Her participative and cooperative announcement speech drew much review from the press. The Washington Post noted, “The effect was one of

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breathtaking political shrewdness and brilliant staging, like a mash-up between The West Wing and Diane Keaton’s latest holiday heartwarmer. And for all its studied spontaneity, its air of having been pre-tested, choreographed, and managed to within a microfiber of Clinton’s mascara, it worked, if only to provide a little eye candy within a grainy sea of canned speeches and awkward iChats.”14 It wasn’t lost on the media that Clinton’s announcement speech setting was markedly different from that of her counterparts. Michael Goodwin of the New York Daily News gave her marks for uniqueness. He wrote, “Thus, her call for a ‘national conversation’ and three nights of live Web chats are all New Age, touchy-feely moves that target young people and women. As the only woman in the expanding Democratic field, the forum is a chance for her to remind women voters especially that the Mommy Party is their party and that she can best represent them. That she is doing it on the Internet makes her look younger and hipper than her fifty-nine years.”15 It was also a politically savvy move, since the trend in politics is toward the Internet. Trippi alerted readers in The Revolution Will Not Be Televised that “the Internet is the most democratizing innovation we’ve ever seen—more so than even the printing press. There has never been a technology this fast, this expansive, with the ability to connect this many people from around the world.”16 Hillary Clinton’s decision to sit on a sofa, in her home with family photos featuring her daughter Chelsea and her husband, former President Bill Clinton visible in the background, was a much different choice than her rivals. Both her husband and daughter would play significant roles in Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid. It was not surprising that Bill Clinton would have a role, but the emergence of the young adult Chelsea Clinton as an articulate voice for her mother was notable. Chelsea Clinton played a minimal role in her mother’s 2006 Senate reelection campaign, even missing the state nominating convention because of a work conflict. Her presence was welcome, especially since there were already a number of photogenic children, including the young families of Senator Barack Obama and former Senator John Edwards. Seeing Chelsea Clinton in the photographs in the living room was also a nonverbal announcement of the well-raised, young woman and her emerging role in her mother’s campaign. Having delivered Chelsea to adulthood in relative obscurity, and so well, is something of a resume builder for Hillary Clinton. Women candidates are often judged on their role as mother more so than male candidates are judged as fathers. The setting embodied the three requirements of feminine political rhetoric. When we first look at the scene, we take in a familiar figure: former first lady and senator from New York, Hillary Clinton. We are reminded of her domestic side, that of mother as we glimpse the framed family photos in the setting. She started: “I announced today that I am forming a presidential

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exploratory committee. I’m not just starting a campaign, though; I’m beginning a conversation—with you, with America.” Her use of language to “have a conversation” is intimate and suggests interpersonal communication rather than public campaigning. Her choice to launch her campaign over the Internet (which was widely broadcast over television) suggests a personal connection more than her rivals, since most people turned on their personal computers to hear her announcement. She was calling for participation and cooperation. Her use of pronouns was personal, too. “Let’s talk”; how to make “us” energy independent; “Our basic bargain that no matter who you are or where you live, if you work hard and play by the rules, you can build a good life for yourself and your family.” Her intimate quest is to not “just” start a campaign, in other words, not just dive into politics as usual like her counterparts—she is going to listen to people—to have a conversation. The notion of kitchen klatches and gathering around for storytelling and discussion has a long feminine tradition in America. Her call for conversation suggests that through her politics she can not only maintain but improve relationships—in this case with the American people and government—embodies one of the major hallmarks of feminine rhetoric. She is showing us that she is one of us; another mother and wife trying to live the American dream. For a woman who has had anything but an ordinary life in America, she presented a very ordinary, family, feminine vignette. Instead of accentuating her tough business side in stiff business attire behind a podium, she took a “kitchen table” approach to politics. She made her political self as personal as possible. This functioned effectively for Senator Clinton because it was novel, warm, and personal. Though she looked serious and professional, she appeared approachable and friendly. Hillary Clinton spoke in a manuscript style, though unlike a live State of the Union address, she had the advantage of editing and it was obvious that the announcement speech was cut and spliced together so that it would be as effective as possible. Still, Hillary Clinton seemed comfortable reading from a teleprompter and gave the speech a warm, fireside chat feel. Her gestures contributed to the chatty, warm feeling achieved in the speech. For example, when she notes that “we all have to be part of the solution” she raises her hands with her palms facing as if to suggest that we will all have to re-mold America. Later in the speech she rests her right arm on the back of the sofa to signify that she is comfortable talking about these issues and that we should feel comfortable sharing our views with her. She asks the audience to participate, creating a reciprocal interpersonal communication environment not usually evident in traditional manuscript speeches. She used personal experience to back up her claim that she would be an effective president. Her experiential evidence: “I grew up in a middleclass family in the middle of America, and we believed in that promise. I

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still do. I’ve spent my entire life trying to make good on it. Whether it was fighting for women’s basic rights or children’s basic health care. Protecting our Social Security, or protecting our soldiers. It’s a kind of basic bargain, and we’ve got to keep up our end.” In this statement both her shared, lived experiences and her ethic of caring, as she reminds the viewers that she has fought for women’s basic rights or children’s basic health care are evident. In a similar way that Karrin Vasby Anderson17 argues that Hillary Clinton employs personal narrative as a rhetorical strategy to outline her political ideology in her autobiography Living History, in her announcement speech Hillary Clinton again leans on her own life story as evidence that she would be an effective president. Because she “grew up in a middle-class family in the middle of America” and “believed in that promise” [of opportunity for hard work in America] she asks the American public to trust her, and to vote for her. She closed with a personal, intimate request: “So let’s talk. Let’s chat. Let’s start a dialogue about your ideas and mine. Because the conversation in Washington has been just a little one-sided lately, don’t you think? And we can all see how well that works. And while I can’t visit everyone’s living room, I can try. And with a little help from modern technology, I’ll be holding live online video chats this week, starting Monday. So let the conversation begin. I have a feeling it’s going to be very interesting.” The term “let’s chat” has a double meaning as she promises to not only start a conversation but to use technology that will allow her, even if only through a computer, to get into everyone’s living room and “chat” back and forth. This announcement speech exhibited several sophisticated communication strategies on the part of Hillary Clinton. She adopted feminine political rhetoric and communicated online to create a modern connection to younger voters and subtly remind voters that she wasn’t a newcomer to politics. She spoke utilizing a traditional manuscript style, but her warm hand gestures and the camera close-ups achieved a chatty, interpersonal, conversational speech of presidential announcement unlike any other.

NOTES 1. From Hillary Clinton’s announcement speech. Transcribed from www.hillary clinton.com (accessed July 1, 2008). 2. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Living History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), 339. 3. Robert Watson, editor. The Presidents’ Wives: reassessing the office of First Lady (Boulder, CO: L. Rienner, 2000), 78. 4. Lawrence J. Rifkind. “Breaking out of the circle: an analysis of the gendered communication behaviors of Hillary Clinton and Sarah Netanyahu,” The Social Science Journal, Volume 37, Issue 4, 2000, 611.

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5. From Living History, quoted in Karrin Vasby Anderson, “The Personal Is Political: Negotiating Publicity and Privacy in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Living History” in Brenda DeVore Marshall and Molly A. Mayhead, Telling Political Lives: The Rhetorical Biographies of Women Leaders in the United States (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008), 143. 6. Colleen Elizabeth Kelley. The Rhetoric of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton (Westport: Praeger, 2001), 6. 7. Lisa M. Burns. First Ladies and the Fourth Estate: Press Framing of Presidential Wives (Dekalb: Northern Illinois Press, 2008), 162. 8. From Hillary Clinton’s announcement speech. Transcribed from www .hillaryclinton.com (accessed July 1, 2008). 9. Bonnie J. Dow, and Mari Boor Tonn. “’Feminine Style’ and Political Judgment in the Rhetoric of Ann Richards,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 79 (1993): 286–302. 10. Patrick Healy. “In a Field of Heavy Hitters, No Sure Thing,” The New York Times, January 21, 2007, A1. 11. Carol Hanisch. “The Personal is Political” Feminist revolution: Redstockings of the Women’s Liberation Movement, editor, Kathie Sarachild (New York: Random House, 1978), 204–5. 12. Thomas Friedman. “Foreign Affairs: Are you ready?” The New York Times, June 1, 1999, www.nytimes.com (accessed September 10, 2008). 13. Joe Trippi. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, The Internet and the Overthrow of Everything (New York: Reagen Books), 2004, 1. 14. Ann Homaday. “Throwing Her Hat on The Web; Clinton’s Announcement Combines Internet Savvy And Polished Production,” The Washington Post, January 21, 2007, D1. 15. Michael Goodwin. “Clinton’s Off and Running from Day 1,” New York Daily News, January 21, 2007, 4. 16. Joe Trippi. The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, The Internet and the Overthrow of Everything (New York: Reagen Books, 2004), 236. 17. Karrin Vasby Anderson. “The Personal Is Political: Negotiating Publicity and Privacy in Hillary Rodham Clinton’s Living History,” in Brenda DeVore Marshall and Molly A. Mayhead, Telling Political Lives: The Rhetorical Biographies of Women Leaders in the United States (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008), 132.

3 Speaking for Herself The Campaign Speeches

“When we first started, people everywhere asked the same question: Could a woman really serve as Commander-in-Chief? Well, I think we answered that one.”1

In no other time in American history has a first lady argued her experience to lead the nation based even partly on the experience of her first ladyship. In this way, Hillary Clinton has expanded both the role of first lady and the progress of women in presidential politics. While swirled in controversy for most of her tenure as first lady, she drew upon her eight years in the White House to run successfully for the Senate and to enlarge her aspirations to elected office with her bid for the presidency in 2008. When Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations ended with her concession to Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee for president, she vowed to assist the young Illinois senator in his bid for the White House. After her blockbuster speech at the Democratic National Convention, when she boldly requested, “No way, no how, no McCain,” Hillary Clinton was dispatched by the Obama team to counter some of the star power that Alaska Governor Sarah Palin brought to the Republican ticket when she was named the vice presidential nominee. The impact of Hillary Clinton’s historic bid for the White House was ebulliently referenced by Sarah Palin in her national debut. Palin acknowledged that Hillary Clinton had made “eighteen million cracks” in the glass ceiling in her presidential bid that year, and that she would pick up where she left off since, as she phrased it: “It turns out that women in America aren’t finished yet, and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all.”2 Though the ideologies of Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton could not be more different, that they were both political women 29

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angling for support in a national political election, may have motivated Governor Palin to try to align herself with Clinton and the throngs of Clinton supporters. Marie Cocco of the Washington Post wrote that Hillary Clinton must have felt like she did when she wrote in Living History: “I ran for student government president against several boys and lost, which did not surprise me but still hurt, especially because one of my opponents told me I was ‘really stupid if I thought a girl could be elected president.’ As soon as the election was over, the winner asked me to head the Organizations Committee, which as far as I could tell was expected to do most of the work. I agreed.”3 In the same way, Hillary Clinton pressed on, campaigning for Barack Obama, who bested her out of the nomination and in her own unique style she asserted herself by saying: “So, to slightly amend my comments from Denver: No way, no how, no McCain-Palin.”4 With the McCain-Palin team courting undecided female voters, including some who backed Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama aides said they were counting on not only Senator Clinton but also Democratic female governors to counter Sarah Palin, and, by extension, John McCain. Those governors who marshaled to make the case against Sarah Palin were Janet Napolitano of Arizona and Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas. This chapter will include an analysis of the most salient speeches and communication of Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid and will conclude with her Democratic National Convention speech and a campaign speech she made on behalf of the Barack Obama for President campaign in her “adopted” hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania. Although focus groups and polling revealed Hillary Clinton to be a polarizing figure (Troy Gil’s book is even titled Hillary Rodham Clinton, Polarizing First Lady), she was very successful at winning voters over in small settings. Feminist icon Gloria Steinem noted: When she was running for the Senate, I made it a project to take Hillary-haters to hear her speak and all but one of them turned around once they were in the same room as her. I wasn’t attempting to change people who were polar opposites on issues. I was trying to look at people who otherwise would be her supporters, but were influenced by the public campaign against her.5

When Hillary Clinton adopted a feminine style of rhetoric, her speeches were well received. She often adapted her talks with several of the attributes of feminine political rhetoric and in this chapter Hillary Clinton’s use of that form of rhetoric will be analyzed. This chapter will also reveal that, like another prominent spouse-turnedcandidate, Elizabeth Dole, Hillary Clinton’s speeches relied upon rhetorical multitasking in order to achieve the desired result. Like Elizabeth Dole,

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Hillary Clinton “has had to address more than one purpose in almost every speech she has ever given,”6 and by the time she concluded her presidential bid, her style was finessed. She was able to celebrate her motherhood, womanhood, leadership ability, and ambition all at once. As first lady her ambition was concealed in traditional first lady pastel suits and changing hairstyles. She was not the main actor in her husband’s administration and she needed to adapt her speech to that of a supporting role. By enacting feminine political rhetoric Hillary Clinton was able to accentuate her womanhood and her leadership in an ethos-enhancing way. For example, on January 21, 2007, the day after Hillary Clinton’s Internet announcement that asserted she was “in to win” the presidency, she visited a Manhattan community health clinic, aptly, but coincidentally named the Chelsea-Clinton Neighborhood Health Clinic (for the neighborhoods it is in), where she was promoting a federal children’s health-care program. She said that as president she would introduce legislation to expand the Children’s Health Insurance Program to all families who need it, regardless of income. Her ethos as the former first lady who attempted to overhaul healthcare was important to draw upon as she appeared onstage gripping the hands of four-year-old Olivia and two-year-old Camilla Harden, whose parents said they relied on CHIP [a federally-funded children’s health insurance program] for their daughters’ health care. The girls looked bewildered as hundreds of flashbulbs popped and cameras whirred throughout the room. “It’s simply wrong for any child to lack health care in America. That’s where we start,” Clinton said.7 At the health clinic there were very few campaign staff, no family members and not even a sound system to amplify Hillary Clinton’s remarks. Her appearance there looked more like that of a humanitarian mission worker than a politician running for president. According to Dow and Tonn, to exhibit feminine style rhetors must do three things: First, they must use personal experience to back up claims. Second, politicize the personal, and third, they must exhibit the ethic of care. Political feminine style allows speakers to bring their private experiences to the public sphere and they cite their own lived experience as evidence of effective leadership.8 In the first speech of her presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton managed to do all three. Healthcare had been her focus for years, and what she could not accomplish as first lady she would make the cornerstone of her presidential platform. She may have entered her political life with a speech style that was lawyerly and direct, and when debating, she often leans more heavily on that approach than feminine style, but in her campaign speeches, she adopted a more inclusive, warm, and nurturing tone. This was a markedly different style than Karlyn Kohrs Campbell described when Campbell noted: “Hillary Rodham Clinton’s style of public advocacy typically omits all of the discursive markers by which women publicly enact

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their femininity. Her tone is usually impersonal . . . her ideas unfold deductively. She is impassioned, but very rarely emotional.”9 So what better issue than healthcare to demonstrate her nurturing side? Heading up healthcare as first lady was not successful for Hillary Clinton. While she was widely praised by the national news for her knowledge and poise, soon she was assailed as an unelected policymaker. Anne F. Mattina notes, “Her methods and motivations were soon savaged by the media and callers to radio talk shows nationally.”10 During a speech in Seattle she was met by an angry group of protestors shouting, “Socialized medicine makes me sick!”11 Soon, Hillary Clinton was no longer a proponent of healthcare. However, as a presidential candidate, it was now her opportunity to rejoin the national conversation on healthcare, but she needed a way to broach the subject without the backlash she experienced as first lady. The principles of feminine style came to her aid. With two adorable children by her side in the setting of a hospital, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton seemed both knowledgeable about the topic and caring about this sensitive issue. It is this combination of her undisputed command of the material—delivered with a human touch—that proved rhetorically effective for Clinton in her presidential quest. Using her first appearance as a candidate to present her domestic side, instead of accentuating her tougher self that no doubt had served her as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, signaled that perhaps she was making an effort to appeal to women, who would ultimately make up a huge part of Hillary Clinton’s base. Holding the hand of small children, asking for the children to have better healthcare is a position difficult for anyone—even the most hard-hearted “Hillary Hater”—to find objectionable. As the race for the White House started to shape up, the candidate who ultimately would be chosen as the vice presidential candidate on the ticket with Barack Obama noted: “I think she’s incredibly formidable and has got to be the front-runner and the odds-on pick right now. But this is a marathon. There’s a long way to go,”12 said Delaware Senator Joe Biden, who also vied for the Democratic nomination. At the beginning of the primary, the crowded field of Democratic candidates included Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, 2004 vice presidential nominee John Edwards, former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich. A Washington Post-ABC News poll released on January 2, 2007, showed Clinton was the favorite of 41 percent of Democrats, more than double the support of any of her rivals.13 Hillary Clinton explained to the press why she got into the presidential race. She said: I am worried about the future of our country, and I want to help put it back on the right course, so that we can work together to meet the challenges that

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confront us at home and abroad in order to secure a better future for all. I believe that I am in the best position to be able to do that. “I’m in to win. And that’s what I intend to do.”13

This flourish of certainty—that she was not a symbolic candidate and instead a candidate that would go the distance to be president is an especially important component in the rhetoric of women presidential candidates. It was important because the United States has never had a woman president, and because every other woman presidential candidate became a symbolic candidate almost immediately upon her announcement that she was running or when she dropped out. For example, Shirley Chisholm explained, “One of my biggest problems was that my campaign was viewed as a symbolic gesture. While I realized that my campaign was an important rallying symbol for women and that my presence in the race forced the other candidates to deal with issues relating to women, my primary objective was to force people to accept me as a real, viable candidate.”15 Female candidates have also historically dealt with the press casting them as vice presidential candidates, when they are in the presidential race. For example, several articles, some early in the race, suggested that in 2000 Elizabeth Dole really wanted to be vice president, not president. Paul Alexander, in an article titled “Vice Can Be Nice,” subtly undermined Elizabeth Dole’s ethos as a presidential candidate by describing her as more likely to be more suited for the vice presidency, rather than the presidency.16 Hillary Clinton’s campaign effectively confronted this phenomenon in the primary season by suggesting that Barack Obama would make a good vice president. Only once it was certain that Barack Obama was the nominee did the Hillary Clinton camp allow media speculation that she could be a vice presidential consideration. On March 4, 2007, Hillary Clinton appeared at the pulpit at the First Baptist Church in Selma, Alabama, for a notably different kind of campaign speech. In her autobiography, Living History, Hillary Clinton wrote about the importance of faith in her life. She noted, “My active involvement in the First United Methodist Church of Park Ridge opened my eyes and heart to the needs of others and helped instill a sense of social responsibility rooted in my faith.”17 Her youth minister once brought Hillary and a group of classmates to see Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., speak. As a presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton publicly shared the underpinnings of her faith more than she ever had previously. The Washington Times noted: “Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is more devout than public perception has allowed, her Methodism carried close to her heart alongside her political interests, even if she is almost reluctant to talk about it.”18 Few of her utterances about faith are as passionate as this speech that marks the anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” which occurred on March 7, 1965, when

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600 civil rights marchers were attacked by state and local police with billy clubs and tear gas. Standing at the pulpit of the church, Hillary Clinton began: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. And I want to begin by giving praise to the Almighty for the blessings he has bestowed upon us as a congregation, as a people, and as a nation. and I thank you so much, Reverend Armstrong, for welcoming me to this historic church. I come here this morning as a sister in worship, a grateful friend and beneficiary of what happened in Selma forty-two years ago. I come to share the memories of a troubled past and a hope for a better tomorrow.19

This fervent talk of religion was important on the presidential stage because the evangelical vote has been largely credited with winning the White House for George W. Bush. So concerned was the Clinton campaign to capitalize on this faction of voters that it recruited Burns Strider from the staff of the House Democratic Caucus. He was brought in after the 2004 election to explain evangelical Christians and try to rope them back into the Democratic Party. His job as senior advisor of faith based operations in the Hillary Clinton for President campaign was to try to drive the wedge deeper between religious voters and the Republican Party.20 As feminine style dictates, Hillary Clinton used personal experience to back up her claims. In her speech she described her upbringing as a member of her church’s youth ministry and a special trip to hear Dr. Martin Luther King speak. She effectively politicized the personal with her call to action for Katrina victims, education, and economic needs. As always, her ethic of caring is central to her cornerstone issue of healthcare reform. How can we rest while poverty and inequality continue to rise? How can we sleep, while 46 million of our fellow Americans do not have health insurance? How can we be satisfied, when the current economy brings too few jobs and too few wage increases and too much debt? How can we shrug our shoulders and say this is not about me, when too many of our children are ill-prepared in school for college and unable to afford it, if they wish to attend? How can we say everything is fine when we have an energy policy whose prices are too high, who make us dependent on foreign governments that do not wish us well, and when we face the real threat of climate change, which is tinkering with God’s creation? How do we refuse to march when we have our young men and women in uniform in harm’s way, and when they come back, their government does not take care of them the way they deserve?21

Hillary Clinton effectively ties her faith to the political actions that her leadership would allow her to carry out. One of her favorite passages in

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Scripture is the Epistle of James that says, “Faith without works is dead.”22 She sums up her plea that ties religion to the political when she says: And how do we say that everything is fine, Bloody Sunday is for the history books, when over 96,000 of our citizens, the victims of Hurricane Katrina, are still living in trailers and mobile homes, which is a national disgrace to everything we stand for in America? We know, if we finish this march, what awaits us? St. Paul told us, in the letter to the Galatians, “Let us not grow weary in doing good, for in due seasons we shall reap, if we do not lose heart.” The brave men and women of Bloody Sunday did not lose heart. We can do no less. We have a march to finish. Let us join together and complete that march for freedom, justice, opportunity, and everything America should be. Thank you, and God bless you.23

This was dramatically religious speaking that evokes the Methodist beliefs of Hillary Clinton’s upbringing. She ties the issues that face the country to a calling of a religious nature. She argues that faith without action is not true faith, a cornerstone of the Methodist pragmatic religious movement. This speech embodies feminine political rhetoric because the ethic of caring is replete throughout. “Doing good” to serve America is her mantra in this speech as she ties the servant leadership of public service to her core value of her Methodist faith. The major Republican and Democratic presidential candidates vying for their parties’ nomination took center stage at the International Association of Fire Fighters Bipartisan 2008 Presidential Forum that was held at the Hyatt Regency Hotel on Capitol Hill on March 14, 2007. Ultimately, however, in August 2007, the International Association of Fire Fighters endorsed Democratic candidate Christopher Dodd, though in this speech Hillary Clinton spoke about and emphasized her unique association with firefighters that stemmed from the terrorist attacks in New York City on September 11, 2001. Hillary Clinton began her speech in a colloquial style reminiscent of New York–style street talk: Hello, how are you doing? Thank you. Thank you all. You know as I look around this room which is packed with people whom I admire so much, I see a lot of old friends, and it’s been an honor to stand with you. We’ve stood together in good times and bad times. We’ve stood together when it seemed as though the darkness would never end and when we finally saw the light.24

Subtly, Hillary Clinton referred to the September 11, 2001, attacks in New York and how fire fighters responded. She then became much more explicit about it, by saying: On the day before, September 11, not only our country but the entire world saw for themselves what fire fighters are made of. You were the ones who ran

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into the fire. You were the ones who ran into the dust. Into those collapsing buildings. And for some of your brothers and sisters it was the last time you saw them. You were there when we needed you, and I want you to know that I will be there with you when you need me.25

Hillary Clinton then transitioned from the attacks of September 11, 2001, and assailed the Bush administration for letting down the American people. She promised that her presidency would change that. She pointed to a lengthy list of initiatives, including repairing the economy and improving education and health care that she argued the Bush administration did not pursue. She pointed to her toughness noting that she “does not back down” from a fight. The elements of feminine political rhetoric, the ethic of caring, and her own lived experience of working as a senator in New York during the terrorist attacks are evident attributes of this speech. In her speeches, Hillary Clinton stressed her toughness just as Geraldine Ferraro did in her 1978 race for congress. Ferraro’s slogan, “Finally a Tough Democrat,” resonated with voters,26 and throughout her vice presidential campaign, the slogan “One Tough Cookie” was often used, emphasizing as women candidates often do, that they are strong enough to lead. Time magazine dubbed Hillary Clinton “The Fighter” on its March 17, 2008, cover, as Hillary Clinton swung her way through the tough primary fight with Barack Obama. She acted tough and she consistently reminded us of her toughness. Her campaign made good on its promise to throw “the kitchen sink” at Obama, and she added, “I’m just getting warmed up.”27 Her toughness was often tied to attributes of feminine rhetoric. For example, she tells the firefighters that they can trust her because she will fight for them and the basic human values of a job, affordable housing, and a good education. She says: “So many of us grew up with that. You know, we were raised to believe that if you worked hard and if you played by rules you’d be able to build a better life for yourself and your family.”28 She effectively cast herself as the populist “everywoman” who understands what it means to pull herself up by the bootstraps. In her Internet announcement speech analyzed in chapter 2, she makes a similar argument about basic human values. Quite conversely, however, a pivotal communication moment happened in the presidential bid of Hillary Clinton on the eve of the New Hampshire primary in January 2008. Though it was not a public speech, it deserves mention in this chapter since it was this show of not toughness, but rather tender emotion from Hillary Clinton that prompted her to say she had “found her voice.”29 “How,” a woman asked Hillary Clinton at an event in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, “did you get out the door every day? I mean, as a woman, I know how hard it is to get out of the house and get ready. Who does your hair?” Clinton snickered, made a few jokes about how she “has help” on

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certain days (but those are never the pictures you see on websites, she joked). Then she paused. Her eyes grew red. The coffee shop, packed with about a hundred members of the media and voters, grew silent. “I just don’t want to see us fall backward as a nation,” Clinton began, her voice strained, her eyes welling. “I mean, this is very personal for me. Not just political. I see what’s happening. We have to reverse it. Some people think elections are a game: who’s up or who’s down,” Clinton said, her voice breaking and tears welling, It’s about our country. It’s about our kids’ future. It’s about all of us together. Some of us put ourselves out there and do this against some difficult odds. We do it, each one of us, against difficult odds. We do it because we care about our country. Some of us are right, and some of us are not. Some of us are ready, and some of us are not. Some of us know what we will do on day one, and some of us haven’t thought that through.30

The last two lines were a subtle jab at the more youthful and comparatively less experienced Barack Obama. “This is one of the most important elections we’ll ever face,” Clinton continued after a long pause, her cracking voice barely audible at times over the clicking shutters. “So as tired as I am and as difficult as it is to keep up what I try to do on the road, like occasionally exercise, trying to eat right—it’s tough when the easiest thing is pizza.” There were a few sympathetic chuckles and nods from her female compatriots. At this point Clinton, struggling for composure, said: “I just believe . . . so strongly in who we are as a nation. I’m going to do everything I can to make my case, and then the voters get to decide.”31 This uncharacteristic show of emotion—which could easily have backfired on Hillary Clinton (like it did on Ed Muskie and Pat Schroeder)— revealed a human side of Hillary Clinton that not many voters had seen. While detractors pointed out that they were crocodile tears, the greater concensus was that Hillary Clinton responded naturally and genuinely. Chuck Todd and Sheldon Gawiser, authors of How Barack Obama Won, described it as “the tears heard around the world.”32 On Februrary 12, 2008, Hillary Clinton gave a speech in El Paso, Texas, where she told the enthusiastic crowd as she gestured with a sweeping movement with her hand: We’re going to sweep across Texas in the next three weeks, bringing our message about what we need in America—the kind of president who is needed on day one to turn the economy around. I’m tested, I’m ready, let’s make it happen! You know, there’s a great saying in Texas, you’ve all heard it—‘all hat and no cattle.’ Well after seven years of George Bush, we need a lot less hat and a lot more cattle. Texas needs a president who actually understands what it is going to take to turn the economy around.33

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After this enthusiastic introduction, Hillary Clinton told the audience that she remembers being in Texas thirty-five years ago as a young political activist registering voters. Using feminine rhetoric she connects her own experiences of being in Texas to understanding what it is like to live there because the friendships she formed with people she met thirty-five years ago are still part of her life now. She used humor that related to the audience in her “hat and cattle” reference and she raised her credibility by letting the audience know that she is not a stranger to Texas. Her connection to residents is a hallmark of Hillary Clinton’s campaign style. Hillary Clinton could draw upon her residency in New York and her work as a senator to gain a connection with the audience of fire fighters, and in the campaign speech she gave in Scranton, Pennsylvania, she once again made a hometown connection with the huge, supportive audience that came to hear her speak on her campaign trip through Pennsylvania. On March 10, Hillary Clinton returned to Scranton, Pennsylvania, the birthplace of her father, where she visited often as a child. The crowd of 3,500 at a Scranton (Pennsylvania) High School enthusiastically greeted her and were even more enthused when she said she would return over the weekend for Scranton’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade, which is one of the biggest in the country. She noted, “I think Northeastern Pennsylvania is the key to winning the Keystone State.” Hillary Clinton talked about her family roots in Pennsylvania, and every time she mentioned a name the audience recognized, such as the Scranton Lace Mills, Revello’s Pizza, a popular local pizza place, and the famous Penn State University football coach, Joe Paterno, the crowd roared. “This is such a big part of my life,” she said, speaking in the gym at Scranton High School. “When I come back here I think about all those memories. My only regret is that my father isn’t here in person, but he’s buried here and I have a feeling he’s here in spirit.”34 Pennsylvania proved to be an important state during the presidential primary. Hillary Clinton won the state in the April 22 Primary by more than ten points. On April 1, she spoke to the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO and she told of her visit to a sheet metal factory. She said: I started my morning at the William J. Donovan Company where I got to visit with sheet metal workers at a company that’s been in business for 95 years, understands the importance of having trained workers, starting people off as apprentices moving towards becoming journeymen. Once again, I was reminded that American workers are the hardest working, most productive workers in the world.35

She then recounted her visit to a pharmaceutical company and even noted the union workers who impacted her campaign trip:

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I flew into Philadelphia yesterday, thanks to union members working in the air traffic control tower. I drove here today in a car built by union members from steel made by union members, over roads laid by union members. We passed by schools where children are taught by union members, by hospitals where people are cared for by union members, came to a hotel that is staffed by union members, in a building that was built by union members. Now, I’m standing here with all the union members who are some of the hardest working, most compassionate, most patriotic Americans I know.36

Hillary Clinton spoke as a populist who had a deep understanding of the plight of Labor. Though often criticized for a lack of warmth and inclusiveness as a first lady, her rhetoric as a political candidate, particularly when she ran for president, demonstrated that she understood how to connect with middle class workers. She has an Ivy League pedigree and was first lady, a position of prestige and pampering in the United States, but she was a hardscrabble campaigner in Pennsylvania, drawing upon her own middle class background and her northeastern Pennsylvania roots to connect with voters. If it was “the economy, stupid” when Bill Clinton was running, it’s “the word choice,” this time around. Notice her sarcastic criticism of the current administration, sure to resonate with a frustrated, out of work middle class Pennsylvanian: I met with a group of truck drivers in Harrisburg yesterday. They are pretty fed up with high fuel prices and they were making their opinions known. Who is listening? I’m listening, but it doesn’t seem like the White House is listening. The president is too busy holding hands with the Saudis to care about American truck drivers who can’t afford to fill up their tank any longer. I meet workers all over Pennsylvania and elsewhere who lost their pensions; they have seen companies go into bankruptcy and discharge their obligations. We have a vice president, who, when he was CEO of Halliburton—which now gets all these no bid contracts, don’t they, from the government?—workers lost $25 billion in pensions. But Dick Cheney got to strap on a golden parachute worth $20 million. You give tax breaks to people who don’t need them while our children get stuck with the bill.37

As a campaigner in Pennsylvania she seemed to embody the heart and soul of that fed up worker in a way that seems to resonate more honestly than Barack Obama. It also helped that she and her brother were baptized in Scranton and spent their summers on nearby Lake Winola. Ironically Hillary Clinton was able to communicate that she is just like an average Pennsylvanian better than her rival Barack Obama who had come under attack for telling a private audience at a California fundraiser that economically frustrated people in small towns get bitter and “cling to guns or religion”38

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to express their feelings. Barack Obama, who arguably had a more “up by the bootstraps” American experience than Hillary Clinton, was cast as an elitist. Hillary Clinton argued that she will be tough and fight for Americans. She said: No one knows better than our unions what it means to fight for the underdog. Every day you are standing up for workers who need someone to stand up with them. And I’m in this race for the very same reason—to fight for everyone who needs a champion in their corner. But one thing you know about me is that when I say I’ll fight for you, I’ll fight for you. I know how to fight for you and that’s exactly what I will do throughout this campaign. Look, I know there will be hurdles and setbacks between now and November. But I also know that I’m ready. I know what it’s like to stumble. I know what it means to get knocked down. But I’ve never stayed down. I never will. And neither will you and neither will America. We are on the comeback trail as a country.39

When she won the April 22 Pennsylvania primary she told supporters in Philadelphia: “It’s a long road to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and it runs right through the heart of Pennsylvania. The tide is turning.” Chelsea Clinton’s eyes welled with tears as she watched her mother speak. Hillary Clinton earnestly noted, “Yesterday, we had record turnout in Pennsylvania. I won that double-digit victory that everybody on TV said I had to win, and the voters of Pennsylvania clearly made their views known—that they think I would be the best president and the better candidate to go against Senator McCain.40 Before her Pennsylvania primary victory Hillary Clinton fended off calls to drop out of the race as the increasingly bruising primary fight raised worries from within the party that the daily cycle of charge-and-countercharge could hurt the Democrats’ chances in the general election. Her notable victory over Barack Obama in Pennsylvania quelled the calls for her to end her candidacy, but another campaign controversy would soon erupt. On March 17, 2008, Hillary Clinton gave a speech on Iraq at George Washington University. She said: Good morning. I want to thank Secretary West for his years of service, not only as Secretary of the Army, but also to the Veteran’s Administration, to our men and women in uniform, to our country. I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia, and as Togo said, there was a saying around the White House that if a place was too small, too poor, or too dangerous, the president couldn’t go, so send the First Lady. That’s where we went.41

Her toughness was reinforced by the notion that as first lady she went places that were “too small, too poor, and too dangerous” for even her husband, former President Bill Clinton.

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I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base. But it was a moment of great pride for me to visit our troops, not only in our main base as Tuzla, but also at two outposts where they were serving in so many capacities to deactivate and remove landmines, to hunt and seek out those who had not complied with the Dayton Accords and put down their arms, and to build relationships with the people that might lead to a peace for them and their children.42

And, in our hyper-fast news society, almost as soon as the words came out of her mouth, Hillary Clinton was forced to retract the claim that she landed under sniper fire in Bosnia twelve years ago after a CBS video emerged contradicting her account. The video of her arrival shows Mrs. Clinton and her daughter Chelsea smiling and waving as they walked at a leisurely pace across the tarmac from a cargo plane, stopping to shake hands with Bosnia’s acting president and listen while an 8-year-old girl read out a poem. The comedian Sinbad, who along with singer Sheryl Crow accompanied Mrs. Clinton on the goodwill mission, said he had no recollection either of the threat or reality of gunfire.43

Correspondent Sharyl Atkisson of CBS, who accompanied Hillary Clinton on the trip, also said Hillary Clinton had “greatly misstated” what happened. The news network added: “There was no sniper fire either when Clinton visited two army outposts, where she posed for photos. And no sniper fire back at the base, where she sang in a USO show starring Sinbad and Sheryl Crow.”44 Her ethos of being “ready on day one” to face foreign crises, a claim that she contended would make her more prepared than Barack Obama to be president, was severely hurt by this gaffe on the part of Hillary Clinton. She even appeared on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno to reduce the damage caused by the embarrassment and quipped that she was running late because she was “caught in sniper fire.” Though her remark and appearance on late night television illustrated that she was able to take this campaign setback in stride—even make fun of it herself—and it was amusing to see her do so, the clip of her misspoken Bosnia recounting was played thousands of times on YouTube and created a negative news cycle for Hillary Clinton, giving her many detractors another reason to dislike her. But even more damaging, the media spectacle took Hillary Clinton off of her campaign message and into the unenviable place of having to explain herself. That one of her experiences from her time as first lady that was recounted in order to prove her leadership ability was found to be a lie called into question all of her campaign rhetoric, begging the question of how much of it was true. The Bosnia misspeak is a prime example of the modern day, unending news cycle that politicians now face. Though the television news story may stop getting airtime, the story continues to live on

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(and damage the campaign) in cyberspace where bloggers could continue the discussion as long as they want. Another story she told during her speech, a story steeped in a feminine style, captivated her audiences. In April, during a visit to King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Hillary Clinton told a sad story that reveals, in her view, what is wrong with the health care system. She said: I remember listening to a story about a young woman in a small town along the Ohio River, in Meigs County, who worked in a pizza parlor. She got pregnant, she started having problems. There’s no hospital left in Meigs County, so she had to go to a neighboring county. She showed up, and the hospital said, “You know, you’ve got to give us $100 before we can see you.” She didn’t have $100. So the young woman went back home. The next time she went back, she was in an ambulance. It turned out she lost the baby. She was airlifted to Columbus. And after heroic efforts at the medical center, she died.45

This story was usually a part of Hillary Clinton’s stump speech, and an example of how, in a campaign year in which lofty phrases have taken center stage, she rejected sweeping oratory—“just words,” as her campaign likes to accuse democratic rival Barack Obama of offering—in favor of a dramatic speaking style all her own. The story of the pizza worker was discovered to be untrue—the hospital protested that the woman was thirty-five, managed a Pizza Hut, was insured, and wasn’t turned away—but it made people believe that Hillary Clinton would take care of them.46 This story did not receive as much attention as the Bosnia story, but nevertheless, Hillary Clinton stopped telling it and adopted other, similar stories that told a tale of woe and how, as president, she planned to make things better. In hushed tones, sometimes with palpable sadness in her voice, Clinton tells dark, difficult anecdotes picked up on the campaign trail. They often relate to health matters, culled from her conversations with voters, and are designed to illustrate a policy point. She often ends by saying: “It’s a real indictment of our health-care system. That shouldn’t happen in America.” Her unique experience as first lady, senator, daughter, wife, and mother often served as the evidence for the claim that she was qualified to lead. It was compelling storytelling, and an effort at feminine political rhetoric that often held her audiences in rapt attention. A big victory speech was delivered on May 13, 2008, when Hillary Clinton won the West Virginia primary. Looking overjoyed, she read from a prepared script and told her enthusiastic, Charleston, West Virginia, audience that was chanting “Hillary! Hillary! Hillary!” in reference to the country song, it is “almost heaven.” Smiling widely, she went on to say there are those who wanted to cut this race short. They say “give up, it’s too hard; the mountain is too high,” but you here in West Virginia know a few things about rough

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roads to the top of the mountain! We know from the bible that faith can move mountains and faith from the mountain state have moved me. I am more determined than ever to stay in this race until everyone’s voice is heard.47 .

By the time the brutal primary fight was over, Barack Obama won the nomination. Only when she was absolutely ready to do so, did Hillary Clinton conceded the race on June 7, 2008. She began on a note of gratitude: I want to start today by saying how grateful I am to all of you—to everyone who poured your hearts and your hopes into this campaign, who drove for miles and lined the streets waving homemade signs, who scrimped and saved to raise money, who knocked on doors and made calls, who talked and sometimes argued with your friends and neighbors, who emailed and contributed online, who invested so much in our common enterprise, to the moms and dads who came to our events, who lifted their little girls and little boys on their shoulders and whispered in their ears, “See, you can be anything you want to be.”48

This notion that her campaign moved forward the thinking that her candidacy empowered others is not a new strategy for women candidates. While Barack Obama more subtly pointed to the notion that his election as the first black president would be historic with his often repeated phrase, “In no other country on earth is my story even possible,”49 Hillary Clinton pointed more to the impact on children that her presidency, and in the end, at least her candidacy, would have on children. This slight difference is a feminine rhetorical difference. The notion that she is caring for the future by running for president and showing our children that they have a chance to be president, or anything they want to be, is a feminine style of speaking. She continues that assertion with storytelling: To the young people like thirteen-year-old Ann Riddle from Mayfield, Ohio, who had been saving for two years to go to Disney World, and decided to use her savings instead to travel to Pennsylvania with her Mom and volunteer there as well. To the veterans and the childhood friends, to New Yorkers and Arkansans who traveled across the country and telling anyone who would listen why you supported me.50

She noted the volume and diversity of supporters: Eighteen million of you from all walks of life—women and men, young and old, Latino and Asian, African American and Caucasian, rich, poor, and middle class, gay and straight—you have stood strong with me. And I will continue to stand strong with you, every time, every place, and every way that I can. The dreams we share are worth fighting for.51

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She also more explicitly stated the historic implication of her bid and how it is different from the presidential bids of women who went before her. She said: This election is a turning point election and it is critical that we all understand what our choice really is. Will we go forward together or will we stall and slip backwards. Think how much progress we have already made. When we first started, people everywhere asked the same question: Could a woman really serve as Commander-in-Chief? Well, I think we answered that one. Now, on a personal note—when I was asked what it means to be a woman running for President, I always gave the same answer: that I was proud to be running as a woman but I was running because I thought I’d be the best President. But I am a woman, and like millions of women, I know there are still barriers and biases out there, often unconscious. I want to build an America that respects and embraces the potential of every last one of us. I ran as a daughter who benefited from opportunities my mother never dreamed of. I ran as a mother who worries about my daughter’s future and a mother who wants to lead all children to brighter tomorrows. To build that future I see, we must make sure that women and men alike understand the struggles of their grandmothers and mothers, and that women enjoy equal opportunities, equal pay, and equal respect. Let us resolve and work toward achieving some very simple propositions: There are no acceptable limits and there are no acceptable prejudices in the twenty-first century.52

Although Hillary Clinton was careful throughout her presidential bid not to point to the historical nature of her candidacy, in this speech she did make a distinct marker about how her presidential campaign advanced the cause of a woman front-runner presidential candidate. She said: You can be so proud that, from now on, it will be unremarkable for a woman to win primary state victories, unremarkable to have a woman in a close race to be our nominee, unremarkable to think that a woman can be the President of the United States. And that is truly remarkable.53

Note her use of feminine style: her own lived experiences and her ethic of caring, ensuring that all Americans are treated equally. Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it’s got about 18 million cracks in it. And the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time. That has always been the history of progress in America.54

At the Democratic National Convention, Hillary Clinton’s speech was much anticipated. Of course the Democratic National Convention was supposed to showcase Barack Obama, yet it devoted a considerable amount of time to Hillary Rodham Clinton and her family, including during the state-

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by-state vote on a nominee for president, where delegates had the option of choosing Clinton rather than Obama—giving supporters a chance to cheer her candidacy one more time and have the “catharsis” that Hillary Clinton felt that her supporters needed. The purpose of the exercise was to resolve the tedious political problem for the Barack Obama campaign and the Democratic Party. Even after Barack Obama locked down the nomination in June, some Clinton loyalists were slow to embrace his candidacy. Both campaigns thought that by setting aside time to acknowledge Hillary Clinton at the convention the party would have a better chance of emerging from the convention united. Hillary Clinton motioned to cut the roll call vote short, saying, “Let’s declare together with one voice right here, right now, that Barack Obama is our candidate and he will be our president. With every voice heard and the party strongly united, we will elect Senator Obama president of the United States,” in a statement released by the two campaigns.55 Her husband, former President Clinton, spoke at the convention the following night, giving a definitive nod to Barack Obama after much publicized halfhearted expressions of his confidence in Barack Obama. At the convention a ten minute video tribute to Hillary Clinton, narrated by her daughter Chelsea, offered biographical insight about Hillary Clinton. It started by describing the journey her mother took as a young girl on a train being sent to live with her grandparents since she and her sister were born to teenage parents who were too young to care for them. She described how her grandmother still imagined “the daughter she might one day have” and how she would teach her daughter that she could be anything she wanted to be. The video tribute included a reference to Hillary Clinton’s efforts to gain admission to NASA, only to learn that NASA did not accept women. The video montage included admiring quotes from her mother, Bill Clinton, her campaign aides, and supporters who chanted “Hillary!” A clip of Hillary Clinton appearing on Saturday Night Live was also included in the video tribute and her “great guffaw of a laugh” was noted by campaign aides. After a loving introduction by her daughter, Chelsea, who said “My mom’s dreams are not about her own life, but by all Americans” she invited her mother onto the stage saying, “OK—so she didn’t become an astronaut but she did reach for the stars. . . . because of her there’s 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling and what opened up is a whole new possibility for all of us.”56 To bring her mother onto the stage, Chelsea Clinton said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I am very proud to introduce my mother and my hero, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.” Hillary Clinton began: I am honored to be here tonight. A proud mother. A proud Democrat. A proud American. And a proud supporter of Barack Obama. My friends, it is time to

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take back the country we love. Whether you voted for me, or voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose. We are on the same team, and none of us can sit on the sidelines.57

She brought the fighting theme resonate in her campaign for president to this urgent plea for her supporters to back Barack Obama: This is a fight for the future. And it’s a fight we must win. I haven’t spent the past thirty-five years in the trenches advocating for children, campaigning for universal health care, helping parents balance work and family, and fighting for women’s rights at home and around the world . . . to see another Republican in the White House squander the promise of our country and the hopes of our people. And you haven’t worked so hard over the last eighteen months, or endured the last eight years, to suffer through more failed leadership.58

Then she uttered the line that was most often the sound-bite from the speech: “No way. No how. No McCain.”59 The line received thunderous applause from the audience. She made it clear that her support did not waiver: “Barack Obama is my candidate. And he must be our President.”60 Once again using a feminine style of rhetoric, Hillary Clinton told the most compelling stories of her campaign experiences: I will always remember the single mom who had adopted two kids with autism, didn’t have health insurance and discovered she had cancer. But she greeted me with her bald head painted with my name on it and asked me to fight for health care. I will always remember the young man in a Marine Corps t-shirt who waited months for medical care and said to me: “Take care of my buddies; a lot of them are still over there . . . and then will you please help take care of me?” I will always remember the boy who told me his mom worked for the minimum wage and that her employer had cut her hours. He said he just didn’t know what his family was going to do. I will always be grateful to everyone from all fifty states, Puerto Rico, and the territories, who joined our campaign on behalf of all those people left out and left behind by the Bush Administration. To my supporters, my champions—my sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits—from the bottom of my heart: Thank you. You never gave in. You never gave up. And together we made history.61

She described the major initiatives of her campaign: I ran for president to renew the promise of America. To rebuild the middle class and sustain the American Dream, to provide the opportunity to work hard and have that work rewarded, to save for college, a home and retirement, to afford the gas and groceries and still have a little left over each month.

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To promote a clean energy economy that will create millions of green collar jobs. To create a health care system that is universal, high quality, and affordable so that parents no longer have to choose between care for themselves or their children or be stuck in dead end jobs simply to keep their insurance. To create a world class education system and make college affordable again. To fight for an America defined by deep and meaningful equality—from civil rights to labor rights, from women’s rights to gay rights, from ending discrimination to promoting unionization to providing help for the most important job there is: caring for our families. To help every child live up to his or her God-given potential. To make America once again a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws. To bring fiscal sanity back to Washington and make our government an instrument of the public good, not of private plunder. To restore America’s standing in the world, to end the war in Iraq, bring our troops home and honor their service by caring for our veterans. And to join with our allies to confront our shared challenges, from poverty and genocide to terrorism and global warming. Most of all, I ran to stand up for all those who have been invisible to their government for eight long years. Those are the reasons I ran for President. Those are the reasons I support Barack Obama. And those are the reasons you should too. America is still around after 232 years because we have risen to the challenge of every new time, changing to be faithful to our values of equal opportunity for all and the common good. And I know what that can mean for every man, woman, and child in America. I’m a United States Senator because in 1848 a group of courageous women and a few brave men gathered in Seneca Falls, New York, many traveling for days and nights, to participate in the first convention on women’s rights in our history. And so dawned a struggle for the right to vote that would last seventy-two years, handed down by mother to daughter to granddaughter—and a few sons and grandsons along the way. These women and men looked into their daughters’ eyes, imagined a fairer and freer world, and found the strength to fight. To rally and picket. To endure ridicule and harassment. To brave violence and jail. And after so many decades—eighty-eight years ago on this very day—the nineteenth amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote would be forever enshrined in our Constitution. My mother was born before women could vote. But in this election my daughter got to vote for her mother for President. This is the story of America. Of women and men who defy the odds and never give up. How do we give this country back to them? By following the example of a brave New Yorker, a woman who risked her life to shepherd slaves along the Underground Railroad.

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And on that path to freedom, Harriet Tubman had one piece of advice: If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If they’re shouting after you, keep going. Don’t ever stop. Keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going. Even in the darkest of moments, ordinary Americans have found the faith to keep going. I’ve seen it in you. I’ve seen it in our teachers and firefighters, nurses and police officers, small business owners and union workers, the men and women of our military—you always keep going.62

The speech was tailored to her need to speak directly to those who supported her, especially those unreconciled to Obama’s nomination. It was laden with references to feminist advances—the Seneca Falls conference of 1848 got hearty applause, the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment was duly noted, Harriet Tubman was cited as advice to all (keep going). The speech, which was being written up until the final moments of the delivery, was given on the anniversary of the women’s suffragist movement. She saluted her own persistence through the primaries and noted that America is great because of people who, like her, have not given up easily. She multitasked in this speech as she thanked supporters, reminded the audiences of the advances of the women’s movement ,and asked her supporters to throw their support behind Barack Obama. On October 12, 2008, Hillary returned to Scranton, Pennsylvania, to speak at the “Change we Need” Rally in Scranton. She had become an important force in the Barack Obama campaign and she aimed to bring her many supporters to the voting booth for Barack Obama on Election Day. Her ties, and those of vice presidential candidate Joe Biden provided a strong argument to support the Democratic ticket in November. She began: It’s great that Joe has roots here in Scranton as do I—and we will make sure that those roots and those values are carried into the White House after Joe wins. Isn’t it going to be wonderful to have a vice president you’re proud of and excited about?63

Even when campaigning for Obama and Biden, Hillary Clinton uses a personal narrative that functions as an effective political rhetorical strategy. She asserts: For two years on the campaign trail—in fact, for my entire adult life—I have been fighting for families left out and left behind, for the chance of every child to reach his or her God-given potential. That’s why I respect Dr. Jill Biden so much because she has worked for twenty-seven years to help our young people realize their potential. I have fought for the people of this country who have felt invisible to their own President—like he just doesn’t even see them. And that’s who I am fighting for today.64

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Again her life-long struggle of fighting for the underdog who is “invisible” to the current leadership. She asserts that she was born to lead, as was the locally born Biden because of their blue-collar Scranton ties: It starts right here in Scranton where my father was raised and where he’s buried. My grandfather worked in the Scranton lace mills all of his life, starting when he was eleven years old until he retired at the age of sixty-five. My family spent summers in a cabin on Lake Winola. We went swimming and fishing and played a lot of pinochle. My grandfather built that cabin nearly a hundred years ago and it’s still standing because here in Scranton, people are built tough. Here in northeastern Pennsylvania, we don’t go down without a fight.65

In addition to vigorous campaigning for Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton also raised more than $8 million for his campaign. She also stepped up efforts to help Democratic women win their bids for Senate seats. She assisted in an email plea and effectively helped Kay Hagan in North Carolina upset Elizabeth Dole for the Senate seat there. She was called Barack Obama’s “secret weapon” on the trail in the closing days of the 2008 race: “Tell them Hillary sent you to vote for Barack Obama.”66 As she continued to slough it out—not for herself per se, but for the Democratic party—Democratic strategist Tad Devine said that Clinton stands to become “the most important woman in American politics”67 if Democrats win the race. So far, “the most important woman” is as close as any woman has gotten to president of the United States. Her speeches in this race demonstrate a seasoned politician who grew increasingly comfortable campaigning and sharing a distinctly personal narrative to connect herself with voters.

NOTES 1. From Hillary Clinton’s June 7, 2008, concession speech. www.hillaryclinton .com (accessed June 10, 2008). 2. “VP pick Palin makes appeal to women voters,” www.msnbc.com, August 29, 2008 (accessed September 12, 2008). 3. Marie Cocco. “Clinton’s Thankless Job,” The Washington Post, August 26, 2008, A13. 4. Ben Smith. “Clinton Amends Her Speech.” Politico.com, September 3, 2008 (accessed September 8, 2008). 5. Suzanne Goldenberg. Madam President: Is America ready to send Hillary Clinton to the White House? (London: Guardian Books, 2007), 99. 6. Molly Meijer Wertheimer and Nichola D. Gutgold. Elizabeth Hanford Dole: Speaking from the Heart (Westport: Praeger Press, 2004), 13. 7. Beth Fouhy. “Clinton Campaigns at Health Center,” The Winchester (VA) Star, January 22, 2007, AF.

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8. Bonnie J. Dow, and Mari Boor Tonn. “’Feminine Style’ and Political Judgment in the Rhetoric of Ann Richards.” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 79 (1993): 286–302. 9. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell. “The Discursive Performance of Femininity: Hating Hillary.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs, 1:1, 3. 10. Ann F. Mattina. “Hillary Rodham Clinton: Using Her Vital Voice,” in Molly Meijer Wertheimer, Leading Ladies of the White House: Communication Strategies of Notable Twentieth-Century First Ladies (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005), 224. 11. Ibid. 12. Anne E. Kornblut. “For the Clinton Candidacy, a Soft Launch,” The Washington Post, January 22, 2007, A1. 13. “Clinton 41% Favorite.” January 2, 2009. www.washingtonpost.com (accessed May 1, 2009). 14. Anne E. Kornblut, “For the Clinton Candidacy, a Soft Launch,” The Washington Post, January 22, 2007, A1. 15. Representative American Speeches (New York: H.W. Wilson, 1994/1995), Volume 21, 79. 16. Paul Alexander. “Vice Can Be Nice,” Mirabella, September 2000, 66. 17. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Living History (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2003), 23. 18. “Clinton’s Faith Underestimated,” The Washington Times, April 25, 2007, www.washingtontimes.com/news/April25/.clintons-faith-underestimated.html (accessed October 23, 2008). 19. www.hillaryclinton.com (accessed April 30, 2007). 20. John M. Broder. “A Clinton Religious Aide is Careful Not to Preach,” The New York Times, May 3, 2007, www.nytimes.com/2008/05/03/uspolics/03strider/html (accessed October 23, 2008). 21. From Hillary Clinton’s speech, March 4, 2007, at First Baptist Church, Selma, Alabama, www.hillaryclinton.com (accessed May 2007). 22. Linda Feldman. “Candidate Clinton Goes Public with her Private Faith,” Christian Science Monitor, December 12, 2007, 14. 23. From Hillary Clinton’s speech, March 4, 2007, at First Baptist Church, Selma, Alabama, www.hillaryclinton.com (accessed May 2007). 24. From Hillary Clinton’s March 14, 2007, speech at International Association for Firefighters event, Washington, D.C., www.hillaryclinton.com (accessed May, 2007). 25. Ibid. 26. Geraldine Ferraro Biography. www.notablebiographies.com (accessed November 8, 2008). 27. Karen Tumulty and David Von Drehle. “Ready to Rumble,” Time, March 17, 2008, 29. 28. Ibid. 29. Jennifer Parker. ABC News, “Clinton Wins In New Hampshire,” January 9, 2008. www.abcnewsgo.com (accessed November 8, 2008). 30. Karen Breslau. “Hillary Tears Up,” Newsweek Web Exclusive, January 7, 2008 (accessed November 7, 2008). 31. Ibid.

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32. Chuck Todd and Sheldon Gawiser. How Barack Obama Won; A State-by-state guide to the historic 2008 Presidential Election (New York: Vintage Books, 2009), 13. 33. Speech transcribed from CNN (recorded live broadcast, February 12, 2008). 34. “Hillary Clinton Addresses Crowd at Scranton High School,” The Times Leader, March 11, 2008, www.timesleader.com (accessed November 11, 2008). 35. Hillary Clinton’s speech to AFL-CIO, April 1, 2008, www.hillaryclinton.com (accessed November 11, 2008). 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid. 38. “Clinton Plays Up Obama Quote as ‘Elitist,’” USA Today, April 14, 2008, www .usatoday/news/politics/election (accessed November 10, 2008). 39. Hillary Clinton’s speech to AFL-CIO, April 1, 2008, www.hillaryclinton.com (accessed November 10, 2008). 40. CNN, April 24, 2007, 6:00 a.m. (ET) broadcast. 41. Hillary Clinton’s speech at George Washington University, March 17, 2008, www.hillaryclinton.com (accessed May 2008). 42. Ibid. 43. CBS News Video Contradicts Clinton’s Story CBS’ Sharyl Attkisson Was On Bosnia Trip—And Got A Warm, Sniper-Free Welcome; Clinton Says She “Misspoke,” March 24, 2008, www.cbsnews.com (accessed November 11, 2008). 44. Ibid. 45. Anne E. Kornblut, “In Speeches, Clinton Often Veers to Dark Side,” The Washington Post, April 3, 2008, A6. 46. Gail Sheehy. “Hillaryland at War,” Vanity Fair, August 2008, www.vanityfair .com (accessed February 11, 2009). 47. Speech transcribed from CNN live broadcast, May 13, 2008. 48. From Hillary Clinton’s concession speech, June 7, 2008. www.hillaryclinton .com (accessed June 10, 2008). 49. Taylor Stuart, Jr. “Most Promising Start For Obama: Obama and his advisers seem more focused on fixing what’s broken than on grinding ideological axes,” National Journal, January 24, 2009, www.nationaljournalmagazine.com (accessed February 3, 2009). 50. Ibid. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid. 54. Ibid. 55. Peter Nicholas. “Clinton To Get Moment in the Spotlight,” Los Angeles Times, August 15, 2008, A1. 56. Video tribute transcribed from MSNBC broadcast, August 26, 2008. 57. Hillary Clinton’s speech at Democratic National Convention, August 26, 2008, www.hillaryclinton.com (accessed August 30, 2008). 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid.

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62. Ibid. 63. Hillary Clinton’s speech in Scranton. October 12, 2008, www.hillaryclinton. com (accessed November 12, 2008). 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid. 66. CNN, October 21, 2008, 6:00 a.m. (ET) broadcast. 67. Fredreka Schouten. “Clinton goes to bat for Obama and party,” USA Today, October 6, 2008, 2A.

4 Debating It and Debating It Again The Many Debates of the Primary

“I’m running for president because I know we can meet the challenges of today, that we can continue to fulfill the promise that was offered to successive generations of Americans.”1

Communication scholar Robert Denton notes that the essence of politics is “talk” or human interaction. 2 The 2008 Democratic presidential debates included more than twenty debates; the final events were between the two final Democratic presidential nominees who remained in the lengthy contest: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The opportunity for talk was great because the 2008 presidential campaign was long, and careful analysis of the discourse of the debates is worthy of consideration here. As Dailey, Hinck and Hinck point out, debates are “consumed by audiences who might watch the debates in their entirety, and possibly again, in fragments framed by news coverage, campaign commentators and spin doctors.”3 That is even truer today, since there is media immortality on YouTube and other Internet sites that keep content live long after the initial broadcast. The variety of the types of debates is also a novel aspect of these many primary debates. Social networking sites, special interest groups, and political websites as well as the mainstream print and electronic media outlets all sponsored these debates. As Helweg, Pfau, and Brydon note, “The primary debates seem destined to be sponsored by a variety of groups. At this level, experimentation of formats is easily achieved and negotiation of terms seems less likely to be contested. Candidates are also more willing to take risks at this level.”4 Television is still the major delivery format for debates, but as this chapter reveals, the Internet is shaping how debates are delivered and how they live on long after the initial television airing. No longer 53

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are debates “uniquely television events.”5 The casual communication style presented on social networking sites, the ubiquitous nature of the Internet, and the role of late night television that often draws huge audiences when it parodies the candidates have influenced how debate performances are delivered, received, and how long they are accessible to anyone wishing to rewatch the event. Communication scholar Steven Brydon describes the shift in how debates live on with the new media: Today debates like all other campaign events take on a life far beyond the initial television viewing audience. The advent of YouTube has brought a kind of immortality to embarrassing moments and gaffes in these debates. Unlike the pre-YouTube era, when a mistake in a debate might make the evening news and become perhaps a two or three day story, today’s gaffes live on in perpetuity on the Web. Further, it is now possible for people to create their own YouTube videos, taking excerpts of debates or other candidate statements and incorporating them into their own messages, either favorable or unfavorable. Thus, one video integrated the famous 1984 Apple Computer Big Brother ad with audio and video of Hillary Clinton. In support of Obama, rapper will.i.am created a video using speech excerpts to create the “Yes We Can” video viewed by millions. In the world of the Internet, candidates and the mainstream media lose control of their words and images and virtually anyone with a computer can make a statement that can reach millions.6

Debates matter, otherwise we would not have them, though winning debates is not enough to win an election. For example, in 2004 John Kerry won the debates and was clearly a more sophisticated communicator, deeper thinker, and agile debater than George W. Bush, though he lost the election. Hillary Clinton was widely considered the deftest of debaters, only to be bested out of the nomination by the fresh, young newcomer, Barack Obama, who never failed to remind Hillary Clinton of her vote for the war at every chance that these many debates presented. Televised debates between the nominees of the two major parties have become standard fare in contemporary presidential election campaigns.7 The Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD), which has sponsored all general election debates since 1987, is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, tax-exempt organization that, as part of its mission, ensures, for the benefit of the American electorate, that general election debates are held every four years between the leading candidates for the office of the President and VicePresident of the United States.8 Jamin B. Raskin argues that despite its recent appalling insistence that it is “nonpartisan,” the CPD was launched as an avowedly “bipartisan” corporation “to implement joint sponsoring of general election presidential and vice presidential debates by the national Republican and Democratic committees between their respective nominees.”9

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He complains that corporate interests involved with the CPD are not well known by the general public, and the process of excluding candidates keeps the debates from being truly democratic. Some of the best debate performances in the history of political debates include the Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960; the first Kerry-Bush debate in 2004, where John Kerry went from being way down in the polls to a few points ahead; the Clinton town-hall debate in 1992, where Bill Clinton connected with the voters and the patrician George H. W. Bush checked his watch; the vice-presidential debate of 1988, when Lloyd Bentsen obliterated Dan Quayle with his “I knew Jack Kennedy, and you’re no Jack Kennedy” zinger, and the 1996 vice-presidential debate where Al Gore bested Jack Kemp with his undeniable political “wonkiness.” During the primary race debate in the 1980 campaign, Ronald Reagan showed an uncharacteristic flair of anger when he asserted, “I’m paying for this microphone,” and then he went on to handily win the nomination. In 1984 the political showmanship of Ronald Reagan was again showcased in his debate performance, this time with his Democratic rival Walter Mondale when asked about whether or not his age would prevent him from governing if elected. To the delight of the audience, and even his opponent, Walter Mondale, Ronald Reagan amusingly responded that he would not “exploit for political purposes my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” The witty line became the media sound bite of the debate and it reminded viewers and voters just how affable and entertaining President Reagan could be as a communicator. Hillary Clinton’s style as a debater was markedly different than her public speaking. In her public speaking during the 2008 presidential campaign she utilized feminine political rhetoric to great effect, but in debates she was more lawyerly, precise, and less reliant on narrative storytelling that was so often part of her speaking on the stump. The debates showcased Hillary Clinton’s political and intellectual confidence and strengths, which include her poise, her vast reservoir of knowledge, and her experience. Editors Brenda DeVore Marshall and Molly A. Mayhead, in their book, Navigating Boundaries: The Rhetoric of Women Governors, included a chapter by Kristina Horn Sheeler that presented a cluster analysis of metaphors that have been used to describe women governors in the media throughout history. The cluster analysis is in response to the containment in which women politicians find themselves because of democracy’s male-dominated history. Horn Sheeler argued that although women gained access to political leadership, their access is limited and shaped in masculine terms. These four metaphors include “pioneer,” “puppet,” “beauty queen,” and “unruly woman.” She argued that the metaphors are negative, limit women, and create another way to disenfranchise women in political life.10 In these debates Hillary Clinton showed a versatile style of communication that could not be labeled into one particular metaphor. While the label “pioneer”

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seems instantly fitting, Hillary Clinton’s familiarity with the national political scene de-emphasized her pioneering status. Hillary Clinton also resisted the temptation to position herself as a pioneer. The number of the debates were many, however, and it must have impacted the candidates’ schedules significantly to make room for the debates and the preparation that goes with them. Anne Kornblut of the Washington Post noted, “Even Clinton, a disciplined and experienced candidate with a polished delivery on policy matters, sets aside time to prepare for each debate, underscoring how none of the campaigns treat the forums as tossaway events.”11 One mistake in a debate could cost a candidate an election and the 2008 election gave Clinton and Obama many opportunities to win votes or lose them. In this chapter, the research of Dailey, Hinck, and Hinck, that contends “for candidates in debates, advancing one’s case or refuting an opponent’s case effectively might affect how an audience views the content of claims for office. More than proving or disproving claims, however is the effect each argument has on the candidate’s face is most relevant.”12 The many debates may have also reduced viewer interest since the likelihood for viewers to grow weary of the debate process and simply tune out increases with the number of debates that are offered. With each additional debate the event seems less like a special rhetorical moment and more like a common occurrence. The plethora of debates prompted the New York Times to publish a story with the headline: “Appearing Now on a TV Near You? Surely a Presidential Debate.”13 The article noted that summer 2007 was a “Summer of Debates” and that “This campaign has turned into a mind-numbing blur of 90- and 120-minute debates and forums that has consumed the democratic candidates.”14 Regardless, the primary race was so close that candidate performance in the hebdomadal debates, especially the final ones including just Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, were important campaign events. For newer candidates with less debate skills than the more experienced candidates, the many debates provided an invaluable and fertile training ground to become better debaters. The Democratic debates began on April 26, 2007, in Orangeburg, South Carolina, at South Carolina State University. This chapter will briefly analyze the initial debates that included more than the two final candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The final debates, which included only those two remaining Democratic candidates, will be analyzed in further depth. One is not a debate, but rather separate conversations with each candidate about their positions on faith. The Compassion Forum, held at Messiah College in Pennsylvania, is included in this chapter, since, like a debate, it offered voters an opportunity to hear the candidates’ views. The first debate at South Carolina State University included Senator Joseph Biden, Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Chris Dodd, Senator John Edwards, Senator Mike Gravel, Mr. Dennis Kucinich, Senator Barack Obama, and Gov-

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ernor Bill Richardson. The debate was ninety minutes long and included a sixty-second time limit for answers, and no opening or closing statements. It was broadcast via cable television and online video streaming by MSNBC. The debate was moderated by Brian Williams of NBC Nightly News. The most significant issue discussed during this first debate was the Iraq War, and all candidates strongly criticized President George W. Bush. Front-runner Hillary Clinton noted, “the American people have spoken, the Congress has voted, as of today, to end this war. And we can only hope that the president will listen.”15 “If this president does not get us out of Iraq, when I’m president I will,” she said.16 Political pundits including Chris Matthews, Howard Fineman, Keith Olbermann, and Joe Scarborough declared that Hillary Clinton was the most presidential of the candidates, and the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza noted that “Hillary Clinton entered the debate with high expectations and managed to meet them—not an easy task. She was informed, concise and under control at all times. She showed her tough side when asked what she would do in the event of simultaneous terrorist attacks against two American cities—a question Senator Barack Obama initially flubbed before going back to it later.”17 As the front-runner, Clinton might have been seen as the likely target for attack, but the candidates largely avoided engaging one another directly—and the format, which was often fast-paced and moved from topic to topic, offered no easy opportunities to do so. The closest approximation to a direct engagement came when John Edwards was asked whether he was specifically talking about Clinton when he said the country wants a leader who is willing to admit mistakes. “I think that’s a question for the conscience of anybody who voted for this war,” he said. “I mean, Senator Clinton and anyone else who voted for this war has to search themselves and decide whether they believe they’ve voted the right way.” Hillary Clinton, who regularly defended her vote for the war along the campaign trail, responded by saying what she has said before: “I take responsibility for my vote. Obviously, I did as good a job I could at the time. It was a sincere vote based on the information available to me. And I’ve said many times that, if I knew then what I now know, I would not have voted that way.” The vote Hillary Clinton cast in favor of the war would become an albatross for her campaign. Her explanation that she would not have voted for the war if she had more information about it than she did wasn’t a satisfying answer to most Americans who she was trying to convince that she would be “ready on day one” to lead the country. Her answer also lacked emotional markers. To say that it was a “sincere” vote, based on the information that she had at the time does not involve the emotional reasons that may have gone into the vote. Had she responded in a way that reminded the American people of the groundswell of support for the war following the September 11, 2001, attacks, the audience might have recalled their own sense of patriotism that swept the country. This was one issue that might

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have benefited from the application of feminine rhetoric that was more commonly found in Hillary Clinton’s speeches, not the debates. The second Democratic debate was held in New Hampshire at Saint Anselm College on June 3. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer moderated along with a newspaper writer and a television journalist, both from local news organizations in New Hampshire. During the first half of the debate, candidates stood behind sleek podiums. During the second half of the debate candidates sat and questions were asked from the live studio audience. In addition to Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Barack Obama, and Senator John Edwards, who dominated the debate, Senator Chris Dodd, Governor Bill Richardson, Senator Mike Gravel, Senator Joe Biden, and Dennis Kucinich also participated. Hillary Clinton was the candidate who demonstrated a deft grasp of the issues, and a steadfast refusal to admit error. Asked about her failure to read the entire classified National Intelligence Estimate before she voted in 2002 to permit President George W. Bush to go to war, Clinton said unapologetically, “I was thoroughly briefed. I knew all the arguments. I knew all of what the Defense Department, the CIA, the State Department were all saying. And I sought dissenting opinions, as well as talking to people in previous administrations and outside experts.” John Edwards, in contrast, noted “I think one difference we have is I think I was wrong. I should never have voted for this war.” Barack Obama, though solid with his responses, still had not found a way to excel in a multi-candidate debate format. His debating skills had not matched the electricity that his candidacy generated in other settings. It was during the third debate, held at the end of June at Howard University in Washington, D.C., that all candidates were given equal time. Tavis Smiley, author and talk show host, moderated and several well known personalities attended the event including Jesse Jackson, Harry Bellefonte, and Dorothy Heights. The first question of the evening was asked by a Crecilla Cohen Scott, who won a contest that was sponsored by the radio program to win the right to ask the first question in the debate. The format of the debate included questions from journalists as well as the host Smiley and the contest winner who asked the first question. Hillary Clinton again demonstrated superior debating skills in this debate. Her response to the question about the high prevalence of HIV-AIDS among African American women created the largest response from the audience. Her response: You know, it is hard to disagree with anything that has been said, but let me just put this in perspective. If HIV-AIDS were the leading cause of death of white women between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-four, there would be an outraged outcry in this country. . . .We have to do all of this and I’m working on this. I’m working to get Medicaid to cover treatment. I’m working to raise the budget for Ryan White which the Bush administration has kept flat, disgracefully so, because there are a lot of women particularly who are becoming

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infected in poor rural areas as well as under-served urban areas in states where frankly their state governments won’t give them medical care. So this is a multiple dimension problem. But if we don’t begin to take it seriously and address it the way we did back in the 1990s when it was primarily a gay men’s disease, we will never get the services and the public education that we need.18

In this debate Hillary Clinton was able to concisely, and somewhat emotively express her leadership directives in a way other candidates did not. Her plaintive request for AIDS research was an opportunity for her to describe how women are often neglected by the medical industry. Barack Obama seemed more fluid in this debate, and as the debates progressed there was a steady improvement on his part to weave the high rhetoric of his speeches into the more direct and responsive debate format. For example, Barack Obama invoked identity politics as he noted that his presence on the stage would not be possible if not for the work of Thurgood Marshall. On July 12, 2007, all eight candidates attended a debate in Detroit, Michigan, that was held during the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) convention. John Edwards and Hillary Clinton were overheard—on stage, over microphones—talking about weeding out non–front-runner candidates from participating in future debates. At this point in the campaign, even though Barack Obama had raised more money than the other candidates—$32 million—he still trailed behind Hillary Clinton in every poll. It was important in this debate for Barack Obama to make a clear connection between him and African American voters, a constituency that Hillary Clinton was fighting mightily to capture. Hillary Clinton reminded the audience that she had attended several NAACP conventions, and she spoke of her connection to prominent African American Marian Wright Edelman, with whom she has worked on civil rights issues. Still, Barack Obama seemed to connect with the audience and hit his stride as a debater more so than in previous debates, and he was especially effective when he forcefully argued: The massacre that happened at Virginia Tech was a terrible tragedy, and we were grief-stricken and shocked. But in this year alone in Chicago, we have had thirty-four Chicago public school students gunned down, and for the most part there has been silence. We have to make sure that we change our politics so that we care just as much about those thirty-four kids in Chicago as we do about those kids at Virginia Tech.19

CNN news personality Anderson Cooper moderated a joint CNN and YouTube sponsored debate on the campus of the Citadel on July 23, 2007. All questions were selected from, and posed as videos submitted via YouTube by members of the public. YouTube and Google streamed the event live. This was the first time in presidential debate history that user-

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generated video drove the debate.20 All eight candidates participated in this event, and the format offered a refreshing naturalness to what is often a stilted question and answer format. For example, the first question came from Zach Kemp in Provo, Utah, who asked: What’s up? I’m running out of tape; I have to hurry. So my question is: We have a bunch of leaders who can’t seem to do their job. And we pick people based on the issues they represent, but then they get in power and they don’t do anything about it anyway. You’re going to spend this whole night talking about your views on issues, but the issues don’t matter if when you get in power nothing’s going to get done. We have a Congress and a president with, like a 30 percent approval rating, so clearly we don’t think they’re doing a good job. What’s going to make you any more effectual, beyond all the platitudes and the stuff we’re used to hearing? I mean, be honest with us. How are you going to be any different?21

This casual questioning style is in keeping with the colloquial style of social networking sites and YouTube. It may also serve to ignite young voters’ interest in the political process since it mimics their style of talk and casual approach to Internet communication. On August 7, the AFL-CIO Working Families Vote Presidential Forum was held at Soldier Field in Chicago, Illinois, in front of approximately 15,000 union members and their families. The questions in the debate were used to determine if and whom the AFL-CIO would endorse in the Democratic primary. Keith Olbermann of MSNBC hosted the debate, which featured seven of the candidates. Mike Gravel was excluded because he failed to submit a written questionnaire by the August 6 deadline. During the debate Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama argued about foreign affairs, even though the debate was supposed to center around labor issues of special importance to organized labor. In particular, Hillary Clinton took Barack Obama to task for offering a hypothetical scenario with respect to Pakistan. Barack Obama noted that we should engage in military action against Al-Qaida figures hiding in Pakistan if Pakistan wouldn’t. During a policy speech on August 1, Barack Obama said that I understand that President Musharraf has his own challenges. But let me make this clear. There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again. It was a terrible mistake to fail to act when we had a chance to take out an Al-Qaida leadership meeting in 2005. If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will.22

At the debate Hillary Clinton said, I do not believe that people running for president should engage in hypotheticals. I think it is a very big mistake to telegraph that and to destabilize

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the Musharraf regime, which is fighting for its life against the Islamist extremists who are in bed with Al-Qaida and Taliban. And, remember, Pakistan has nuclear weapons. The last thing we want is to have Al-Qaida–like followers in charge of Pakistan and having access to nuclear weapons. So, you can think big, but, remember, you shouldn’t always say everything you think if you’re running for president, because it has consequences about the world.23

This utterance by Hillary Clinton was a strong reinforcement to the argument she attempted to make throughout the campaign that she is the most experienced candidate to lead the country during uncertain times. Repeatedly she tried to make the case that although Barack Obama is an inspiring rhetor, it is she who would deliver in times of crisis and it is she who has the international experience and savvy to lead the country. During this debate, Barack Obama responded to Hillary Clinton by stating: “I did not say that we would immediately go in unilaterally. What I said was that we have to work with [Pakistan’s President Pervez] Musharraf. We’re debating the most important foreign policy issues that we face, and the American people have a right to know.”24 Senator Christopher Dodd, also a candidate, echoed Hillary Clinton’s criticism of Barack Obama calling it “irresponsible” for Barack Obama to send the military into Pakistan to pursue terrorists if the Pakistani government did not take action of its own. Barack Obama countered the criticism with, “I find it amusing that those who helped to authorize and engineer the biggest foreign policy disaster in our generation are now criticizing me for making sure that we are on the right battlefield and not the wrong battlefield in the war against terror.”25 Hillary Clinton evoked her experience and her tenacity when she said, “For fifteen years I have stood up against the right-wing machine, and I’ve come out stronger. So if you want a winner who knows how to take them on, I’m your girl.” Ultimately, on June 26, 2008, the AFL-CIO endorsed Barack Obama. On August 9, 2007, LGBT (lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender) network Logo hosted a debate focusing on lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, and transgender issues, moderated by Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese and singer Melissa Etheridge. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Bill Richardson, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich, and Mike Gravel participated. The debate was broken down into domestic policy, foreign policy, and philosophy and leadership. Candidates were allotted ninety seconds for each question with forty-five-second rebuttals, although the time limits were not strictly enforced. After the debate, breakout sessions were held where conventiongoers could question each candidate individually. On August 19, 2007, ABC News in conjunction with the Iowa Democratic Party held a debate streamed on This Week with George Stephanopoulos that was moderated by George Stephanopoulos. It was a rare early morning

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debate that included all eight of the candidates. Stephanopoulos began after a general welcome: The podium order was determined by lot, but here’s where they stand in Iowa, according to our latest ABC News poll. At 27 percent, Illinois Senator Barack Obama. New York Senator Hilary Clinton is at 26 percent, as is former North Carolina Senator John Edwards, also at 26 percent. New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson is at 11 percent. Senator Joe Biden of Delaware is at 2 percent, along with Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, also at 2 percent. Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd is at 1 percent. And former Alaska Senator Mike Gravel, no support registered.26

The debate opened with a focus on the qualifications of Barack Obama to be president. George Stephanopoulos asked Hillary Clinton: “Senator Clinton, you did tell the Quad City Times that Senator Obama’s views on meeting with foreign dictators are naive and irresponsible. Doesn’t that imply that he’s not ready for the office?” Senator Clinton responded, “You should not telegraph to our adversaries that you’re willing to meet with them without preconditions.”27 After several other candidates weighed in on Barack Obama’s inexperience, Senator Obama retorted, “To prepare for this debate, I rode in the bumper cars at the State Fair.”28 Despite the efforts of Hillary Clinton to demonstrate that she would bring more experience into the White House, Barack Obama continued to gain in the polls. On September 9, 2007, Univision hosted a forum in Coral Gables, Florida, called “Destino 2008.” The event was simultaneously broadcast in Spanish at the University of Miami’s Bank United Center and was moderated by Univision’s anchors Jorge Ramos and Maria Elena Salinas. Joe Biden did not participate in the debate. The TV audience of 2.2 million was also the debate season’s youngest, at an average of thirty-six years old. “The debate was really a recognition of the growing importance of the Hispanic population in the United States as voters,” said Susan Kaufman Purcell, director of the University of Miami’s Center for Hemispheric Policy, a think tank examining critical issues affecting countries in the Western Hemisphere.29 On September 12, 2007, Yahoo!, in partnership with The Huffington Post, produced a “mashup” debate with Charlie Rose interviewing the candidates. Segments were recorded on September 12, with the “mashups” posted on September 13. A mashup is a video that combines several sources and is modified to create a unified program. This debate is an especially good example of the variety of debate formats that prevailed during the primary season. It is also representative of the new media. The experimental online “mashup”—a build-your-own Democratic presidential debate—attracted more than 1 million viewers in ten days. Four

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questions were posed to each of eight candidates, one question being a “wild card” posed by comedian Bill Maher. His questions were watched 42 percent of the time—more than the others, which were on Iraq, education, and healthcare and were posed by PBS host Charlie Rose. Maher quizzed the hopefuls about topics including the Ten Commandments; marijuana legalization; the relative dangers of sugar, coal dust, and terrorism; and the climate-changing effect of cows. Yahoo!, HuffingtonPost.com, and Slate .com conceived the format as a way to give online viewers the ability to build a debate with video blocks of each candidate answering questions. The clips were recorded two weeks before the debate and were posted on September 12 at debates.news.yahoo.com. Viewers were able to choose the candidates they wanted to see and hear, match them against a rival, and compare and contrast. But organizers of the online debate say that its audience was more engaged and that the format put the content in the viewers’ hands. According to the Los Angeles Times, the most viewed candidate was Hillary Clinton who received thirty-five percent of all the video clips viewers watched.30 On September 20, 2007, PBS held a forum in Davenport, Iowa, that focused on domestic issues, specifically health care and financial security. It was moderated by Judy Woodruff. Barack Obama rejected PBS’s invitation, and Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich were excluded from the debate because they did not have at least one paid staff member or office space in Iowa. Five presidential hopefuls at Thursday night’s American Association for Retired Persons (AARP) forum fielded questions on everything from their plans to overhaul the nation’s health care system to the subprime mortgage crisis. The absence of Barack Obama changed the dynamic of the debate and clearly showed Hillary Clinton as more deft at answering questions and staking a claim to her experience. Each candidate offered various solutions to repair the nation’s lagging health care system while using the opportunity to slam the Bush Administration in front of the mostly senior citizen audience. Hillary Clinton established her ethos of experience by saying: “Been there, done that. Fifteen years ago I was advocating for universal health care and it was kind of lonely back then.” Republicans “don’t have a clue or the willingness to move forward on what we are committed to.”31 Though she appeared tired, she articulated her passion for health care reform more completely than any of the other participants. On September 26, 2007, in Hanover, New Hampshire, MSNBC held a debate at Dartmouth College in conjunction with New England Cable News and New Hampshire Public Radio. The moderator was the late Tim Russert. Candidates participating included Senator Joe Biden, Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Christopher Dodd, Former Senator John Edwards, Representative Dennis Kucinich, and Governor Bill Richardson. As with so

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many of the debates, the discussion focused on the war and the first question went to Barack Obama. Tim Russert asked: Senator Obama, I’d like to start with you. General Petraeus in his testimony before Congress, later echoed by President Bush, gave every indication that in January of 2009 when the next president takes office, there will be 100,000 troops in Iraq. You’re the president. What do you do? You said you would end the war. How do you do it in January of 2009?

Barack Obama responded: And let me also say that had my judgment prevailed back in 2002, we wouldn’t be in this predicament. I was opposed to this war from the start, have been opposed to this war consistently. But I have also said that there are no good options now; there are bad options and worse options.

Hillary Clinton defended her war position by saying, “Well, Tim, it is my goal to have all troops out by the end of my first term. But I agree with Barack. It is very difficult to know what we’re going to be inheriting. You know, we do not know, walking into the White House in January 2009, what we’re going to find.” She bolstered her image by offering evidence that she would be ready to lead at the start. She said, “That’s why last spring I began pressing the Pentagon to be very clear about whether or not they were planning to bring our troops out. And what I found was that they weren’t doing the kind of planning that is necessary, and we’ve been pushing them very hard to do so.”32 On October 30, 2007, a debate was held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at Drexel University and was televised by NBC News. All candidates except former Alaskan Senator Mike Gravel attended the debate. Seven Democratic presidential candidates participated in a two-hour debate which was moderated by the late Tim Russert and Brian Williams. Democratic rivals focused their attacks on Senator Clinton, and were particularly critical of her response to a proposal from then New York Governor Eliot L. Spitzer which would allow illegal immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses. Five of the seven candidates indicated they would support states issuing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. The front-runner, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, appeared to endorse the idea as well before retreating into an answer with so many caveats that her rivals mocked her for seeming to take both sides. The issue has been a source of controversy in several states, from California (where Governor Gray Davis, who supported licensing, was recalled in 2003) to New York (where Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s call to grant licenses has drawn fire). It stayed alive during the 2008 campaign as states moved to meet a set of deadlines, the first in May, for complying with the Real ID Act of 2005. That law set nationwide standards designed to make it more dif-

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ficult for illegal immigrants to secure driver’s licenses. In its final report, the independent commission that investigated the September 11 attacks recommended federal license standards as a way to prevent would-be terrorists in the United States from getting around lax state laws and obtaining a recognized form of identification. Only three states have enacted measures to comply with Real ID. Fourteen others—citing the cost of compliance, along with a dislike of federal intrusion—have passed measures saying they will not comply with the law, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. California legislators have debated the issue, but have yet to act. Although the broader question of how the United States deals with illegal immigration was at the forefront of the 2006 midterm election, in which the Democrats won control of both houses of Congress, it had yet to emerge as a dominant issue between the parties in the 2008 presidential race. Republicans generally favor a tough enforcement approach to illegal immigration, but there are differences among the candidates of both parties over how to handle the fence along the U.S.-Mexico border and whether American cities should offer sanctuary to illegal immigrants. Russert asked: “Why does it make a lot of sense to give an illegal immigrant a driver’s license?” Clinton did not answer directly; instead she said, We know in New York we have several million at any one time who are in New York illegally. They are undocumented workers. They are driving on our roads. The possibility of them having an accident that harms themselves or others is just a matter of the odds. It’s probability. So what Governor Spitzer is trying to do, Tim, is to fill the vacuum. There needs to be federal action on immigration reform.

Russert followed up by asking whether any candidate opposed the driver’s licenses. Only Sen. Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut put his hand up. “Look, I’m as forthright and progressive on immigration policy as anyone here,” Dodd said, “but we’re dealing with a serious problem here; we need to have people come forward. The idea that we’re going to extend this privilege here of a driver’s license, I think, is troublesome.” Clinton jumped back in: “I just want to add, I did not say that it should be done, but I certainly recognize why Governor Spitzer is trying to do it.” That drew an immediate reaction from Senator Dodd: “Wait a minute,” he said. “No, no, no. You said yes, you thought it made sense to do it.” Former North Carolina Senator John Edwards and Senator Barack Obama also jumped in. “Unless I missed something, Senator Clinton said two different things in the course of about two minutes just a few minutes ago, and I think this is a real issue for the country,” John Edwards said. Barack Obama added: “I was confused on Senator Clinton’s answer. I can’t tell whether she was for it or against it, and I do think that is important.”33 After the debate, moderator Tim Russert was criticized for asking a misleading question to Senator Clinton regarding the release of her records as

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first lady. Tim Russert raised the issue of a letter which Bill Clinton wrote in which the former president ordered “a ban” on the release of his records by the National Archives. However, it was later revealed that Tim Russert misrepresented the letter, as it turns out that President Clinton was actually requesting for the National Archives to speed up the release of the records, despite the National Archives’ backlog. The next debate was hosted by The Nevada Democratic Party on November 15, 2007, and the debate aired on CNN, moderated by Wolf Blitzer. The candidates present at the debate were Joe Biden, Bill Richardson, Dennis Kucinich, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Chris Dodd, and John Edwards. It was at this debate that Hillary Clinton offered a tenacious response to whether or not she is playing the “gender card.” Moderator Campbell Brown asked, Senator Clinton, you went to your alma mater recently, Wellesley College, and you said there that your tenure had prepared you to compete in the all-boysclub of presidential politics. At the same time, your campaign has accused this all-boys-club, surrounding you on stage, of piling on with their attacks against you. And then your husband recently came to your defense by saying that these, quote, “boys,” had been getting rough with you. And some have suggested that you, that your campaign, that your husband are exploiting gender as a political issue during this campaign. What’s really going on here?34

Hillary Clinton responded, Well, I’m not exploiting anything at all. I’m not playing, as some people say, the gender card here in Las Vegas. I’m just trying to play the winning card. And I understand, very well, that people are not attacking me because I’m a woman; they’re attacking me because I’m ahead. And I understand that . . . You know, as Harry Truman famously said, ‘If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.’ And I feel very comfortable in the kitchen. And I’m going to withstand the heat. But, you know, this is really one of the kind of issues that we can laugh about because it’s exciting when you look at this field of candidates. You know, several of us would never have had a chance to stand here and run for president—a Latino, an African American, a woman—if it hadn’t been for the progress of America over my lifetime. And I am thrilled to be running to be the first woman president.”

Campbell Brown followed up: “But, Senator, if I can just ask you, what did you mean at Wellesley when you referred to the ‘boy’s club’? Hillary Clinton responded: Campbell . . . Well, it is clear, I think, from women’s experiences that from time to time, there may be some impediments. And it has been my goal over the course of my lifetime to be part of this great movement of progress that includes all of us, but has particularly been significant to me as a woman. And to be able to aim toward the highest, hardest glass ceiling is history-making.

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Now, I’m not running because I’m a woman. I’m running because I think I’m the best qualified and experienced person to hit the ground running, but it’s humbling . . . It’s been inspiring. And I have to tell you, as I travel around the country, you know, fathers drive hours to bring their daughters to my events. And so many women in their nineties wait to shake my hand. And they say something like: I’m ninety-five years old, I was born before women could vote, and I want to live long enough to see a woman in the White House.35

On December 4, 2007, NPR broadcast a radio-only debate in Des Moines, Iowa. NPR hosts Steve Inskeep, Michele Norris, and Robert Siegel moderated the debate. The debate broadcasted from the State Historical Society of Iowa in Des Moines to NPR stations around the country and was streamed online. All of the major candidates were present except for New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson who was attending the funeral of a Korean war casualty. The Des Moines Register and Iowa Public Television hosted a Democratic debate on December 13, 2007, in Johnston, Iowa. Six of the eight candidates participated. On January 5, 2008, ABC, WMUR-TV, and Facebook jointly hosted backto-back Democratic and Republican debates from Saint Anselm College, just three days before the official first-in-the-nation primary the following Tuesday, January 8. ABC evening news anchor Charles Gibson moderated, and despite the many debates, the interest in this debate surged and according to Nielsen Media Research, the debate drew the largest televised audience of the primary season with an estimated 9.36 million viewers.36 Between the two debates, Democrats Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Bill Richardson joined the Republican candidates on the stage at St. Anselm College in Manchester. This was the first time all of the major candidates from both parties had been together on stage. Major topics were introduced with a short news-clip-style video produced by ABC and the candidates were encouraged to interact with each other. During the debate, Obama, Clinton, and Edwards all battled over who best exemplified the buzzword of the campaign, “change.” Hillary Clinton was asked why polls showed she was less “likable” than other candidates, particularly Barack Obama, and she joked tongue-in-cheek, “Well that hurts my feelings . . . but I’ll try to go on.” Barack Obama grudgingly consoled her by saying, “You’re likable enough” to Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton used the opening to assert that although being likable is good, it isn’t enough. She said: You know, I think this is one of the most serious decisions that the voters of New Hampshire have ever had to make. And I really believe that the most important question is who is ready to be president on day one. You know, the problems waiting, some of which we have talked about already, are huge and the stakes could not be higher.37

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She also used the opportunity to remind voters that electing a president on personality may be a repeat of the Bush administration. She said, And, you know, in 2000 we, unfortunately, ended up with a president who people said they wanted to have a beer with; who said he wanted to be a uniter, not a divider; who said that he had his intuition and he was going to, you know, really come into the White House and transform the country. And, you know, at least I think there are the majority of Americans who think that was not the right choice. So I am offering thirty-five years of experience making change, and the results to show for it. I, you know, respect and like both Senator Edwards and Senator Obama.38

The exchange showed excellent debate skills on the part of Hillary Clinton, and was the first time a less-than-sunny and affable Barack Obama emerged. Though Barack Obama tried to say that his remark was an effort at graciousness, columnist E. J. Dionne wrote: “Gestures of graciousness shouldn’t have to be explained.” Dionne thought the remark was “snarky” and Richard Cohen said it was a “dismissal” of Hillary Clinton, while Charles Krauthammer noted that, “It showed a side of (Obama) not seen before or since. And it wasn’t pretty.”39 After this debate, Hillary Clinton won the New Hampshire primary. On January 15, 2008, The Nevada Democratic Party partnered with the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce and IMPACTO, 100 Black Men of America, and the College of Southern Nevada to hold the second Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas. The debate was telecast live by MSNBC and held at the Cashman Center in Las Vegas. Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama took part in the debate. In Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, on January 21, 2008, The Congressional Black Caucus and CNN hosted a debate which set another record for a cable TV audience with an estimated 4.9 million total viewers, according to Nielsen Fast Nationals Ratings.40 The participants were Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards. The debate, chaired by Wolf Blitzer, had an unusual format; for the last forty minutes the candidates sat down and the debate took a much more casual tone.

AND THEN THERE WERE TWO Some of the most famous Hollywood celebrities came to the famed Hollywood Kodak Theatre on January 31, 2008, for a debate hosted by the Los Angeles Times, Politico, and CNN. The debate set another cable TV viewing record for a presidential primary debate, with 8,324,000 million total viewers.41 Going into the debate, Barack Obama was leading Hillary Clinton

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in the number of pledged delegates—those awarded based on primary or caucus votes. Hillary Clinton had the edge when super delegates were factored in. (Super delegates are party leaders and elected officials who are not obligated to support a particular candidate. They can change their decisions at any time leading up to the Democratic National Convention in August.) Barack Obama won an estimated sixty-three national convention delegates as a result of primary or caucus votes, while Hillary Clinton earned an estimated forty-eight delegates.42 The debate showed an unusual amount of cordiality and the New York Times noted that it seemed as though each candidate was trying to “out nice” the other.43 Barack Obama opened by noting, “I was friends with Hillary Clinton before we started this campaign; I will be friends with Hillary Clinton after this campaign is over.” Clinton answered with equal grace, remarking on the historic significance that the Democratic nominee will be either a black man or a woman. “Look at us,” she said. “We are not more of the same. We will change this country.”44 But despite the upbeat, hospitable atmosphere and the splendor of the venue, it was clear that each candidate wanted to emerge the victor. Hillary Clinton pragmatically asserted: Well, on January 20, 2009, the next president of the United States will be sworn in on the steps of the Capitol. I, as a Democrat, fervently hope you are looking at that next president. Either Barack or I will raise our hand and swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States. And then, when the celebrations are over, the next president will walk into the Oval Office. And waiting there will be a stack of problems, problems inherited from a failed administration. . . .45

A central theme of the debate was the Iraq war. Barack Obama asserted that it was his position—not voting for the war—that points to his ability to lead the nation in a new direction. Hillary Clinton did not apologize for her vote for the war and instead defended her vote, attempting to pin the blame on President Bush when she asserted that, “I think I made a reasoned judgment. Unfortunately, the person who actually got to execute the proposal did not.”46 Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were asked if they might consider joining forces as a “dream ticket” to take on the Republicans in November—a question that, in it, elicited the biggest cheers and applause of the night—and neither of them dismissed the notion. Barack Obama said Hillary Clinton “would make anybody’s short list” of potential vicepresidential candidates, and Hillary Clinton said she wouldn’t disagree with that. Adding to the Hollywood excitement was the importance that this was the final debate before Super Tuesday.

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Throughout the debate, which lasted close to two hours, the cameras recording the event cut away to notables in the Kodak Theatre crowd—Steven Spielberg, his wife Kate Capshaw, Stevie Wonder, Angelina Jolie—just as they might on Oscar night.47 Once the debate was over and the microphones turned off, Barack Obama leaned in close to Hillary Clinton in a near-embrace and whispered in her ear. Whatever he said caused Hillary Clinton to smile and laugh. On February 21, 2008, CNN, Univision, and the Texas Democratic Party jointly hosted a debate on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin. Questions focused heavily on illegal immigration and the economy, among other issues, and the tone of the candidates was decidedly less cordial than it was at the debate in Hollywood the previous month. The debate was moderated by Campbell Brown and John King of CNN and Jorge Ramos of Univision. Campbell Brown noted: “We have given the candidates the opportunity to make opening statements. The order was determined by a draw. Senator Obama won the draw and elected to go second. So please go ahead, Senator Clinton.” Hillary Clinton began: Well, thank you. And I am just delighted to be back here in Austin. You know, nearly thirty-six years ago I came to Austin for my very first political job, and that was registering voters in south Texas. And I had the great privilege of living for a while in Austin and in San Antonio, and meeting people and making friends that have stayed with me for a lifetime. And I found that we had a lot in common, a lot of shared values, a belief that hard work is important, that selfreliance and individual responsibility count for a lot. And among the people whom I got to know, who became not only friends, but heroes, were Barbara Jordan, who taught me a lot about courage, and today . . . would actually be her birthday. I remember all the time about how she got up every single morning, facing almost insurmountable odds, to do what she did. And another was my great friend Ann Richards, who taught me so much about determination. Ann was a great champion for the people of Texas. She also reminded us that every so often it is good to have a laugh about what it is we’re engaged in.

Hillary Clinton’s acknowledgement of strong women leaders from Texas was a subtle reminder about other women who have paved the way in politics for more women to enter the pipeline. It also offered the voters the sense that Hillary Clinton knows a lot of political people—she’s no stranger to politics—she has been around a long time. On February 26, 2008, NBC News held a debate at the Holstein Center on the campus of Cleveland State University. The debate was moderated by Brian Williams with the late Tim Russert. In the opening of the debate, Hillary Clinton made what seemed odd and small-minded comments about

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how she usually gets the first question in the debates and she complained that Barack Obama seemed to be getting an easier treatment from the press. She awkwardly referenced the late night comedy show Saturday Night Live as evidence that she was being mistreated by the press. What was most evident during this debate was not the policy differences of the candidates, but instead their styles. Hillary Clinton asserted herself as a fighter who would be more successful in challenging John McCain in the general election than her opponent, the relative newcomer, Barack Obama. During a portion of the debate Hillary Clinton was shown a videotape of herself on the campaign trail mocking Barack Obama for being naïve about politics. Hillary Clinton defended her comments by saying, “I was having a little fun. The larger point is that I know that trying to get health insurance for every American that’s affordable is not gonna be easy . . . it’s going to take a fighter.” Hillary Clinton asserted that while Barack Obama has campaigned on the promise to change America, she in fact, would be a more effective agent of change. She said: The question that I have been posing is, who can actually change the country? And I do believe that my experience over thirty-five years in the private sector as well as the public and the not-for-profit sector, gives me an understanding and an insight into how best to make the changes that we all know we have to see.48

She provided evidence of her ability to be tough and keep fighting when odds are against her. She said, You know, when I wasn’t successful about getting universal healthcare, I didn’t give up. I just got to work and helped to create the Children’s Health Insurance Program. And, you know, today in Ohio 140,000 kids have health insurance. And yet this morning in Lorain, a mother said that she spent with the insurance and everything over $3 million taking care of her daughter, who had a serious accident. And she just looked at me, as so many mothers and fathers have over so many years, and said, “Will you help us?”49

On April 13, 2008, the Compassion Forum, discussing faith and values, was held at Messiah College in Grantham, Pennsylvania. It wasn’t actually a debate, but instead, the forum was a question-and-answer session in which CNN commentator Campbell Brown and Jon Meacham of Newsweek as well as select members of the audience, posed questions about faith and politics to Clinton and Obama. Both appeared separately. Still, this appearance by both candidates will be considered in this chapter since it gave voters an opportunity to hear answers to the same questions about faith, from both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Hearing Democratic candidates discuss faith is rare, since it is more common to hear religion

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and faith issues from Republican candidates. And for years the evangelical vote mostly supported Republican candidates. In 2000 it is believed that George W. Bush’s success came largely from the Republican Christian base. The 2008 race saw evangelicals torn between John McCain and the Democratic candidates. The forum was hosted by Campbell Brown of CNN and John Meacham of Newsweek. John Meacham began: Senator, we’ll start with the news. You have been extremely critical of Senator Obama’s recent comments in San Francisco in which he argued that some hard-pressed Americans have—economically hard-pressed Americans have, and I quote, “gotten bitter and cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or antitrade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” Senator, you have written of how faith sustained you in bitter times. Many of us have been sustained by our faith in bitter times. What exactly is wrong with what Senator Obama had to say?

Hillary Clinton responded: Well, I’m going to let Senator Obama speak for himself. But from my perspective, the characterization of people in a way that really seemed to be elitist and out of touch is something that we have to overcome. You know, the Democratic Party, to be very blunt about it, has been viewed as a party that didn’t understand and respect the values and the way of life of so many of our fellow Americans. And I think it’s important that we make clear that we believe people are people of faith because it is part of their whole being; it is what gives them meaning in life, through good times and bad times. It is there as a spur, an anchor, to center one in the storms, but also to guide one forward in the day-to-day living that is part of everyone’s journey. And, you know, when we think about the legitimate concerns that people have about trade or immigration, those are problems to be solved. And that’s what I think we should be focused on. But I am very confident that, as we move forward tonight and beyond, people will get a chance to get to know each of us a little better, and that’s really what I want to talk about. I will leave it to Senator Obama to speak for him; he does an excellent job of that. And I will speak for myself on what my faith journey is and what, you know, leads me to this chair here tonight.

When asked if she believed that life begins at conception, she said, “the potential for life begins at conception” and then added: “the Methodist church has struggled with this issue.” While she believes that abortion should remain legal, she also thinks it should be “safe and rare.” On April 16, 2008, ABC sponsored a debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Moderators Charles Gibson and George Stephanopoulos were criticized by viewers, bloggers, and media critics for the pettiness of their questions. Tom Shales of the Washington Post said that while it was a step forward for democracy, “it was another step downward for network news—in particular ABC News, which hosted the debate from

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Philadelphia and whose usually dependable anchors, Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos, turned in shoddy, despicable performances.”50 The opening of the debate, however, started on a high note. Hillary Clinton made this opening statement: Well, we meet tonight here in Philadelphia, where our founders determined that the promise of America would be available for future generations, if we were willing and able to make it happen. You know, I am here, as is Senator Obama. Neither of us were included in those original documents. But in a very real sense, we demonstrate that that promise of America is alive and well. But it is at risk. There is a lot of concern across Pennsylvania and America. People do feel as though their government is not solving problems, that it is not standing up for them, that we’ve got to do more to actually provide the good jobs that will support families; deal once and for all with health care for every American; make our education system the true passport to opportunity; restore our standing in the world. I am running for president because I know we can meet the challenges of today, that we can continue to fulfill that promise that was offered to successive generations of Americans, starting here, so long ago. And I hope that, this evening, voters in Pennsylvania and others across the country will listen carefully to what we have to say, will look at our records, will look at the plans we have. And I offer those on my website, hillaryclinton.com, for more detail. Because I believe with all my heart that we, the people, can have the kind of future that our children and grandchildren so richly deserve.51

During the debate neither Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton would answer whether or not they would name the other as their running mate. Several questions seemed petty during a time when the country is facing a severe economic crisis and grappling with the ongoing war in Iraq. For example, why Barack Obama did not wear an American flag pin on his lapel, the incendiary comments of his former pastor, or Hillary Clinton’s incorrect assertion that she had to avoid sniper fire in Bosnia more than a decade ago. Hillary Clinton came into the debate forum a skilled debater and peregrinated throughout the country to keep up with the ambitious debate schedule. In most of the debates her ability to present her views and make a persuasive argument that she was the most qualified person to be president was notable. The 2008 election offered many opportunities for voters to see the discursive skills of the candidates and Hillary Clinton advanced her candidacy in these exchanges with confidence, acuity, and comfort in highly confrontational settings.

NOTES 1. “Transcript: Obama and Clinton Debate.” ABC News, April 16, 2008. www .abcnews.go.com (accessed December 28, 2008).

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2. Robert E. Denton, Jr. The Symbolic Dimensions of the American Presidency (Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1982), 3. 3. William O. Dailey, Edward A. Hinck and Shelly S. Hinck. Politeness in Presidential Debates (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), 3. 4. Susan A. Helweg, Michael Pfau and Steven R. Brydon. Televised Presidential Debates: Advocacy in Contemporary America (New York: Praeger Press, 1992), 12. 5. Ibid., xxi. 6. Email correspondence with Steven Brydon, February 14, 2009. 7. Susan A. Helweg, Michael Pfau and Steven R. Brydon. Televised Presidential Debates: advocacy in Contemporary America (New York: Praeger Press, 1992), 12. 8. Commission of Presidential Debates, www.debates.org/pages/news_030924 .html (accessed November 17, 2008). 9. Jamin B. Raskin. “Let’s Talk about the Debates! Commission on Presidential Debates Biased, Exclusionary,” The Nation, vol. 270, issue 5, February 7, 2000, 21. 10. Brenda DeVore Marshall and Molly A. Mayhead, eds. Navigating Boundaries: The Rhetoric of Women Governors (Westport: Praeger, 2000). 11. Anne E. Kornblut. “Officially the First, the Democrats’ Debate Feels Like Anything But,” The Washington Post, July 23, 2007, A1. 12. William O. Dailey, Edward A. Hinck and Shelly S. Hinck. Politeness in Presidential Debates, (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008), 6. 13. Adam Nagourney. “Appearing Now on a TV Near You? Surely a Presidential Debate,” The New York Times, August 11, 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/08/11/us/ politics/11debate.html?scp=4&sq=aflpercent20ciopercent20 (accessed March 11, 2009). 14. Ibid. 15. “The Democrats’ First 2008 Presidential Debate,” The New York Times, April 27, 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/is/politics/27debate (accessed November 16, 2008). 16. Ibid. 17. Chris Cillizza. “The Fix,” www.washingtonpost.com, political blog (accessed November 17, 2008). 18. “The Democrats’ First 2008 Presidential Debate,” The New York Times, April 27, 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/04/27/is/politics/27debate (accessed November 16, 2008). 19. NAACP Convention, July 2007, webcast of the debate, www.naacp webcast.com/naacp2007/player_naacp07_01.asp (accessed January 3, 2009). 20. CNN/YouTube Democratic debate: Complete video, www.cnn.com/2007/ POLITICS/07/24/youtube.debate.video/index.html (accessed December 8, 2008). 21. CNN/YouTube Democratic presidential debate transcript, July 24, 2007, www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/07/23/debate.transcript (accessed December 1, 2008). 22. “AFL-CIO Democratic Forum; The ‘President of Canada’ and other factual bobbles,” Fact Check.org, Annenberg Political FactCheck, August 14, 2007, www .factcheck.org/elections-2008/afl-cio_democratic_forum.html. 23. “Obama, Clinton Openly Spar at AFL-CIO Forum,” WHYY, August 8, 2007, www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/politics/july-dec07/debate_08-08.html (accessed March 11, 2009).

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24. Ibid. 25. Jeff Zeleny and Steven Greenhouse. “War on Terror Takes Focus at Democrats’ Debate,” The New York Times, August 8, 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/08/08/us/ politics/08dems.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=aflpercent20cio (accessed March 11, 2009). 26. ABC News, transcript, The Democratic Debate, “George Stephanopoulos Moderates Democratic Debate on a Special Edition of ‘This Week.’” August 19, 2007, www.abcnews.com/politics/decision2008/story (accessed December 8, 2008). 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29. www.miami.edu/communications/events/destino2008/ (accessed January 31, 2009). 30. THE STATE—2008 debate gets interactive online—A Democratic ‘mashup’ lets viewers pick and compare video clips of eight hopefuls. More than 1 million sign on. September 24, 2007, Los Angeles Times, http://articles.latimes.com/2007/ sep/24/nation/na-mash24 (accessed March 12, 2009). 31. Transcribed from recorded PBS broadcast, September 20, 2007. 32. MSNBC, “The Presidential Debate” transcript, www.msnbc.com, September 26, 2008. (accessed January 4, 2009). 33. Nicole Gaouette and Joe Mathews. “Illegal immigrant licenses drive debate,” The Los Angeles Times, November 01, 2007, A1. 34. CNN Live Event Special, Debate in Las Vegas, Aired November 15, 2007, http://transcripts.cnn.com/transcripts/0711/15/se.02.html (accessed March 2, 2009). 35. Ibid. 36. Marisa Guthrie. “Ratings Surge for Presidential Debate,” Broadcasting and Cable, January 8, 2008, www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6518.html (accessed December 21, 2008). 37. www.abcnewsgo.com/story/facebook/WMUR. 38. Ibid. 39. Don Frederick. “Top of the Ticket: Obama’s Aside Hashed Over,” LATimesblogs.latimes.com (accessed December 28, 2008). 40. Nielsen Fast Track ratings, www.zap2it.com/search/dispatcher.front (accessed March 1, 2009). 41. Ibid. 42. “Clinton-Obama; Just the Two of Them in Debate,” January 31, 2008, www .cnn.com (accessed December 21, 2008). 43. Jeff Zeleny and Patrick Healy. “One on One in Debate, Democrats Set Aim at G.O.P.,” The New York Times, February 1, 2008, www.nytimes.com/2008/02/01/ uspolitics (accessed December 21, 2008). 44. David Wright. “Clinton, Obama Avoid Fireworks in Hollywood,” ABC News, February 1, 2008, www.abcnews.com/politics/contenders/story (accessed December 22, 2008). 45. International Herald Tribune, transcript Democratic Debate in Los Angeles, February 1, 2008, www.iht.com.article/2008/ (accessed December 21, 2008). 46. “Transcript of Thursday’s Presidential Debate,” CNN, January 31, 2008, www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/01/31/dem.debate (accessed December 22, 2008).

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47. Andrew Gumbel. “Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama: A Jazzy Performance Fit for the Hollywood Glitterattzi,” The Independent, February 2, 2007, www.the independent.co.uk/news/americas/hillary (accessed December 21, 2008). 48. www.blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2008/02/complete (accessed December 26, 2008). 49. Ibid. 50. Tom Shales. “In Debate, the Clear Loser is ABC,” The Washington Post, April 17, 2008, C1. 51. “Transcript: Obama and Clinton Debate,” ABC News, April 16, 2008, www .abcnews.go.com (accessed December 28, 2008).

5 The Many and Varied Media Messages

“If I were a campaign consultant, the first piece of advice I would give my candidate is, ‘Every time you walk into a room, every time that you stand on a podium, every face you see is a journalist. Forget about it. There’s no such thing as off-the-record anymore. Any moment, anything you say, anywhere, to anybody is likely to end up on YouTube.’”1

In this media saturated society, it would be an oversight to document the political efforts of any rhetor without including the media coverage of them. Indeed, the media has become a crucial, and often the most compelling aspect of the presidential election process. Candidates must astutely utilize all forms of media—television, radio, magazines, newspapers, and the relatively new, yet undeniably powerful Internet to deliver their messages to the masses. Campaigns often strategize to receive as much coverage of their candidates as possible. Even novel forms of media usage, such as late night comedy programs, satirical political shows, music television programs, Facebook, and Twitter have become attractive media outlets for politicians to showcase their agendas and more often to reveal glimpses of their personalities in the hope that viewers will find them attractive political choices. In short, the press plays a big role in how we think about candidates and often shapes public perception about them. In an essay that appeared in the National Review, John O’Sullivan noted that the media often unfairly favors one candidate over another.2 In contrast, Pam Frost Gorder in Ohio State University Research News noted that “people see bias when coverage does not reflect their views” and “research has shown that the news media aren’t consistently biased against any political party.”3 Yet a significant amount of evidence suggests that in the case 77

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of the 2008 presidential election, Barack Obama was a favorite candidate among the media and the bias in favor of him created an automatic bias against the other candidates, including Hillary Clinton, the candidate in a hotly fought battle against Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination. When the press focuses on personal characteristics and sensational topics, it robs voters of substantive material that should be part of their decision making process, and this chapter will show that much of the media coverage pertaining to Hillary Clinton focused on her personal characteristics and trivial topics. It wills how that the media overslaugh Hillary Clinton in favor of Barack Obama. Moreover, women candidates have historically been victimized by media coverage that minimizes the political and emphasizes the personal. National Public Radio (NPR) commentator Alicia C. Shepard noted that the press was more likely to call Hillary Clinton “Mrs. Clinton, and not giving her the same respect as Senator McCain or Senator Obama. I felt there were subtle things that the press did with language that were disrespectful. The focus on her clothing wasn’t something that you would see in the way men are covered. Just recently on NPR they talked about Senator Clinton returning to the Senate, ‘looking splendid in a turquoise pant suit.’”4 Erika Falk in her book Women for President: Media Bias in Eight Campaigns points to “role conflict” as a major contributor to women’s low rate of [political] candidacy.5 How the media perpetuates role conflict by its coverage of women candidates is also problematic for women candidates. Hillary Clinton presented an even more curious media persona than perhaps any other woman running for a political office since she served as first lady, a role steeped in traditional female mores, and was attempting to win the presidency, a position with a singular masculine tradition. Nevertheless, all candidates in every election face negative coverage, and this chapter will describe the media interpretations—both positive and negative—of 2008 and consider how Hillary Clinton’s candidacy may have been affected by them. One survey found that once the nominees were named more than three times as many Americans saw a media tilt in favor of Barack Obama than toward Republican John McCain. A Rasmussen Reports telephone survey released July 21, 2008, of 1,000 likely voters, “found that 49 percent of voters believe most reporters will try to help Barack Obama with their coverage, up from 44 percent a month ago,” compared to a piddling 14 percent who “believe most reporters will try to help John McCain win” while “just one voter in four (24 percent) believes that most reporters will try to offer unbiased coverage.”6 During the primary race, an unprecedented amount of press for Barack Obama also called into question whether or not the media was so enthralled with Obama that any coverage of Hillary Clinton would seem biased, or at least lacking by comparison. The website gawker.com

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facetiously noted that “if you have a magazine, Barack Obama is probably on the cover of it.”7 Saturday Night Live offered a skit mocking a CNN debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. An actress impersonating CNN anchor Campbell Brown gushed, Like nearly everyone in the news media, the three of us are totally in the tank for Senator Obama. Now let’s meet the candidates. Just four years ago, Barack Obama was known only as a brilliant, charismatic and universally admired member of the Illinois State Senate. Today he is one of our nation’s truly visionary leaders. And soon, knock on wood, the first black president of the United States.8

While this was a parody and was enormously entertaining, there is evidence to support the media tilt in favor of Barack Obama. For example, in 2008, Obama appeared on the cover of Time magazine fourteen times since January 1. Newsweek was close behind, featuring the now-president on twelve of its issues. Time had fifty-two issues in 2008, so Obama was featured on more than one-in-four of its covers, or about 27 percent of the time. That number, though, goes even higher if you include how many times Obama has appeared in the “skybox”—eleven times. That means Obama’s face or name somehow made it onto the cover of Time just about half of the time in 2008 (twenty-five out of fifty-two issues—48 percent).9 During the election, television news was most critical of Hillary Clinton, while Barack Obama and Mike Huckabee were the biggest media favorites, according to a study conducted by the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA) at George Mason University. The study also found that Fox News Channel’s evening news show provided more balanced coverage than its counterparts on the broadcast networks. These results are from CMPA’s 2008 ElectionNewsWatch Project and are based on a scientific content analysis of all 481 election news stories (fifteen hours forty minutes of airtime) that aired on the flagship evening news shows on ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX (the first thirty minutes of “Special Report with Brit Hume”) from October 1 through December 15, 2007. On-air evaluations of Hillary Clinton were nearly three to two negative (42 percent positive vs. 58 percent negative comments), while evaluations of her closest competitor Barack Obama was better than three to two positive (61 percent positive vs. 39 percent negative). John Edwards attracted much less coverage, but his evaluations were two to one positive (67 percent positive vs. 33 percent negative). Hillary Clinton was evaluated more often than all her Democratic opponents combined. The study cited the following examples: “Critics say her best known Senate vote, on Iraq, was driven by politics, not by principle.”—Andrea Mitchell, NBC

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“She was widely blamed for a health care policy so secretive and complex it died at birth.”—Major Garrett, FOX10 John F. Harris and Jim Vandehei asked: “Are journalists not merely observers but participants in the Obama phenomenon?11

When it came to covering Hillary Clinton in the media, there were several stories that gained what political scientist Larry Sabato has termed a “feeding frenzy” state. In his book, Feeding Frenzy: Attack Journalism and American Politics, Sabato notes that “the press prefers to employ titillation rather than scrutiny; as a result, its political coverage produces trivialization rather than enlightenment.”12 Glenn Kranzley, a thirty-year veteran newspaper writer and an editor for the opinion pages of the Allentown, Pennsylvania, Morning Call newspaper, said, I think the American people are still trying to decide how much of an issue race is when they think about the new president and public life more broadly. This was true during the presidential campaign and it still is true. The news media so far haven’t been much help because editors and broadcasters still seem to be feeling their way. Regarding job performance and policy, I don’t think race enters the analysis; at least, it should not. Just as they say there’s no such thing as a Republican pothole or Democratic streetlight, the race of the executive in charge shouldn’t affect the wisdom of his or her policy. I do think that a lot of people, perhaps even journalists, are going to pull their punches when they speak in public or on the record to criticize the new president. At least, they will express themselves in ways so as not to appear to be petty or even racist. I heard from people in the days after the Jan. 20, 2009, inaugural who said exactly that.13

Shortly before Hillary Clinton conceded the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama, Washington Post syndicated columnist Marie Cocco wrote a scathing editorial that accused the media of misogyny toward Hillary Clinton. She wrote: I will not miss seeing advertisements for T-shirts that bear the slogan “Bros before Hos.” The shirts depict Barack Obama (the Bro) and Hillary Clinton (the Ho) and are widely sold on the Internet. I will not miss walking past airport concessions selling the Hillary Nutcracker, a device in which a pantsuit-clad Clinton doll opens her legs to reveal stainless-steel thighs that, well, bust nuts. I won’t miss television and newspaper stories that make light of the novelty item. The airwaves will at last be free of comments that liken Clinton to a “she-devil” (Chris Matthews on MSNBC, who helpfully supplied an on-screen mock-up of Clinton sprouting horns). Or those who offer that she’s “looking like everyone’s first wife standing outside a probate court” (Mike Barnicle, also on MSNBC).14

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Marie Cocco cited several other cases of bias against Hillary Clinton specifically and all women generally and then summed up her article by noting: There are many reasons Clinton is losing the nomination contest, some having to do with her strategic mistakes, others with the groundswell for “change.” But for all Clinton’s political blemishes, the darker stain that has been exposed is the hatred of women that is accepted as a part of our culture.15

On the social networking site Facebook, several groups formed specifically to ridicule Hillary Clinton’s presidential aspirations. One group was called “Hillary Stop Running for President and Make Me a Sandwich” and another was called “The Hillary Clinton Deathwatch.” On late night television, comedians resurrected jokes about Hillary Clinton’s husband’s philandering ways to entertain their audiences. As Hillary Clinton was preparing to become Secretary of State in Barack Obama’s administration, comic Jay Leno noted: The largest donor at the Clinton Library turns out to be Saudi Arabia. Yeah. Yeah. Well, some critics argue that such close financial ties to the Mideast could be a conflict of interest. However, Hillary Clinton says she will not advocate Arab policies. Except, you know the practice of stoning adulterers.16

Joshua Green published a thorough account of what went wrong in Hillary Clinton’s campaign in Atlantic Monthly magazine, titled “The Frontrunner’s Fall.” Though her campaign was history making and her ability to win almost eighteen million votes17 significant, the most notable aspect of her campaign that lingered in the media was that she lost. That the media cast most of Hillary Clinton’s campaign in a negative light was summed up in this article by Green.18 It was also evident on the cover of the March 17, 2008, issue of Time magazine, which was the only Time magazine cover to feature Hillary Clinton as the main subject in 2008. On the cover, an ebullient photo of a clapping Hillary Clinton is pictured after her Ohio and Texas primary victories, and the headline “The Fighter” following by the cautious line: “How she came back—and why it could be too late.” On the same cover is a small photo of Barack Obama’s head with the title, “Why Obama is Tougher Than He Looks.”19 Even after a big victory for Hillary Clinton, Time magazine cautioned the public that, in effect, the win won’t help Hillary Clinton in the long run. The media were overly critical of her, downplayed her victories, and ultimately cast her campaign as a failure, even though she came closer to the presidency than any other woman in American history. Though not the first woman running for president to receive less media coverage than her

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counterparts, her fame makes her an interesting politician to consider when analyzing her media coverage as a presidential candidate. Erika Falk in her book Women for President; Media Bias in Eight Campaigns notes “although many women have run for president, lackluster press coverage of their campaigns has contributed to the fact that few women are aware of these candidacies, making a female presidential candidacy seem less normative and more difficult.”20 Unlike most of the women who ran for president, Hillary Clinton has an extensive relationship with the press that predates her presidential bid. For that reason, how the media portrayed her in the press is of unique interest. Howard Wolfson, communication director in her 2000 Senate campaign and 2008 campaign for president, noted, “Putting Hillary in formats where she could speak at length before a live audience—shows like ‘The View’ and ‘The Letterman Show’, any chances where she could come into the living room and show who she was—were very positive for us.”21 This is a media strategy that Hillary Clinton has used since her pre–first lady days when she first appeared on national television as the wife of then presidential candidate Bill Clinton who was accused of extramarital affairs. Appearing alongside her husband on the CBS news program, 60 Minutes, Hillary Clinton made a direct appeal to American voters on behalf of her husband. From her “YouTube” style announcement for president speech to her appearances on Saturday Night Live, Hillary Clinton continued to make those personal media appeals in an effort this time, to win the White House, not for her husband, but for herself.

A MEDIA SENSATION FROM THE START The day after Hillary Clinton’s Internet announcement that she would seek the presidency, she appeared at a New York medical clinic to make a speech about her health care plan. She wanted to begin her race with a discussion about how health care needed to be reformed in America. Reflecting her new status as a leading presidential contender, the room was packed with media—some two dozen television camera crews jockeyed for position with scores of reporters from as far away as Germany. Photographers waited outside in chilly temperatures for over an hour to snap pictures of Clinton’s arrival.22 The fact that Hillary Clinton’s presidential race would cause a lot of media interest was not surprising. Hillary Clinton received a lot of press coverage, however, the coverage she received often focused on negative aspects of her; including her laugh (called the Clinton Cackle), her tendency to clap her hands, and even once, her hint of cleavage. While the press went into “auto pilot” and forcefully criticized the former first lady, the press was less comfortable about taking the first African

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American front runner to task for almost anything. Communication scholar Robert Watson notes, When women do receive media coverage, it is often through a feminine lens. For example, the media focuses more on her clothing, hair style, family, and other “soft” matters for female candidates than for male candidates. This not only does little to make a woman appear to be commander-in-chief material, but makes it even more difficult for her to get her message across.23

Political communication scholar Dianne Bystrom notes that “women forging new political ground often struggle to receive media coverage and legitimacy in the eyes of the media and, subsequently, the public.”24 Indeed, Erika Falk found: “One of the findings of my research is that women receive less media coverage than men, even when we compare losing candidates.”25 Hillary Clinton knew about the special constraints women political candidates face in the media. While she was the first first lady ever to appear on Vogue, she canceled a scheduled cover shoot with the same magazine because her campaign told [editor] Anna Wintour and Vogue that the Clinton campaign was concerned that if Clinton appeared in Vogue that she would appear too feminine. Anna Wintour wrote about Hillary Clinton’s cancellation in her editor’s letter in the February issue of Vogue. Wintour said, Imagine my amazement, then, when I learned that Hillary Clinton, our only female presidential hopeful, had decided to steer clear of our pages at this point in her campaign for fear of looking too feminine. The notion that a contemporary woman must look mannish in order to be taken seriously as a seeker of power is frankly dismaying. How has our culture come to this? How is it that The Washington Post recoils from the slightest hint of cleavage on a senator? This is America, not Saudi Arabia. It’s also 2008: [former British Prime Minister] Margaret Thatcher may have looked terrific in a blue power suit, but that was 20 years ago. I do think Americans have moved on from the powersuit mentality, which served as a bridge for a generation of women to reach boardrooms filled with men. Political campaigns that do not recognize this are making a serious misjudgment.26

While Hillary Clinton shied away from appearing on Vogue, in an effort to not appear too feminine, her rival, Barack Obama, not only appeared on the unprecedented number of Time magazine covers, but also on the cover of Men’s Vogue, GQ, People, Vanity Fair, Rolling Stone, Ebony, and Vibe magazines. It was difficult to go to a magazine stand without seeing Barack Obama peering out from multiple covers. Vogue magazine editor Anna Wintour’s mention of The Washington Post refers to a July 20, 2007, Washington Post Style section headlined “Hillary Clinton’s Tentative Dip Into New Neckline Territory,” in which staff writer Robin Givhan wrote that “[t]here was cleavage on display Wednesday afternoon on C-SPAN2. It belonged to Sen. Hillary Clinton.” Givhan further asserted that

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Clinton’s look was “unnerving” and claimed: “The last time Clinton wore anything that was remotely sexy in a public setting surely must have been more than a decade ago.” Givhan added, “[I]t was more like catching a man with his fly unzipped. Just look away!”27 This coverage “through a feminine lens” has been a major part of the media coverage of Hillary Rodham Clinton throughout her public life, and her presidential campaign was no exception. Hillary Rodham debuted in the national press when she appeared in Life magazine in 1969 after being the first student at Wellesley College to make a commencement speech. To be sure, Hillary Clinton, presidential candidate, was not a media neophyte. To the contrary, Hillary Clinton was a media sophisticate who communication scholar Colleen Kelley argues framed “herself as the most important story and calling media attention to herself.” In effect, Kelley notes, “Hillary Clinton forced the Clintons’ critics, including other political actors such as Ken Starr and Congress, to see that who she was and what she said and did was as significant as what her husband was doing.” She argues that Hillary Clinton “controlled at least a portion of the media’s agenda, which further empowered the First Lady as an agent of influence.”28 By refusing to pose for the Vogue cover as a presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton was attempting to manage her public image and to de-emphasize her feminine side, a strategy that has been proven successful for women seeking office. “Female candidates who ultimately won had discussed issues more frequently—taxes, health care, senior citizen issues, and women’s issues, in particular—and emphasized being aggressive/a fighter more often than other candidates,”29 according to Dianne Bystrom. Throughout her campaign for president, Hillary Clinton was the subject of countless articles that appeared ubiquitously on the Internet, as fodder for late night comedians, in actress Amy Poehler’s Saturday Night Live recreations, and in the mainstream media. Like all successful politicians, Hillary Clinton attempted to manage her media image. She was careful about backing out of the Vogue cover shoot, she joined in the fun and appeared on Saturday Night Live, she tried to make as many personal, direct appeals as possible, and she likely did many other things with an eye toward how the press would cover it. Her husband, former president Bill Clinton, caused a media sensation of his own, often looking and sounding more like a politicaster than a dignitary, which will also be considered in this chapter.

MAJOR MEDIA MOMENTS OF THE HILLARY CLINTON PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN A unique media phenomenon that gained attention during the Hillary Clinton presidential race was the Apple-computer inspired homage that

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created a frenzy on the Internet and was written about in print media and rebroadcast in electronic media. The YouTube video garnered over five and a half million hits and over 45,000 people logged on to post a comment as of January 2009. In the video, which appeared in March of 2007, The San Francisco Chronicle notes, It may be the most stunning and creative attack ad yet for a 2008 presidential candidate—one experts say could represent a watershed moment in 21st century media and political advertising. Yet the groundbreaking 74-second pitch for Democratic Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, which remixes the classic “1984” ad that introduced Apple computers to the world, is not on cable or network TV, but on the Internet.30

Although the video featured the Obama campaign logo at the end, Barack Obama’s campaign denied any responsibility for the production. The YouTube video is an updated version of director Ridley Scott’s provocative Apple Computer ad that created a stir when it premiered at the 1984 Super Bowl. It depicts a young blond female athlete running with a sledgehammer toward a large video screen. She is listening to an iPod and has Obama’s logo on her tank top as she runs toward the screen featuring Hillary Clinton as the Big Brother character. The commercial warns: “On January 14, the Democratic primary will begin. And you’ll see why 2008 won’t be like 1984.” The Apple symbol has been transformed into an O and the tagline reads: BarackObama.com. The YouTube ad received over 45,000 hits as of February 2009. Another media moment during the presidential bid of Hillary Clinton involved the neckline of her clothing written about by Robin Givhan of the Washington Post. The story had legs, so to speak, and ended up in the Miami Herald, the New York Times, and all over the political blogosphere. So distracting was the story, that Hillary Clinton’s campaign sent a fundraising email out from top campaign official Ann Lewis to supporters in response to the Washington Post story noting, “Frankly, focusing on women’s bodies instead of their ideas is insulting,” and urged readers to “take a stand against this kind of coarseness and pettiness in American culture. And take a stand for Hillary, the most experienced, most qualified candidate running for president.”31 But by then, what was done, was done and the story took on a life of its own in the media. Electronically manipulated photos of a scantily clad Hillary Clinton were ubiquitous across the Internet and Media Matters documented that MSNBC devoted a total of twenty-three minutes and forty-two seconds to segments discussing Hillary Clinton’s cleavage on July 30, 2007, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. During the same time period, CNN devoted three minutes and fifty-four seconds to the coverage of her cleavage, while Fox News devoted none. 32 Givhan, in her Washington Post article expressed amazement at the show of cleavage, especially, as she noted: “it wasn’t until the early 1990s that women were even allowed to wear pants

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on the Senate floor. It was even more surprising to note that it was coming from Clinton, someone who has been so publicly ambivalent about style, image and the burdens of both.”33 The website gawker.com tried to defend Givhan’s piece as more high minded by postulating that “Ms. Givhan’s piece uses the neckline as a tool with which to examine Mrs. Clinton’s uneasy use of femininity throughout her public life.”34 Indeed, Givhan did review Hillary Clinton’s most memorable fashion moments. She said, The last time Clinton wore anything that was remotely sexy in a public setting surely must have been more than a decade ago, during Bill Clinton’s first term in office when she was photographed wearing a black Donna Karan gown that revealed her shoulders. It was one of Karan’s “cold-shoulder” dresses, inspired, Karan once noted, because a woman’s shoulders remain sensuous and appealing regardless of her age. Her second inaugural gown was by Oscar de la Renta. The original version of the gold lace dress had cap sleeves and a wide, jewel neckline. Clinton altered it so that it had long sleeves and a high, almost Victorian collar. When she appeared on the cover of the December 1998 issue of Vogue, just after the Monica Lewinsky scandal had peaked, she wore another de la Renta gown, this one with a boat neck and long sleeves. She looked glamorous, regal and defiant. But one was not even tempted to mention the s-word.35

Givhan even compared Hillary Clinton’s show of cleavage to that of British home secretary Jacqui Smith’s, noting that Hillary Clinton’s cleavage was more “unnerving” because it was so subtle, but Smith’s was a bold and confident “style package.” No sooner did the uproar over her necklines simmer down in the media when her laugh became the subject of media inquiry. On September 23, 2007, Hillary Clinton appeared on five morning political programs. In response to several questions and comments by her interviewers, she laughed a hearty laugh. For example, during her appearance on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace he asked why she and her husband have such a “hyperpartisan” view of politics. Hillary Clinton’s response was a big smile and a hearty laugh. After several other appearances and similar reactions from Hillary Clinton that same day on other news programs, a story appeared a few days later in the New York Times titled “Laughing Matter in Clinton Campaign.”36 In the article, Patrick Healy wrote: It was January, 2005, and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton had just finished a solemn speech about abortion rights—urging all sides to find “common ground” on the issue, and referring to abortion as “a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women.” Stepping offstage, she took questions from reporters, and found herself being grilled about whether she was moderating her own pro-choice position. And suddenly it happened: Mrs. Clinton let loose a hearty belly laugh that lasted a few seconds. Reporters glanced at one another as if we’d missed the joke.37

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Hillary Clinton’s friends, according to the Healy article, explain that Hillary Clinton has an impressive sense of humor that may be slightly sarcastic and “instead of alienating Iowans who might not vote for edginess, Mrs. Clinton goes for the lowest-common-denominator display of her funny bone: She shows that she can laugh, and that her laugh has a fullness and depth.” Healy went on to note: The weirdest moment was with Bob Schieffer on the CBS News program Face the Nation when Mr. Schieffer said to Mrs. Clinton, “You rolled out your new health care plan, something Republicans immediately said is going to lead to socialized medicine.” She giggled, giggled some more, and then could not seem to stop giggling—“Sorry, Bob,” she said—and finally unleashed the full Cackle. The Schieffer moment seemed particularly calculated because Mrs. Clinton has most certainly not laughed in other settings when she has been accused of pursuing socialized medicine. She faced that accusation at a forum in Las Vegas this summer, for instance; she turned frosty and traded barbs with the audience member who made the assertion. It was clearly no laughing matter there.

The “Clinton Cackle” took on a life of its own on political programs. Jon Stewart of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart presented a montage of Hillary Clinton hyperglast, and the blogosphere picked up on the story with dozens of articles making fun of Hillary Clinton’s laugh. One blog article called it “Clinton’s Calculated Cackle” and the Los Angeles Times invited readers to blog their responses to the question, “How do you feel about the Hillary Clinton Laugh?” On Huffingtonpost.com, Milton Friedberg asked: “Clinton’s Cackle: Who the @#*& Cares?” One industrious marketing company even promoted “The Hillary Clinton Laughing Pen” that included a moveable mouth and a “medley of the New York Senator’s actual chortles, snorts and guffaws digitally recorded.”38 The Boston Globe entered the conversation about Hillary Clinton’s laugh with an article that began: “Hens cackle. So do witches. And, so does the front-runner in the Democratic presidential contest.”39 YouTube offers many variations of the Clinton laugh, Matt Drudge posted a sound clip of it, and Fox News anchor Sean Hannity questioned whether Hillary Clinton’s laugh seemed “presidential.” John Dickerson of Slate.com posited that Clinton needs to ditch the laugh because it has become her tell. Like all poker players, politicians have a sign that they’re bluffing. For Newt Gingrich, the tell was when he said “frankly.” Dick Cheney uses that same word to dissemble, too. “In all candor” is another signal that a hedge is coming. Nixon had lots of tells—his tense smile, the pod of sweat on his upper lip—it was as if his tiny little truth instinct was trying to break free any way it could.40

Though all politicians are parodied to a greater or lesser degree through the sale of novelty items, the Hillary Nutcracker and voodoo dolls were

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more sinister tchotchkes than appeared on the shelves depicting Barack Obama. When Hillary Clinton was first lady, Garry Wills wrote: “Hillary Hate is a large-scale phenomenon. At the Republican convention there was a dismemberments doll for sale. For twenty dollars you could buy a rag doll Hillary with arms and legs made to tear off and throw on the floor.”41 As if a knee-jerk reaction to Hillary Clinton, her presidential race offered a rebirth to companies producing items of mockery against her. Still, not all signs of press were negative. The New York Times offered this ringing endorsement of a Hillary Clinton presidency. As Democrats look ahead to the primaries in the biggest states on February 5, The Times’ editorial board strongly recommends that they select Hillary Clinton as their nominee for the 2008 presidential election. By choosing Mrs. Clinton, we are not denying Mr. Obama’s appeal or his gifts. The idea of the first African-American nominee of a major party also is exhilarating, and so is the prospect of the first woman nominee. “Firstness” is not a reason to choose. The times that false choice has been raised, more often by Mrs. Clinton, have tarnished the campaign. Mr. Obama has built an exciting campaign around the notion of change, but holds no monopoly on ideas that would repair the governing of America. Mrs. Clinton sometimes overstates the importance of résumé. Hearing her talk about the presidency, her policies and answers for America’s big problems, we are hugely impressed by the depth of her knowledge, by the force of her intellect and by the breadth of, yes, her experience.42

Many of the negative stories represent media feeding frenzies, since “a critical mass of journalists [leaped] to cover the same embarrassing or scandalous subject and pursue[d] it intensely, often excessively and sometimes uncontrollably.”43 No doubt these stories impacted on the presidential bid of Hillary Clinton. Candidate commercials also represent a significant part of the media impact of any political campaign. The most significant commercial that Hillary Clinton ran was dubbed “the red phone ad.” In late February 2008, Hillary Clinton launched a television commercial that hit the airwaves just before the Texas primary that asked voters whom they wanted answering the White House red phone at 3 a.m., while their children slept. The ad featured images of innocently sleeping children and a stoic-voiced announcer: “It’s 3 a.m., and your children are safe and asleep. But there’s a phone in the White House, and it’s ringing. Your vote will decide who answers that call,” the announcer says. “Who do you want answering the phone?” The Clinton campaign attempts to elicit fear. The haunting ringing sound continues throughout the commercial as the announcer reminds voters that they live in a “dangerous world.” It is up to them to determine whether they choose a leader who already has national security experience—Clinton—

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or not—Obama. At the end of the spot, the narrator repeats the line “It’s 3 a.m., and your children are safe and asleep,” but this time poses this question: “Who do you want answering the phone?” Then the commercial shows an image of Mrs. Clinton, wearing eyeglasses, answering a telephone in a darkened room. The ad debuted the same day as Hillary Clinton held a rally in Waco, Texas, with war veterans. The commercial brought back memories of the infamous “Daisy” television ad that President Lyndon Johnson ran against Barry Goldwater in 1964, which opens with a little girl picking flower petals and ends with a mushroom cloud. Others recalled a similar ad for Walter Mondale in 1984. Barack Obama’s campaign quickly produced its own version of the red-phone ad, also featuring sleeping children, hammering home his “judgment and courage” to oppose the Iraq war. The red phone ad was quickly picked up by media pundits and Internet websites and widely broadcast. Saturday Night Live parodied the commercial and it functioned as an eleventh hour emergency attack of the front-runner candidate. The claim by Hillary Clinton that she was the most experienced choice for president and that she would be ‘ready on day one’ (even at 3 a.m. in a business suit, answering the phone), was put forward in this campaign commercial. Campaigning for his wife in Texas, just before the primary, Bill Clinton told crowds: “If she wins Texas and Ohio I think she will be the nominee. If you don’t deliver for her, I don’t think she can be. It’s all on you.”44 Hillary Rodham Clinton did go on to win both the Ohio and Texas primaries, however, she did not, as her husband predicted, become the nominee. Another influential factor in the presidential efforts of Hillary Clinton was the media’s portrayal of her husband Bill Clinton’s campaign efforts. For as long as the office of first lady has been in existence, the press and public have opined on the ‘proper’ and most helpful role a first lady could have. A major function of the first family is to offer the public a more intimate portrait of the candidate than is possible from a candidate’s solo campaign appearances. A spouse could enhance the image of the candidate by implicitly arguing that if the candidate was smart enough to choose such a smart, attractive, and engaging spouse, he or she must be a good choice as a candidate. Most recently, writer Curtis Sittenfeld based a fiction novel, The American Wife, on First Lady Laura Bush being the ideal first lady. She is considered ideal for her charm, beauty, and “appropriate” sphere of influence with respect to her husband’s administration. Sittenfeld drew from Ann Gerhart’s biography The Perfect Wife: The Life and Choices of Laura Bush where young Laura is described as “steady, smart and quiet.”45 Attributes that would serve her, or any first lady well.

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But we never had a male “first spouse” and so there was no script for Bill Clinton. He certainly wasn’t “steady and quiet.” The same cautious presentation of self that seems to be part of every woman’s life when her husband is a presidential hopeful was conspicuously absent from the comportment of Bill Clinton on the campaign trail. In some ways both Bill and Hillary Clinton were each other’s strongest campaign asset and greatest liability. For example, though Hillary Clinton functioned as an important behind the scenes advisor to her husband and public defender, she often drew criticism for her independent reputation and her lack of traditional female subordinance still expected of first ladies. She was, as she has proven now, her husband’s political equal. Bill Clinton brought his wife, by marriage, international name recognition. Young Hillary Rodham was on a trajectory to accomplish much on her own, but there is no way to predict if she would have risen to international prominence had she not been Mrs. Bill Clinton. In addition, Bill Clinton, having been a former president, had political experience that was invaluable to Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate. Yet both Hillary and Bill Clinton’s communication as spouses caused distraction and even difficulty for each other. Suffice to say, former President Bill Clinton had a difficult time finding his voice as the supporting and pitch-perfect spouse. Though he hit just the right note in his scripted remarks about Hillary Clinton at the Democratic National Convention in August, his presidential aplomb was missing for most of the campaign trail. At the convention, he said: What a year we Democrats have had. The primary began with an all-star lineup. And it came down to two remarkable Americans locked in a hardfought contest right to the very end. That campaign generated so much heat, it increased global warming. Now, in the end, my candidate didn’t win. But I’m really proud of the campaign she ran. I am proud that she never quit on the people she stood up for, on the changes she pushed for, on the future she wanted for all our children. And I’m grateful for the chance Chelsea and I had to go all over America to tell people about the person we know and love.46

Before that eloquent moment, he was known more for his red-faced rants with the media. In September 2006, before Hillary Clinton’s campaign even started, Bill Clinton became furious with Fox News’ Chris Wallace, when Wallace asked him why he didn’t put Bin Laden “out of business.” Still upset about the portrayal of his administration’s handling of the Osama bin Laden threat and Al-Qaida in an ABC docudrama, The Path to 9/11, the question hit a nerve that resulted in Bill Clinton turning red-faced, leaning forward, and waving his pointed finger in the face of Chris Wallace. Although Bill Clinton had been receiving very laudatory press for his admirable work on Clinton’s Global Initiative Conference, and he seemed

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to repair his legacy after the drama over the Monica Lewinsky affair, this television appearance drew much press attention and portrayed the former president as unpresidential and hot-headed. The efforts that Bill Clinton made to improve his ethos after his presidency, his beautiful, lengthy autobiography, his many speeches, his placement of his office in Harlem, and his philanthropic globe-trotting with former president George H. W. Bush had begun to unravel every time he opened his mouth immediately preceding and during his wife’s presidential bid. In December 2007, PBS’s Charlie Rose pressed Bill Clinton on Barack Obama’s experience and Bill Clinton said that Barack Obama’s lack of experience is a “roll of the dice” for the American people. He said, “When is the last time we elected a president based on one year of service in the Senate before he started running?”47 In January 2008, at a Hillary Clinton campaign event, Bill Clinton called Obama’s antiwar record “the biggest fairytale” he had ever seen and later that month at a campaign event he had a heated exchange with a campaign reporter and reprimanded the reporter for being accusatory. A week later a CNN reporter raised the claim that the Clintons have distorted Barack Obama’s record and Bill Clinton ended the exchange red-faced and scolding “shame on you.” After Barack Obama won the South Carolina primary, Bill Clinton remarked: “Jesse Jackson won South Carolina in 1984 and 1988. Jackson ran a good campaign. And Obama ran a good campaign here.”48 Bill Clinton simply could not find it within himself to be a gracious surrogate to his wife. He was supposed to be “the natural” and a great asset to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and though it cannot be said that he is the reason for her loss, his flamboyant campaigning did not do her any favors. If anything, it distracted the campaign and took the media spotlight away from Hillary Clinton and on to Bill. It begged the question: “If she can’t control him, how can she run the country?” In summary, the media coverage of a candidate matters. Specifically the amount and the substance of it. In the presidential bid of Hillary Clinton, there was less press for her than her biggest rival, Barack Obama. She was no newcomer to the press, and Hillary Clinton has always had a complicated relationship with the press. From her first months as first lady when she barred the door that for a quarter-century gave press access to the West Wing of the White House—to her unprecedented bid for the presidency— she has both needed the press and wished they would disappear. When Hillary Clinton made her presidential bid announcement in January 2007, she was the first woman to enter a presidential race as a front runner. According to Erika Falk, a December 2006 poll by the Gallup Organization reported that respondents named Senator Clinton most often (33 percent) as their choice for the Democratic nomination. Senator Barack Obama, who entered the race four days before Clinton, was named second (20 percent).

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Even though Clinton polled better than Obama, in the month in which both candidates announced they would run for president the top six circulating papers in the United States ran fifty-nine stories that mentioned Obama in the headline and just thirty-six that mentioned Clinton.49 Two themes emerge from this analysis of media coverage. First, how much coverage a candidate receives influences the perceptions of the public. Second, how the media frames the candidate; what they say about her, how they say it, and what images accompany the text matter. In this day of media punditry and satire, we must also consider fake news programs as potentially influential and even amateur produced Internet commercials and YouTube videos have potential influence. Determining whether or not Hillary Clinton was given fair treatment in the press is especially tricky since she was not a tabula rasa on the media scene. Her residual messages from her first ladyship and the relationship she had forged with the media years earlier came into play when she ran for president. The media knew all about her—maybe too much—and were quick to respond in a knee-jerk reaction to her, that is to criticize her more instead of taking part, along with the American public of discovering who she is, as they seemed to do with Barack Obama. In addition, the tendency of the media to focus on trivial characteristics of women candidates in a way that male candidates have avoided, worked against the presidential bid of Hillary Clinton. “I’ve always met more discrimination being a woman than being black,”50 Shirley Chisholm told the Associated Press in December 1982, shortly before she left Washington to teach at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. “When I ran for the Congress, when I ran for president, I met more discrimination as a woman than for being black. Men are men.”51 Sadly, these observations about the political climate in the 1970s seem apt for the 2008 election. As Glenna Matthews concluded in her book The Rise of the Public Woman: “A woman will take her place alongside of pubic man only after the last residue of such unequal treatment has been obliterated.”52

NOTES 1. Steven V. Roberts. “The News About the News in Campaign 2008,” Press/ Politics, 2008, 13(4): 484–99. 2. John O’Sullivan. “The Limits of Media Bias: Try as They Might, They Couldn’t Put Kerry over the Top,” National Review, volume 56, issue 22, November 29, 2004, 46. 3. Pam Frost Gorder. “This Political News Is Biased? Depends Who You Ask,” The Ohio State University Research News, April 7, 2004, http://researchnews.osu. edu (accessed January 11, 2009). 4. Steven V. Roberts. “The News About the News in Campaign 2008,” Press/ Politics, 2008, 13(4): 484–99.

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5. Erika Falk. Women for President: Media Bias in Eight Campaigns (Urbana: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 5. 6. Rasmussen Reports, “Belief Growing that Reporters are Helping Obama Win,” July 21, 2008, www.rasmussenreports.com (accessed January 11, 2008). 7. Pareene. “Barack Obama: More Popular than Jesus, Angelina Jolie,” www .gawker.com, June 25, 2008 (accessed January 13, 2009). 8. Noel Sheppard. “SNL Debate Moderators ‘Totally in the Tank’ for Obama,” Media Research Center “NewsBusters,” February 24, 2008, www.newsbusters.org/ blogs/noel-sheppard/2008/02/24/snl-cnn-debate-moderators-totally-tank-senator -obama (accessed February 23, 2009). 9. Domenico Montanaro. “Obama Appeared on Half of Time Covers,” www .firstread.wmsnbc.com, December 17, 2008 (accessed January 13, 2009). 10. “Election Study Finds Media Hit Hillary Hardest; Obama, Huckabee Fare Best; FOX Is Most Balanced,” Center for Media and Public Affairs, George Mason University, December 21, 2007, www.cmpa.com (accessed February 6, 2009). 11. John F. Harris and Jim Vandhei. “Obama’s Secret Weapon: The media,” Politico, April 18, 2008, 7:05 EDT. www.Politico.com/news/storie/0408/9718 .html. 12. Larry Sabato. Feeding Frenzy (Baltimore: Lanahan Publishers, 1991), 4. 13. Email correspondence with the author, January 19, 2009. 14. Marie Cocco. “Misogyny I won’t Miss,” The Washington Post, May 15, 2008, A15. 15. Ibid. 16. “Jay Leno,” The New York Times, December 28, 2008, A2. 17. The number of votes that Hillary Clinton received has been described as “eighteen million,” “eighteen and a half million” and “17,493,836.” “Obama’s People,” New York Times Magazine, January 18, 2009. 18. Joshua Green. “The Front-runner’s Fall,” Atlantic Monthly, September 2008. 19. Karen Tumulty and David Von Drehle. “Ready to Rumble; Hillary Clinton has rescued her campaign by getting a lot rougher on Barack Obama. But Democrats worry: How much collateral damage will be done before it is over?” Time, March 17, 2008, 29. 20. Erika Falk. Women for President: Media Bias in Eight Campaigns (Urbana: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 3. 21. Patrick Healy. “Lessons from a First Lady,” The New York Times, July 22, 2008, A16. 22. Beth Fouhy. “Clinton Campaigns at Health Center,” The Winchester (VA) Star, January 22, 2007, AF. 23. Robert P. Watson. “Madam President: Progress, Problems, and Prospects for 2008,” Journal of International Women’s Studies, Volume 8, Issue 1, November 2006, 1–20. 24. Dianne Bystrom. “Advertising, Web Sites, and Media Coverage,” in Gender and Elections; Shaping the Future of American Politics, edited by Susan J. Carrol and Richard L. Fox (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 171. 25. Erika Falk. Women for President: Media Bias in Eight Campaigns (Urbana: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 5. 26. Anna Wintour. “Letter from the Editor,” Vogue, February 2008.

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27. Robin Givhan. “Hillary Clinton’s Tentative Dip Into New Neckline Territory,” The Washington Post, July 20, 2007, C01. 28. Colleen Elizabeth Kelley. The Rhetoric of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton: Crisis Management Discourse. (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), 261. 29. Dianne Bystrom. “Advertising, Web Sites, and Media Coverage,” in Gender and Elections; Shaping the Future of American Politics, edited by Susan J. Carrol and Richard L. Fox (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 180. 30. Carla Marinucco. “Political Video Smackdown: Hillary 1984 Unauthorized Internet ad for Obama converts Apple Computer’s ‘84 Super Bowl spot into a generational howl against Clinton’s presidential bid,” March 16, 2007, www.sfgate .com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/03/18/MNGHNONEPS1.DTL (accessed January 27, 2009). 31. “The US debates Hillary’s cleavage,” July 30, 2007, www.women.times online.co.uk/to/life_and_style/women/the_way_we_live/article216890 (accessed January 21, 2009). 32. “MSNBC cleaves to Clinton neckline coverage controversy,” Media Matters for America, www.mediamatters.org/items200708010003 (accessed January 21, 2009). 33. Robin Givhan. “Hillary Clinton’s Tentative Dip Into New Neckline Territory,” The Washington Post, July 20, 2007, C01. 34. “Hello Cleveland! Hillary Clinton, Has, Shows, Area Between Breasts,” July 20, 2007, www.gawker.com/news/hello-cleaveland!/hillary-clinton-has-shows-area -between-breasts (accessed January 21, 2009). 35. Robin Givhan. “Hillary Clinton’s Tentative Dip Into New Neckline Territory,” The Washington Post, July 20, 2007, C01. 36. Patrick Healy. “Laughing Matters in Clinton Campaign,” The New York Times, September 28, 2007, www.nytimes.com/2007/09/28/us/politics/28web-healyhtml (accessed January 28, 2009). 37. Ibid. 38. “Delightful or Frightful? Hillary Clinton’s Laughter is only a Click Away with the. . . .” Reuters News Service, February 28, 2008, www.reuters.com/article/press Release/idUS261025+28-Feb-2008 (accessed January 28, 2009). 39. Joan Vennochi. “That Clinton Cackle,” Boston Globe, September 30, 2007, www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/open/article/2007/09/30/that_ clinton (accessed January 28, 2009). 40. John Dickerson. “Bwah-Ha-Ha! What’s with Hillary’s Laugh?” Slate.com, September 28, 2007, 5:29 p.m., www.slate.com/id/2174397/ (accessed January 28, 2009). 41. Garry Wills. “A Tale of Two Cities,” New York Review of Books, October 3, 1996, 12. 42. “Primary Choices: Hillary Clinton,” The New York Times, January 25, 2008, www.nytimes.com/2008/01/25/opinion/25fri1.html?emc=eta1 (accessed March 15, 2009). 43. Larry Sabato. Feeding Frenzy (Baltimore: Lanahan Publishers, 1991), 6. 44. Rick Klein and Sarah Amos. “Bill Clinton: Texas Could be Hillary’s Last Stand,” ABC News, February 20, 2009, http://abcnews.go.com/politics/vote2008/ Story?id=4318311&page=1 (accessed March 11, 2009).

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45. Ann Gerhart. The Perfect Wife: The Life and Choices of Laura Bush (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004). 1. 46. “In His Own Words,” The New York Times, August 28, 2008, A23. 47. Patrick Healy. “Bill Clinton Says Obama Isn’t Ready,” The New York Times, December 16, 2007, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A01E0DA11 3EF935A25751C1A9619C8B63 (accessed February 23, 2009). 48. ABC News, “Bubba: Obama Is Just Like Jesse Jackson,” January 26, 2008, 8:18 p.m., www.abcnews.com (accessed February 11, 2009). 49. Erika Falk. Women for President: Media Bias in Eight Campaigns (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2007), 1. 50. James Barron. “Shirley Chisholm ‘Unbossed’ Pioneer in Congress, Dead at 80,” The New York Times, January 3, 2005, www.nytimes.com/2005/03/01obituarie s/03chisholm.html (accessed February 23, 2009). 51. Ibid. 52. Glenna Matthews. The Rise of the Public Woman (Oxford: Oxford Press, 1993), 243.

Conclusion Not Madam President; Madam Secretary

“I entered this race because I have an old-fashioned conviction: that public service is about helping people solve their problems and live their dreams. I’ve had every opportunity and blessing in my own life—and I want the same for all Americans. Until that day comes, you will always find me on the front lines of democracy—fighting for the future.”1

The title of President of the United States brings to mind images of power, leadership, and tradition. In the United States, it also brings to mind the male presence that has been a part of the office since its inception. There have been other women who have run for president: most famously, Victoria Woodhull, Margaret Chase Smith, Shirley Chisholm, Patricia Schroeder, Elizabeth Dole, and Carol Moseley Braun. There can be no doubt that their bids were vital to the study of women and the U.S. presidency, though none of the previous women candidates came close to winning. In contrast, Hillary Clinton began the race for the Democratic nomination for president in 2007 as the front-runner. From polls and the general consensus of pundits it was all but certain that she would win the Democratic nomination. An April 2007 Gallup Poll showed Hillary Clinton as “the dominant presidential front-runner among Democrats nationally, with twice the support as her nearest challenger, Senator Barack Obama.”2 But the race was long, and the nation’s craving for change insatiable, and the eloquent ciceronian Illinois senator who burst onto the national stage in 2004 with an incredibly effective speech at the 2004 Democratic convention caught the imagination of the country. Barack Obama marshaled an impressive amount of natural political talent that reached near perfection by the end of the race. He engineered a disciplined campaign and a viral 97

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grassroots network of support that spread through the nation that no other candidate in American political history could claim. Hillary Clinton, although a tough competitor, was bested for the nomination by Barack Obama. There are many reasons why a candidate does not win an election and communication skills are one. In this increasingly complicated media age, the demands on a candidate’s speech skills go beyond the rudimentary skill of standing behind a podium and delivering a speech. Today’s successful presidential candidate has to be an agile communicator, able to appear on television on late night comedy programs with a level of performance on par with professional actors. Today’s media savvy candidate knows that the Internet is as viable a source of information as any and that the information on the Internet lives on in perpetuity. Campaigns must have the mechanism to respond quickly to Internet movements and visiting as many states and cities, often repeatedly, is vital for the serious presidential candidate. In this global world, successful presidential candidates demonstrate a sophisticated understanding of affairs and relationships with foreign leaders are imperatives. To become a successful woman presidential candidate it means managing the constraints that have kept women from claiming the presidency as well. For the first time, a woman candidate was not judged on her gender before any thing else. For those reasons, it is useful to consider and preserve Hillary Clinton’s campaign efforts and this book shows that, among other things, Hillary Clinton offers rhetorical skills worthy of review.

ELEMENTS OF HILLARY CLINTON’S RHETORIC Rhetorical Elasticity Hillary Clinton has displayed rhetorical multitasking to an extent that no other American woman has achieved, thus prompting a new term for her rhetoric, rhetorical elasticity. A hallmark characteristic of another political woman, Elizabeth Dole, was dubbed rhetorical multitasking.3 Because Hillary Clinton has even gone further to create new spaces for women rhetors in America, a new term, rhetorical elasticity, is presented here. As communication scholar Anne Mattina noted, “long before she met her husband, Hillary Rodham had established herself as a public speaker.”4 She drew review from the national press in 1969 as the first student commencement speaker ever at Wellesley College. After graduating from Yale Law School her public speaking skills were honed during her work as a Congressional legal counsel. As co-founder of the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, she continued to speak in public for the rights of atrisk youth and families. She was the first female chair of the Legal Services

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Corporation and was later named the first female partner at Rose Law Firm. Two times she made the list as one of the hundred most influential lawyers in America. As first lady of Arkansas she used her rhetorical skills to lead a task force to reform Arkansas’s education system. As America’s first lady she stretched the rhetorical constraints of the role of first lady, becoming as important a political actor in her husband’s administration as the president. She went on to run and win elective office as senator from the state of New York; she became the first front-runner woman candidate for the presidency of the United States, and she has been appointed secretary of state in the Obama administration. There is no doubt that Hillary Clinton’s rhetorical story is still unfolding. This book is but one moment in a career of rhetorical events worthy of academic review. “My hopes of the future rest upon the girls. My patriotism clings to the girls. I believe America’s future pivots on this great woman revolution,” wrote the physician Dioclesian Lewis, in 1871, in his book Our Girls, in an effort to redirect girls from “idle pursuits” to something worthy in Victorian America.5 While no one would dispute the positive effects of seeing a woman win the White House, or in this case, almost win the White House, how Hillary Clinton’s long and changing career has impacted the career aspirations of young children, particularly girls, warrants further study. Furthermore, as more women run for the presidency the impact of their races on the future of young politicians will be instructive. All public speakers should recognize that in any speech event there are both long-term and short-term goals. A theme that emerges from the study of women who have sought the presidency, including the campaign of Hillary Clinton, which could be described as a long-term goal of their campaign speaking, is that at the very least, they were making the way easier for the next woman who traveled in their footsteps and the generations of women to follow. In her bid for the presidency, Hillary Clinton was standing on the shoulders of Margaret Chase Smith, Shirley Chisholm, Pat Schroeder, Elizabeth Dole, Carol Moseley Braun, and others who ran for the presidency in the past. The women who follow Hillary Clinton will wisely study her campaign experiences, including her rhetoric, and will stand on her shoulders when they make their efforts to claim the top political prize in the country. As the Hillary Clinton tenure as first lady reshaped the role of the office for other women who will serve, her bid for the presidency offers an instructive guide for other women wishing to expand the sphere of influence and exercise multiple roles in society. The study of Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid is germane to the understanding of the position of contemporary American women who wish to enter a career in politics. More so than any other woman on the national stage today, Hillary Clinton exemplifies a rhetor who has had to manage multiple roles in order to meet the needs of varying

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rhetorical situations. She is the only woman to vie for the presidency whose gender was not the main focus of her candidacy. Public speaking is a skillsbased enterprise that improves with the amount of experience a rhetor has speaking in many different settings. Because of her divergent career, Hillary Clinton continues to define her style as a rhetor, and continues to create a smooth transition over a course of travel that was previously inaccessible to American women. A Feminine Style As first lady she was criticized for not including enough markers of feminine style. For example, Karlyn Kohrs Campbell noted that her keynote speech at a 1993 health care conference “was startling for the absence of any markers of feminine style.”6 As this writing shows, Hillary Clinton’s style of communication changed from her days as first lady and became more self-disclosing, personal, narrative, and feminine. While Kohrs Campbell made the case that the sheer presence of examples, even detailed and moving do not represent feminine style, Hillary Clinton not only used examples in her speeches as a presidential candidate, she did more than change her appearance when she ran for president to appear more feminine than she did in the early 1980s. Kohrs Campbell noted, “she acquired contact lenses, lightened her hair, began to wear more fashionable clothes, and took her husband’s name. If my reading of her public policy discourse is accurate, however, no such change seems to have occurred in her rhetorical style.”7 On January 20, 2007, the day Hillary Clinton launched her video announcement speech on the Internet to tell the world that she was running for president, signs of a feminine style of speech are evident. The setting itself was soft and intimate, self-disclosing and personal—her own living room, replete with personal photographs and artifacts. Her intimate call for “a conversation” instead of “just starting a campaign” were more inclusive and caring than any other candidate’s announcement speech in the race. Hillary Clinton’s transformation was complete. Not just superficial changes that could easily be made with clothing and hairstyle alterations, Hillary Clinton’s persona as a speaker when she ran for president was markedly different than her speaking style as first lady. She used personal experience to reinforce her promise that she would be a good president. That she “grew up in a middle class family in the middle of America,” argued that her lived experienced made her qualified to govern. She could have said, “As a trained lawyer I will fight for you.” Instead, she pointed to hearth and home to argue her qualifications. As she took her campaign to the voters she again used an inclusive, feminine style to make her case. Her first campaign stop was to a health care center in New York where she stood on stage holding the hands of two

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small little girls who rely on the governmental health care assistance from CHIPS. What could cast her more as the nation’s mother than to see her with small children arguing that she should have your vote for president? As Dow and Tonn state, to exhibit feminine style rhetoric, the speaker must do three things: use personal experience to back up claims, politicize the personal, and show the ethic of care.8 In her public speaking throughout the primary race, Hillary Clinton repeatedly demonstrated principles of feminine political rhetoric that included all three elements. Concise Debate Skills Considered the winner by the media of most the debates of the primary season, Hillary Clinton was able to showcase her lawyerly side to great advantage during the debates. Not once was Hillary Clinton at a loss for a precise or confidant answer in a debate, although as history has shown, winning debates is clearly not enough to win an election. She repeatedly reinforced the notion that she was the most experienced candidate. Typical of this argument was the statement: The question I have been posing is, who can actually change the country? And I do believe that my experience over thirty-five years in the private sector as well as the public and the not-for-profit sector, gives me an understanding and an insight into how best to make the changes that we all know we have to see.9

Her debate skills veered from feminine political rhetoric because the arguments that she made were more deductive than those on the campaign trail. However, she softened her arguments with personal examples, evinced in the excerpt above. Debates also offer a more spontaneous glimpse of the candidate’s personality than prepared speeches since they are less scripted, albeit heavily practiced and rehearsed. The many debates of the primary showcased Hillary Clinton’s intelligence and stamina. Media Savvy Hillary Clinton both used the media and was used by the media during her presidential bid. From her sophisticated YouTube-style announcement speech that carefully brought her into the homes of the American voters for an interpersonal chat, to her self-deprecating appearances on Saturday Night Live, Hillary Clinton managed her media messages in ways that demonstrated media savvy. She was also a victim of gender bias in the media. CBS evening news anchor, Katie Couric, who has also been confronted with harsh criticism as the first woman to be the solo anchor of an evening news broadcast, spoke about sexist media coverage of Hillary Clinton.

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Katie Couric posted a video on the CBS website about the coverage of Hillary Clinton. She said, “Like her or not, one of the great lessons of that campaign is the continued—and accepted—role of sexism in American life, particularly in the media.”10 She went on to lament the silence of those who did not speak up against it. Candy Crowley, covering the campaign for CNN, said that for the most part, she did not see a drumbeat of sexism in the daily reporting, “But I certainly did see it in the commentary. It was hard to know if these attacks were being made because she was a woman or because she was this woman or because, for a long time, she was the front-runner.”11 During the primary race, an unprecedented amount of press for Barack Obama also called into question whether or not the media was so enthralled with Obama that any coverage of Hillary Clinton would seem biased, or at least lacking by comparison. The network MSNBC and Republican radio figure Rush Limbaugh were particularly abusive in their coverage of Hillary Clinton, and she was sometimes referred to as “Mrs. Clinton” instead of the more respectful “Senator Clinton” as Senator McCain and Senator Obama were almost uniformly addressed. Indeed, Kathleen Hall Jamieson identified the latter day double bind that women face: women who succeed in politics and public life will be scrutinized under a different lens from that applied to successful men, and for longer periods of time.12 No other woman in American history has been of interest to the media for as long and so intensely as Hillary Clinton. Stamina Hillary Clinton’s entire career could be described as one built upon tremendous stamina. Her rhetorical skills have been tested—and stretched— like no other contemporary American woman’s rhetorical skills. As first lady she weathered multiple controversies and suffered an unpopular image in the media. Repeatedly she chose to be the defending voice of her husband’s administration to explain controversies that threatened to usurp the power of the Clinton administration. It was this unusual and difficult rhetorical training that served Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate. All public speakers require physical dexterity in order to fulfill the nonverbal demands of effective speech. In this television and Internet age, appearance and agility count toward the effectiveness of a rhetor more than ever. While she is fifteen years Barack Obama’s senior, she displayed energy and stamina—both mental and physical—that equaled his. Even detractors could not ignore her ability to keep going in the face of defeat. Indeed, even conservative commentators noted her tremendous ability to soldier on as the campaign continued long after most people thought it would. She was ridiculed, embarrassed, called to drop out of the race, but

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she kept going. The words of Harriet Tubman that Hillary Clinton quoted in her Democratic National Convention speech aptly describe her own ability to simply not quit: And on that path to freedom, Harriet Tubman had one piece of advice. If you hear the dogs, keep going. If you see the torches in the woods, keep going. If they’re shouting after you, keep going. Don’t ever stop. Keep going. If you want a taste of freedom, keep going.13

The sources of Hillary Clinton’s rhetorical stamina include her sense of mission and importance that goes beyond her own political ambition; her deep faith in the pragmatic, hard working principles of Methodism; her mother’s own difficult experiences; her liberal and feminist beliefs; and her significant education in legal and women’s issues and sheer ambition.

A STORY STILL UNFOLDING As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton appeared on a popular Indonesian program geared to teenagers. She was asked about her most valuable experience during her campaign. Hillary Clinton responded by saying, “I campaigned hard against President Obama. We had an incredibly intense competition, but in a democracy, somebody has to win and somebody has to lose.”14 Her ability to entertain a group of Indonesian teenagers and draw laughs and applause from the crowd is evidence that as she continues to evolve as a leader and her communication skills are still being stretched. This rhetorical elasticity prompted the New York Times writer Mark Landler to note that “On the road with Hillary Clinton, two distinct secretaries of state are emerging: the loose unscripted politician who roamed Asia’s neighborhoods and schools, and the tightly controlled diplomat who marched through the Middle East.”15 She alternated a plain speaking style with heavy analysis, depending on the circumstance. This ability to tailor her message to meet the needs of the occasion with remarkable acuity demonstrates that although Hillary Clinton lost the election for president in 2008 there can be no doubt, however, that she won the rhetorical campaign to see a woman as a front-runner presidential candidate. Because no woman has been elected president, there is no role model for a woman presidential candidate to emulate. The sparse role models are those who have tried, and this work attempts to offer readers an understanding of the efforts of Hillary Clinton’s race for the presidency. In doing so she was able to exercise a full range of rhetorical actions, both

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a feminine style and a more deductive, less emotive use of delivery. Unlike other women candidates she was not subjected to a narrow range of rhetorical styles, and she has learned new rhetorical styles and changed how she presents herself to meet various constraints and rhetorical situations. As secretary of state, Hillary Clinton has continued to stretch the role in new ways beyond those of her predecessors. For example, by March 2009, less than three months into her role, the Washington Post reported that “Clinton’s State Department has embarked on a digital diplomacy drive aimed at spreading the word about American foreign policy and restoring Washington’s image.”16 Hillary Clinton remains a fertile subject for rhetorical scholars. At this early tenure into her role as secretary of state, it appears the Hillary Clinton is finally able to exercise a complete range of rhetorical styles without negative repercussions. When Wellesley graduate Hillary Rodham addressed the audience at her 1969 commencement, she said, “And the challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible.”17 The trajectory of her life and career demonstrates that Hillary Rodham Clinton continues to put her words into action.

NOTES 1. www.hillaryclinton.com (accessed August 10, 2008). 2. Frank Newport. “Hillary Clinton Remains Dominant Front Runner Among Democrats,” Gallup News Service, April 7, 2007, www.cawp.rutgers.edu (accessed November 23, 2008). 3. Molly Meijer Wertheimer and Nichola D. Gutgold. Elizabeth Hanford Dole: Speaking from the Heart (Westport: Praeger Press, 2004), 11. 4. Anne F. Mattina. “Hillary Rodham Clinton: Using Her Vital Voice,” in Molly Meijer Wertheimer, ed., Inventing a Voice: The Rhetoric of American First Ladies of the Twentieth Century (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2004), 417. 5. Joan Jacobs Brumberg. The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls (New York: Vintage Books, 1997), x. 6. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell. “The Discursive Performance of Femininity: Hating Hillary,” Rhetoric and Public Affairs, Volume 1, Number 1, Spring 1998, 9. 7. Ibid, 11. 8. Bonnie J. Dow and Mari Boor Tonn. “‘Feminine Style’ and Political Judgment in the Rhetoric of Ann Richards,” Quarterly Journal of Speech, 70 (1993): 286. 9. www.blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2008/02/complete (accessed December 26, 2008). 10. Katharine Q. Seelye and Julie Bosman. “Critics and News Executives Split Over Sexism in Clinton Coverage,” The New York Times, June 13, 2008, http://query .nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C00E6D71F3EF930A25755C0A96E9C8B63 &scp=1&sq=Clinton+press+coverage&st=nyt (accessed March 14, 2009). 11. Ibid.

Conclusion

105

12. Kathleen Hall Jamieson. Beyond the Double Bind: Women and Leadership (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 5. 13. Hillary Clinton’s speech at Democratic National Convention, August 26, 2008, www.hillaryclinton.com (accessed August 30, 2008). 14. CBS News, February 18, 2009, www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/ (accessed March 4, 2009). 15. Mark Landler. “In Her Travels, the Duality of Clinton Emerges,” The New York Times, March 8, 2009, A10. 16. Matthew Lee. “Hillary Clinton, e-diplomat, embraces new media,” The Washington Post, March 23, 2009, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/23/AR2009032300039_ (accessed March 23, 2009). 17. Hillary Rodham commencement speech, May 31, 1969, www.feminist.com/ resources/artspeech/poli/hillary.htm (accessed June 1, 2008).

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The speeches excerpted in this study were found on the official Hillary Clinton presidential campaign website, www.hillaryclinton.com, unless otherwise noted.

Index

60 Minutes, 82 AARP. See American Association of Retired Persons ABC News, 13, 32, 61–62, 72, 79 AFL-CIO, 60–61 American Association of Retired Persons, 63 Anderson, Karrin Vasby, 27 Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, 98 Atkinsson, Sherryl, 41 Atlantic Monthly, 6, 81 Biden, Joseph, 32, 56 Bigler, Rebecca, 11 Blitzer, Wolf, 58, 68 Bosnia, 41–42 The Boston Globe, 87 Braun, Carol Moseley, 5, 99 Brazaitis, Thomas, 13 Brown, Campbell, 66, 70–71, 79 Brown, Lyn Mikel, 9 Brownback, Sam, 2 Brydon, Steven, 53, 54 Burell, Barbara, 4 Burns, Lisa M., 13 Bush, George, H. W., 5, 91

Bush, George W., 5, 22, 34, 54, 57–58 Bush, Laura, 89 Bystrom, Dianne, 83 Campbell, David, 9 Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs, 6–7, 9, 31, 100 catalyst, 4 CBS, 41, 79, 82, 87, 102 Center for Media and Public Affairs, 79 Cheney, Dick, 39, 87 CHIP, 31 Chirac, Bernadette, 21 Chirac, Jacques, 21 Chisholm, Shirley, 5, 10, 17, 32, 92, 99 Cillizza, Chris, 57 Clark, Helen, 2 Clift, Eleanor, 13 Clinton, Bill, 6–7, 12, 21, 39–40, 84; communication style, 55, 90; unpredictable campaigning, 89, 90–91 “Clinton Cackle,” the, xii, 3, 16, 82, 86, 87 Clinton, Chelsea, 22, 25, 40, 45 Clinton, Hillary: criticism of, 2, 7; gender card, 66; dream ticket talk, 69; early life, 8–9; “Hillary Hate,” 88; impact of race on girls, 10–11; 115

116

Index

Methodism, 72, 103; misogyny, 80–81; rhetorical style, 6, 7, 14; presidential announcement speech, 1–4, 13, 22–27; Scranton, Pennsylvania roots, 38, 48–49; tough style, xi, 4, 81; vote for the war, 54, 57 CNN, 58–59, 68, 70, 79, 85, 102 Cocco, Marie, xi, 30, 80–81 Collins, Gail, 12 Commission on Presidential Debates, 54 The Compassion Forum, 56 Cooper, Anderson, 59 CPD. See Commission on Presidential Debates Crow, Sheryl, 41 Crowley, Candy, 102 Couric, Katie, 101–2 Dailey, William O., 15, 53, 56 The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, 87 Danzinger, Nira, 8 Davis, Gray, 64 Democratic National Convention, 2, 29, 103 Denton, Robert, 53 Dickerson, John, 87 Diogo, Luisa, 2 Dodd, Chris, 32, 35, 56, 61, 63, 65 Dole, Bob, 5 Dole, Elizabeth, 5, 10, 30, 33, 49, 97, 99 Donovan, William J., 38 Dow, Bonnie, 23, 31 Dowd, Maureen, 1, 4 Edelman, Marilyn Wright, 59 Edwards, John, 1, 4, 13, 24–25, 32, 56, 63, 65, 67 Facebook, 16, 77, 81 Falk, Erika, 12, 78, 82, 91 feminine style, 3, 14, 23, 25, 30, 44, 57, 100–101 Ferraro, Geraldine, 14, 36 Fineman, Howard, 57 For the Love of Politics, 12 Fox, 79, 80, 87

Friedan, Betty, 15 Frist, Bill, 2 Front, Pam, 77 Gallup Poll, 91, 97 Garrett, Major, 80 Gawiser, Sheldon, 37 Gerhart, Ann, 89 Gerth, Jeff, 12 Gibson, Charles, 67, 72 Gilligan, Carol, 9 Gingrich, Newt, 87 Givhan, Robin, 84–86 Goldberg, Susan, 11 Gordon, Ann, 13 Gore, Al, 13 Gravel, Mike, 60 Greceanii, Zinaida, 2 Green, Joshua, 81 Hagan, Kay, 49 Hannity, Sean, 87 Harden, Camilla, 31 Harris, John F., 80 Hart, Gary, 5 Healy, Patrick, 86 Helweg, Susan, 53 Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton, 12 Hillary Rodham Clinton: Dreams Taking Flight, 11 Hillary Rodham Clinton: Polarizing First Lady, 11–12 Hinck, Edward A., 15, 53, 56 Hinck, Shelley S., 15, 53, 56 Hofstede, Geert, 7 The Huffington Post, 62 Hume, Brit, 79 Jackson, Jesse, 16, 58; Bill Clinton’s comment about South Carolina, 91 Jamieson, Kathleen-Hall, 102 Kahn, Kim Fridkin, 12 Kelley, Colleen Elizabeth, 12, 22, 84 Kennedy, John F., 7, Kennedy-Nixon debates, 55

Index Kerry, John, 54 King, Martin Luther, Jr., 33–34 Kornblut, Anne, 56 Kranzley, Glenn, 80 Krull, Kathleen, 11 Kucinich, Dennis, 32 Landler, Mark, 103 Lawrence, Regina G., 12 Legal Services Corporation, 98–99 Lewinsky, Monica, 86, 91 Lewis, Dioclesian, 99 Life, 13 Limbaugh, Rush, 16, 102 Living History, 9, 12, 22, 30, 33 Los Angeles Times, 68 Madam President, 11 Maher, Bill, 63 Marshall, Brenda DeVore, 12, 55 “mashup” debate, 62 Matthews, Chris, 57, 80 Matthews, Glenna, 12, 92 Mattina, Anne F., 13, 32, 98 Mayhead, Molly, A., 12, 55 McCain, John, 16, 30, 46, 71, 78, 102 McMahon, Mary, 8 Meacham, John, 72 Meir, Golda, 2 Merkel, Angela, 2 Messiah College, 71 Mink, Patsy, 11 Mitchell, Andrea, 79 Mondale, Walter, 55, 89 The Morning Call, 80 Mosoco, Mireya, 2 MSNBC, 63, 85, 102 Musharaf, Pervez, 61 Muskie, Ed, 37 Myers, Dee Dee, 6, 13 NAACP. See National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Napolitano, Janet, 30 NASA, 9, 45 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, 59

117

National Public Radio, 67, 78 National Review, 77 NBC News, 64, 78, 79 Netanyahu, Sarah, 13 New Hampshire Primary, 68 Newsweek, 71 The New York Daily News, 25 The New York Times, xii, 1, 4, 11–12, 22, 56, 85–86, 103; endorsement of Hillary Clinton, 88 Nixon, Richard, 55, 87 Norris, Michele, 67 NPR. See National Public Radio O’Sullivan, John, 77 Obama, Barack, 2–4, 6, 13, 15–16, 24, 32, 36, 39–40, 42–43, 45–46, 48–49, 53, 56, 97; debate performance 58, 60; debates only with Hillary Clinton, 68–73; popularity with the press, 78, 81, 83; rhetorical style, xi, 97 Olbermann, Keith, 57, 60 Our Girls, 99 Paget, Karen M., 12 Palin, Sarah, 29–30 Parry-Giles, Shawn, 2 Patton, Wendy, 8 Penn, Mark, 1 Pew Poll, 4 Pfau, Michael, 53 Pierre-Louis, Michele, 2 Poehler, Amy, 84 Politico, 68 President’s Task Force on Healthcare Reform, 12 Quad City Times, 62 Raskin, Jamin B., 54 Reagan, Ronald, 5, 55 red phone ad, 88 The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Democracy, The Internet, and the Overthrow of Everything, 24–25 The Rhetoric of First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, 12

118 rhetorical elasticity,98 rhetorical multitasking, 98 Richardson, Bill, 32 Riddle, Ann, 9 Rifkind, Lawrence, 13 Rodham, Dorothy, 8 Rodham, Hugh, 8 Roosevelt, Eleanor, 7 Rose, Charlie, 62 Rose Law Firm, 99 Russert, Tim, 63, 65–65 Sabato, Larry, 80 Santorum, Rick, 2 Saturday Night Live, 16, 45, 79, 84, 89, 101 Scanlon, Larry, 2 Scarborough, Joe, 57 Schieffer, Bob, 87 Schroeder, Pat, 37, 97 Scott, A. O., 10 Sebelius, Kathleen, 30 secretary of state, 6 Seneca Falls, 48 Shales, Tom, 72 Sheehy, Gail, 9 Shepard, Alicia C., 78 Sittenfeld, Curtis, 89 Slate.com, 87 Smiley, Tavis, 58 Smith, Jacqui Smith, Margaret Chase, 5, 17, 97, 99 Smith, Sally Bedel, 12 South Carolina Primary. See Jesse Jackson Spitzer, Elliot L., 64 Stephanopoulos, George, 61, 72 Strider, Burns, 34 Sullivan, Amy, 1

Index Super Tuesday, 69 Swift, Jane, 8 Thatcher, Margaret, 2, 83 The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, 41 Tonn, Mari Boor, 23, 31 Time, 36, 79 Todd, Chuck, 37 Trippi, Joe, 24 Troy, Gil, 11 Truman, Harry, 66 Tubman, Harriet, 48, 103 Twitter, 77 Tymoshenko, Yulia, 2 Vandehei, Jim, 80 Van Natta, Don, Jr., 12 Vilsak, Tom, 32 Vogue, 83 Washington Monthly Magazine, 1 The Washington Post, xii, 24, 30, 32, 56–57, 72, 80, 83, 85, 104 The Washington Times, 33 Wallace, Chris, 86 Watson, Cary M., 9 Watson, Robert P., 13, 21 Wellesley College, 13, 84, 98, 104 Whitney, Catherine, 12 Williams, Brian, 70 Wilson, Marie, 2, 6, 12 Winter, Faith, 5 Wintour, Anna, 83 Witt, Linda, 12 Wolbrecht, Christina, 9 Woodhull,Victoria, 97 Yale Law School, 98 YouTube, 16, 41, 59, 77, 82, 85, 87, 101

About the Author

Nichola D. Gutgold is associate professor of communication arts and sciences at Pennsylvania State University, Lehigh Valley Campus. She teaches a variety of communication courses, directs the honors program, advises for the student newspaper, and engages in research. Dr. Gutgold also serves as the representative for the College of Communications. Her research examines the communication skills needed for women to be successful in male dominated fields. Other books include: Seen and Heard: The Women of Television News (Lexington Books, 2008), Paving the Way for Madam President (Lexington Books, 2006), and Elizabeth Hanford Dole: Speaking from the Heart, with co-author Molly Wertheimer (Praeger Press, 2004). A frequent speaker on the topic of women and politics, she graduated with honors at age twenty with a double major in mass communications and English in 1984 from King’s College, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and in 1988 earned a master’s degree in speech communication from Bloomsburg University, Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. In 1999 she earned a Ph.D. in speech communication from Pennsylvania State University. Dr. Gutgold is a member of the International Communication Association, National Communication Association, Eastern Communication Association, and the 2008–2009 president of the Pennsylvania Communication Association. She serves on the board of directors of LifePath.

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