We Americans are the most powerful voters on Earth, we get to decide the most impactful leader on the planet, the president of the United States who presides over the most powerful military humankind has ever known, the foremost economy on Earth and the most influential on the international stage.
Whether liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, moderate or independent you the voter must use your own individual criteria to determine how to shape your country and your world for 4 or 8 years.
It’s not easy. Every candidate is going to exercise a certain amount of marketing or salesmanship and that’s to put it mildly.
But what are the limits of marketing? Where’s the line between putting forth your best side and speaking out of both sides of your mouth. To show complete candidness is to universally disarm but to pander too much show’s lack of vision and leadership.
Because of the 24/7 news cycle everybody is a political strategist. It’s made voters so much more savvy and made our country better for it as well.
This is what doomed Republican nominee Mitt Romney last cycle, performing prevarication on such matters as health care and social issues. The independent voter who determines elections saw right through it. President Obama, disagree with him as you will, could not be accused of duplicity.
This brings us to last week’s town hall or coming out party for Hillary Clinton. To stake both sides of medicinal marijuana, Benghazi, immigration and Syria conjures up Mrs. Clinton’s run in 2008 and President Clinton’s run in 1992. Back then the strategy of drafting Republican’s, staking out a position that was ‘GOP light’, was a sound and successful way for the progressive minded former Texas State Director of George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign to recapture the White House for Democrats and break 12 years of the age of Reagan. Announcing “the era of big government is over”, introducing “don’t ask, don’t tell” you knew President Clinton didn’t believe in his own rhetoric. When Hillary Clinton first ran for office, the senate seat in New York you may recall her first issue was flag burning. As she was preparing for her run for the presidency in 2007 she burnished her tough foreign policy by voting to allow President George W. Bush to invade Iraq, for reasons that were unclear to you, me and the NY Senator.
Now we are reminded yet again of the political tactics rooted in 1992. I would have no problem living under and voting for Hillary Rodham Clinton as the Democratic nominee against a Republican in a general election campaign. But will those powerful independent voters?
I come from the Kennedy wing of the party. Now it’s not to say that JFK, RFK or even EMK didn’t have their pandering moments, (missile gap anyone?) But to what degree did the Kennedy’s and Barack Obama for that matter, venture from reality to the virtual campaign?
If Mrs. Clinton adopts the same old tactics and thinks because of who she is, she will be anointed the 2016 Democratic nominee and eventually the 45th president of the United States may I present to you President Ted Kennedy in 1980, President John Glenn in 1984, President Gary Hart in 1988, President Al Gore in 2000 and President Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2008.