Quote of the Day:
Did someone get a 3 a.m. phone call from Goldman Sachs?
—Mary Katharine Ham on Hillary Clinton’s attempt to amend her recent anti-business remark
Ham was writing about Mrs. Clinton's attempts to distance herself from her own anti-business words that have been widely compared to President Obama's “you didn’t build that” remarks.
Mrs. Clinton was speaking on behalf of floundering Democratic candidate for governor of Massachusetts. She delivered the anti-corporation words with conviction. But now she is seeking to “clarify” them.
Giving the benefit of the doubt to the likely Democratic standard bearer of 2016, BuzzFeed News says Mrs. Clinton “fumbled” her lines:
When Hillary Clinton fumbled a line at a rally last Friday — “Don’t let anybody tell you that corporations and businesses create jobs” — the comment caused a minor outrage among political observers. Republicans said she’d been pandering to liberals. Democrats wondered if she’d been trying too hard to channel Elizabeth Warren, the populist senator who also spoke at the event.
Politico likewise covers for Mrs. Clinton:
Hillary Clinton on Monday mopped up her botched statement from a rally in Massachusetts last week, making it clear she’d misspoken and hadn’t intended to deliver a fresh economic policy message.
More important than whether Mrs. Clinton was “pandering to liberals” is whether she believes this. It certainly fits in with her early political leanings. President Obama’s “you didn’t build that” speech certainly encapsulated his view of how economies work—and are at the heart of why our economy in particular has been sluggish throughout his tenure.
I agree with Ham that we must entertain the notion that Clinton’s gaffe was Kinsleyian—after Michael Kinsley who famously defined a gaffe as a truth a politician inadvertently utters.
Also, a look at Mrs. Clinton’s “clarification” is edifying:
“The Republican alternative is a discredited economic theory that will hurt middle class families,” Clinton said. “So-called trickle-down economics has failed.”
“I short-handed this point the other day, so let me be absolutely clear about what I’ve been saying for a couple of decades.”
“Our economy grows when businesses and entrepreneurs create good-paying jobs here in America and workers and families are empowered to build from the bottom up and the middle out — not when we hand out tax breaks for corporations that outsource jobs or stash their profits overseas.”
Corporations will create good paying jobs in the U.S. not when they are punished for outsourcing (a move that, alas, makes perfect sense in the current economic climate of the U.S.) but when they find favorable economic conditions here. It is interesting that Mrs. Clinton employs the Barackian rhetoric about Republicans hurting middle-class families—ironically, just the families who have suffered most in the last six years.
It should be a cause of concern that Mrs. Clinton, even in her clarification, sounds very like President Obama.