Roosevelt Island, N.Y. Reporters milled about, waiting for Hillary Clinton to make her grand entrance. Would she come by boat? Perhaps—small police cruisers bobbed up and down alongside the little island in the East River, with Manhattan on one side and Queens on the other. Maybe she’d parachute in? Less likely, but choppers flew over several times.
In a holding pen at the back of the crowd, the perpetually anxious press corps interacted with numerous Clinton advisers, greasing sources and catching up on each others’ personal lives. Karen Finney, who the day before talked on national TV about how unknown the real Hillary Clinton was, gave hugs and politely conversed with members of the media who had been unable to have the same sort of interactions with the candidate herself. John Podesta, the campaign chairman and former White House chief of staff, briefly made the rounds. And various local politicians made themselves available, trying to find their way into the biggest national political story Roosevelt Island had ever been a part of.
In all, 550 media members had requested credentials just to see the perfectly staged and orchestrated event. We did not know exactly how the event, or the ensuing campaign, might unfold. Except, we figured, it would be on a grand scale.
On the main stage, Echosmith played their recent hit, “Cool Kids.” She sees them walking in a straight line, that’s not really her style, the young female singer belted. They all got the same heartbeat, but hers is falling behind. The several thousand assembled for Clinton’s first public campaign rally of the 2016 presidential contest bopped along under the hot sun.
I wish that I could be like the cool kids cuz all the cool kids, they seem to fit in, the song went on. I wish that I could be like the cool kids, like the cool kids.
Eventually, to the great letdown of the more imaginative, Clinton simply walked out. About three hours after the first attendees were admitted, there, toward the H-shaped stage set that mimicked her logo, came the celebrity candidate, slowly glad-handing her way toward the lectern and teleprompter.
The reporters, myself especially, were speculating about the minutiae of the event (how exactly Clinton would come to the island, for instance) because of how predictable we knew the actual speech would be.
It would be a focus-grouped, poll-devised litany of liberal pabulum, meant to appeal at once to the largest sum of voters likely to support her and to specific groups. It would be unfocused in its scope and incredibly small in its prescriptions.
Much like the picture-perfect setting itself, the speech would be carefully planned, with very little room for error.
A large theme would be her family—more precisely, her mother, and not her father or the former president of the United States she calls her husband. “My mother taught me that everybody needs a chance and a champion. She knew what it was like not to have either one,” Clinton said. “And, because some people believed in her, she believed in me.” And because Hillary Clinton’s mother believed in her, she believes she can be president of the United States.
Clinton paid homage to the United Nations building (visible just above her right shoulder), which elicited a decent round of applause. And she praised the two most recent Democratic presidents—her husband, whom she awkwardly avoided simply calling by his first name, and her former boss, Barack Obama.
The assembled crowd was also treated to several references to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for whom the island we gathered on is named.
And then came the meat of the speech: “America can’t succeed unless you succeed,” Clinton said, raising her voice. “That is why I am running for president of the United States. Here, on Roosevelt Island, I believe we have a continuing rendezvous with destiny. Each American and the country we cherish. I’m running to make our economy work for you and for every American.” (The crowd waved the little American flags the campaign had handed out as they cheered. Visually, it was a model, made-for-TV rally.)
She portrayed herself as a tough woman and proved it with Obama-like bashing of the opposition. “Republicans twice cut taxes for the wealthiest, borrowed money from other countries to pay for two wars, and family incomes dropped,” she said, failing to mention that al Qaeda started the wars and, perhaps more important, that she had authorized them as a junior senator from the state of New York. “I’ll fight back against Republican efforts to disempower and disenfranchise young people, poor people, people with disabilities, and people of color,” Clinton vowed, failing also to mention that her own adoptive home state—the very blue state of New York—has more restrictive voting laws than many of the Republican-controlled states to which she referred.
As for specific policy proposals, they were few. There was the proposal for an infrastructure bank, as well as for making “preschool and quality childcare available to every child in America.” And a promise of respect for teachers, college affordability, “lifelong learning for workers,” and “paid sick days” for American workers.
The specificity of a policy proposal perfectly correlated to whether it might be perceived as controversial. That is, the more mundane and widely accepted the idea, the more specific Clinton became.
To wit, there was no promise of peace in our time under a President Hillary Clinton, no plan to defeat and degrade Iran or the Islamic State. Just an oblique promise to “do whatever it takes to keep Americans safe,” as though any presidential candidate would dare say otherwise.
In an apparent sop to her ideological adversaries, Clinton even talked about the limits of government power. “Government is never going to have all the answers—but it has to be smarter, simpler, more efficient, and a better partner.”
The class warfare littered throughout the speech might have been the most gauche part of the rally. “You see corporations making record profits, with CEOs making record pay, but your paychecks have barely budged,” said Clinton, who left the White House “dead broke,” in her words, and now, a decade and a half later, has accumulated tens of millions.
Afterwards, the Republican National Committee would estimate Clinton spent half as much time (2 minutes) explaining her foreign policy as she did attacking Republicans (4 minutes). And less than a minute (54 seconds) on her tenure as America’s top diplomat.
The speech itself went about 45 minutes. But inside the confines of the press pen, surrounded by a slew of cameras and many more print reporters and producers, it seemed much longer.
Back on stage, Clinton wrapped up her speech and accepted cheers from the audience. She clapped for herself, in between giving thumbs up to the audience and waves to her fans.
Daughter Chelsea Clinton was the first on stage and immediately hugged her mother. Bill Clinton, sporting a red polo shirt and a blazer draped over his left shoulder, gave his wife a short kiss and a long hug. And, finally, as though forgetting she had used her moment in the sun, in front of hundreds of press and thousands of fans, to bash the rich, she gave a quick kiss on the cheek and a hug to her son-in-law Marc Mezvinsky—a hedge fund manager.
Daniel Halper is online editor of The Weekly Standard and author of Clinton, Inc.: The Audacious Rebuilding of a Political Machine.