Sounding a theme that seemed suited to a presidential
campaign, Hillary Clinton said the “basic bargain” of America is that people
who “work hard and play by the rules’’ get the chance to build a good life. Mrs.
Clinton is giving hints of the themes and agenda that would animate her
campaign if she were to run for president, offering the barest sketch of what
could evolve into her basic stump speech. Yet, the ideas are, in a sense,
frozen in time. Mrs. Clinton has offered the same thoughts—in virtually
identical language—at earlier stages of her political career.
She talked about the “basic bargain” in 2007, using nearly
the same wording in the Web video announcing she was running for president. Her
husband, Bill Clinton, used the formulation years earlier. Mrs. Clinton’s call
for “evidence-based decision-making” dates at least to 2006. And ending tax
breaks for so-called offshoring dates to Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 campaign but also
to 1992, when Mr. Clinton included it in his own campaign manifesto.
The familiar language underscores a central challenge that
Mrs. Clinton would face as a candidate: How does someone who has been a
household name for nearly a quarter-century, as a first lady, senator and
secretary of state, inspire voters with fresh ideas.
Clinton loyalists say her near-universal name recognition
cuts both ways. It is one reason she has vaulted to the top of every poll of
Democratic voters. But that familiarity could be a handicap, they say, if
people see her as a throwback to another era.
The 67-year-old isn’t a candidate yet and has ample time to
refine a message—and she may yet decide that the ideas she has long championed
are right once again for the moment. But some Democratic strategists are saying
Mrs. Clinton must spell out a more concrete case for why she wants the
presidency and where she would lead the country.
Republicans candidates have begun laying out policy
specifics, or they are officeholders with recent records to run on. Mrs.
Clinton, by contrast, has been largely absent from the political realm for six
years, which draws additional attention to her language in her few forays into
public policy.
In recent speeches, Mrs. Clinton has brought a new element
to her thoughts on policy: her status as a grandmother. Even if babies aren’t
grandchildren of former senators and presidents, they should have the same
educational opportunities and prospects as 3-month-old Charlotte Clinton
Mezvinsky, she says. But at this stage, some of Mrs. Clinton’s speeches seem to
borrow from past addresses. In a radio address he gave in 2000, then-President
Clinton used the “basic bargain” idea that Mrs. Clinton repeated many years
later, at the steak fry and political fest in Iowa three months ago hosted by
Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin.
Mrs. Clinton’s criticism of policies that give “tax breaks
to companies that ship jobs overseas,” made at an event this fall for a
Democratic Senate candidate, has long been part of the Clinton policy arsenal. Lawrence
Lessig, a Harvard law professor and co-founder of the Mayday PAC, a group that
seeks to change the way campaigns are funded, said that Mrs. Clinton faces the
risk of sounding stale.
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