Hillary’s Speech

So who has heard or read Hillary Clinton’s New York speech? I have and was quite surprised at the heavy dose of populism she has injected into her talking points since her 2008 campaign. See the following, for instance:

While many of you are working multiple jobs to make ends meet, you see the top 25 hedge fund managers making more than all of America’s kindergarten teachers combined. And, often paying a lower tax rate.

I’m not a fan of this kind of empty rhetoric (to put it very mildly) but I know that the statement will resonate with the more simple-minded among us.

The part of the speech that I did like was the very careful recognition that the economic problems of today are caused by the erosion of the nation-state:

Advances in technology and the rise of global trade have created whole new areas of economic activity and opened new markets for our exports, but they have also displaced jobs and undercut wages for millions of Americans.

This is, of course, a lot more careful than what Bill Clinton is allowing himself to say. But he’s not running for president, so he can afford do be more explicit. Nobody who is hoping to have a career in politics can afford to break to the voting public the news that there is no way we are going back to the times when Hillary’s grandfather went to work “in the same Scranton lace mill every day for 50 years.”

The following part was also useful:

Now, we can blame historic forces beyond our control for some of this, but the choices we’ve made as a nation, leaders and citizens alike, have also played a big role.

The plan is clear: recognize the erosion of the nation-state and make efforts to retain some of its power to provide for the welfare of the citizens. And the best part of the speech, I believe, was the following:

Now, there may be some new voices in the presidential Republican choir, but they’re all singing the same old song…

A song called “Yesterday.”

It’s true. There is absolutely nothing in the past that can help us move into an entirely new state form that is taking shape today.

And, of course, I was extremely pleased by the psychoanalytic part of the speech:

Research tells us how much early learning in the first five years of life can impact lifelong success. In fact, 80 percent of the brain is developed by age three.

This is really cool. We cannot move towards the future successfully if we retain the antediluvian ideas of the pre-industrial revolution times.

Hillary is not a charismatic leader (nobody in US politics is, and that’s a huge blessing) but she’s doing all she can to present as at least a little bit charismatic. She will never manage to go as far down that road as Obama but she’s doing a lot with what she has.