Hillary Clinton Surrenders the Spotlight

The speech that I chose was Hillary Clinton's endorsement of Barack Obama. She gave it at the Democratic National Convention as a way of conceded defeat in becoming the Democratic nominee for President. I chose it because the speech had garnered some media attention for Clinton allegedly focusing more on herself and less on her support for Obama. I wanted to see if the accusations were true. The focus of this essay is how rhetorically effective was the speech, so some of the points I will be looking at is how effective the speech is at conveying her message and differences in perceptions. You can find a transcript of the speech and an included video here.

The main purpose of this speech is endorsement. Her introduction isn't so much about that, however. She focused about her commitment to getting nominated and included several heartfelt examples of people who either supported or voted for her. This is an interesting tactic, because while she clearly wanted the nomination, she's also showing that it wasn't just her, but also the people who wanted her to win the nomination. She's demonstrating that this wasn't an easy race. However, once she gets these examples out of the way, Clinton does begin to talk about Obama. She praises him, both for his accomplishments before the race, and for his competitiveness during the race for nomination.

After she mentions Obama, she starts to use a really effective method of bringing the supporters together - first person plural. She starts it by saying "the Democratic Party is a family", and afterwards constantly uses the word we. The effect of this word is that it connects her with the audience and with Obama. Instead of saying you or me, she's making the objectives that she states a mission for everybody. A useful tactic when trying to admit defeat gracefully and at the same time let the crowd relate to her, despite her past. It works, too. Her speech for the next few minutes is constantly interrupted by applause. The audience loves her, even if she did lose.

Hillary also uses repetition to great effect. One of her common phrases was "That's why we need to help elect Barack Obama our president." She would list an objective of the Democratic Party, then repeat the phrase, garnering applause each time. She compared and contrasted her and Obama as challenges to the common idea of who becomes a president. She asked the rhetorical questions "Could a woman really serve as commander-in-chief?" and "Could an African-American really be our president?"

The aforementioned critiques of her speech are seen from a somewhat superficial view. There is some change when analyzing more in depth. She mentions Obama, but the focus isn't about Obama, even when she talks about electing him, or endorsing him. Instead, her examples, her rhetoric focuses on her, whether it means she came in close, or that she was the woman who ran for nomination, it still focused on her ideas as to who the president should be.

One example is that "it will be unremarkable for a woman to win primary state victories". She makes no mention of a black candidate, focusing only on her own victories, portraying herself as the pioneer of presidential nominations, ignoring the fact that Obama himself is black and a minority. Why ignore Obama? Because she's resentful and sneaky. This isn't a bad speech by any stretch of the imagination. While the claimed theme is endorsing Obama, the actual focus is her resentment over losing, and in that respect she is achieving exactly that.

What's more interesting is that there will be a difference in how people will perceive this endorsement. The younger generation, inexperienced in the ways of vicious politics will see Clinton as a gracious loser, endorsing Obama as a candidate instead of becoming an independent nominee herself. However, those who have seen such speeches before will realize that Hillary is not focusing on Obama. The older generations have already seen similar cases and know how resentful losers can be. Granted, like all stereotypes this isn't entirely accurate. There will be plenty of younger people who are wholly aware of Clinton's underhanded tactics, as there will be plenty of older people who are taken in by her frozen smile charm.

In conclusion, Clinton gave a great speech. It accomplished the main objective of conceding defeat and endorsing Obama. It roused the crowd to a total of 50 applauses that interrupted her speech, including a final tremendous one at the end. She used repetition, lists, obscure touching examples, all effective tools of winning the hearts and minds of the people. It gave her the spotlight for one final day before she finally would have to give it over to Barack Obama.



It's Always About Her.

Hillary's endorsement of Obama was a farce of an endorsement speech, as it focused little on Obama, and more on her own struggle to gain nomination for the democratic candidate. This speech piqued my interest because it was attacked by the media for being a poor endorsement speech.

After having gone over the transcript and listened to it repeatedly, I'm inclined to agree with the media on this one. From the very beginning, she focuses on her own support. She lists several examples of people who voted for her. The key part of this beginning is that she focuses on the people who voted for -her-, not Obama. One of Hillary's favorite techniques is using the first person plural, as a means of including herself with her listeners.This is effective for bringing together the audience, and connecting with them. However, notably absent is any mention of Barack Obama whatsoever. Thus this inclusive pronoun is in reality exclusive. From the beginning her speech doesn't endorse Obama, it excludes him.

It wasn't until past 7 minutes into her speech that Clinton mentions Obama for the first time. The subject of this speech clearly isn't about endorsing Obama, it's about her struggle to become the nominee. I could equate this to Al Gore using An Inconvenient Truth as a way of mourning his loss in the presidential elections of 2000. Half the time, his talks aren't about global warming, but his ongoing struggle to be the savior of the world. I digress. After mentioning Obama, Clinton goes into a brief summary over his political career, and their brief competition for nomination. However, she soon falls back into the same technique as earlier, using an inclusive pronoun without mentioning Barack. She's including herself in the masses, while keeping Obama decidedly apart.

Don't get me wrong. She definitely endorses Obama in her speech. She even says "That is why we need to help elect Barack Obama our president" 4 times, as a way of saying that he will bring about all good things for the country. However, there's something suspicious about her statement. Obama is mentioned, but not as part of the pronoun, 'we'. Instead, Hillary is once again placing herself amongst the masses, while excluding Obama. She continues to exclude Obama, despite pledging her support, all her plural statements are about her and the voters, but not Obama.

It's at this point where she begins bringing in the fact that they are both minorities running for nomination. She mentions how "people everywhere asked the same questions. Could a woman really serve as commander-in-chief?" and "Could an African-American really be our president?" It was only a matter of time until this happened, because clearly this is such a historic moment in the entire world, despite there being female leaders in countries such as England, or even Chile, considered underdeveloped by the United States.

Additionally, she goes off on a tangent about "what it means to be a woman running for president", despite the fact that she wasn't running for president, but for nomination. It almost looks like Clinton took portions from her now redundant acceptance speech and simply padded it onto her endorsement speech. She talks about how "it will be unremarkable for a woman to win primary state victories". Notably absent is any mention about how Obama makes it unremarkable for a black man to run for presidency either. "Unremarkable to think a woman can be the president of the United States", but apparently still remarkable for a black man to win the nomination for democratic candidate. Clinton's not endorsing Obama, she's patting herself on the back for a good race.

Perhaps one of the most annoying characteristics of this speech is the vague, feel good examples of people who Clinton was fighting for, "the single mom", "the woman", "the young man", nothing identifying. The effect of this is that it makes them easier to relate to, but at the cost of making them superfluous and immaterial. There's no way these people could be proved to exist. I will admit, she gives some concrete examples of supporters earlier, but her later use of the less specific examples undermines her credibility with vagueness and feel-good attitude.

In conclusion, Hillary's endorsement speech is not really about Obama, it's about herself. It's about her struggle to become the democratic nominee and subsequent failure, despite all her support from such people as a 13-year-old named Anne Riddell. She uses quite effective rhetoric for a speech, and it's not a bad speech in the least, it just doesn't fulfill the purpose of endorsing Obama. Which begs the question of what is her intention with this speech in the first place? Is it to endorse Obama, or is it to show all the good things she's supposedly done for the Democrats? Feel free to post your thoughts.