What I wasn't expecting was in Clinton’s prepared remarks. Sure, she has a tin ear and she delivers speeches exactly the way her husband doesn’t, emphasizing the parts of the sentence that are intended as lubricant while gliding along the portions that should be emphasized, but, while her public speaking continues to startle and surprise the unwary ear, after suffering through her primary campaign’s stump speeches this is hardly astonishing. What was astonishing was the immense amount of slight-of-mind in the speech – she alluded to nearly known opportunity and vexation that the world faces today, but every time she veered dangerously close to making a prescription she slipped sideways into the sort of generalities and pabulum that any fourteen-year-old girl in front of her civics class might have advocated when required to give a political speech. And it really was an assigned but otherwise meaningless speech, as CSPAN long ago converted public hearings into the toilet politicians use to communicate with their masses. The masses this time around are from the Left, who have a “don’t bother me with the details – I trust your good intentions” mind-set, so this was all spot on for the audience at hand. Meanwhile I’m was trying not to run off the road because of how violently my gorge kept rising….
But then it hit me: what a stroke of genius on Obama’s part. After the Clinton machine insisted on torturing all thinking listeners for over a year, Obama has managed to give us at least four years peace, in which Clinton can take her crash-course in rhetoric overseas. To paraphrase General Patton, “our job is not to have Clinton melt our minds melted like cheap Velveeta, our job is to let Clinton melt the other poor dumb bastards minds like cheap Velveeta!”. For four years at least, the only speeches we’ll hear from Clinton will be in quick sound-bytes on CNN. If nothing else, this is truly a triumph of the Obama regime.
But then I thought: “Wait a minute! To confidently speak at length in tones of grand significance while actually saying nothing – isn’t this truly the heart and soul of diplomacy?” In addition to saving our poor scalded minds from her speeches, Obama may have achieved an even grander triumph even before being sworn into office: he may have figured out something Hillary Clinton’s good for!
