Hillary Clinton, a Reluctant Star
Donald J. Trump could not resist making a splashy appearance every night of his convention — emerging onstage as a fog-enshrouded silhouette one night, upstaging a political foe from the stands two nights later.
But as Democrats piled on the accolades for Hillary Clinton here, she was not just offstage, or holed up in a nearby hotel suite. She was at home in Chappaqua, N.Y.
Naturally guarded, unusually private and hard-wired to avoid the boastfulness and hagiography that are so typical of political conventions, Mrs. Clinton has seemed, halfway through this four-day celebration of her life and life’s work, a reluctant star of her prime-time production.
It is not hard to understand, when even her catchiest slogan — “I’m With Her” — has been turned against her by Mr. Trump: Stung by his suggestion that the phrase demonstrated that Mrs. Clinton’s campaign was overly motivated by her ambitions, her advisers have urged revising it to “She’s With Us.”
New evidence of Mrs. Clinton’s reserve emerged late on Tuesday when a laudatory 10-minute video that powerfully cast her as a more than worthy heir to the women’s rights movement — and was produced by the same woman who had indelibly defined Bill Clinton as “the man from Hope” — was abruptly pulled from its coveted spot at the conclusion of the night’s program, according to two people briefed on the decision. The video was too narrowly focused to expand her appeal, campaign officials feared.
“She’s an introvert,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, a Democrat. “The spotlight is pretty glaring, and she likes to deflect it.”
She was even deflecting attention at the end of Tuesday night’s program: “This is really your victory,” Mrs. Clinton told delegates in a brief live video greeting. “This is really your night.
“And if there are any little girls out there who stayed up late to watch,” she added, “I may become the first woman president, but one of you is next.”
Earlier Tuesday evening, with a jubilant traditional roll-call vote of state Democratic delegations, Mrs. Clinton had formally become the first womanto capture a major party’s presidential nomination. But her Democratic National Convention has so far avoided some of the heroic tropes of these types of proceedings.
Barack Obama’s 2008 convention highlighted his single mother and his elusive Kenyan father. Bill Clinton’s 1992 convention celebrated his triumphant rise from humble origins in a broken home, and promised every American the chance to achieve as much. Mr. Trump’s business career towered over the Republican National Convention in Cleveland as a success story, if without the bootstraps.
By contrast, Mrs. Clinton’s origin story — as the daughter of a woman born into poverty and child labor on the day Congress approved the right of women to vote — and the encomiums for her personality and character were far outnumbered by the testimonials to her actions.
0 comments: