Policy and person

Hillary Clinton had made her first official policy speech - right here in chilly, spring-challenged New Hampshire. Oh, my, it is cold and nasty right now - one sleety snow storm soon to be followed by an even more extensive and miserable nor'easter bringing a foot or more of snow.
Wicked weather does not get in the way of the NH Primary. Hillary chose to give her policy speech at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. Of course, it gained lots of serious press coverage. The highest-profile presidential aspirant is rarely short of press coverage. A fleet of journalists and cameramen is on tour with her. She is big news.

She offered a 10-point plan to reform the government but the headline the media extracted, and rightly so, was her adamant stand against people who leave their roles in political administration to become lobbyists.
She expanded on this at our meeting, saying that one of her priorities was to get te best-quality people working in the White House and to get rid of that seedy business of "no-bid contracts". Of course, she was speaking of Halliburton. She added: "Really, it's a stunning record of cronyism and corruption, incompetence and deception and it has shaken the people's faith in our government," she said.
She added that it was hard to get accurate information from the incumbent government which "stonewalls and misleads".

I was talking to one of the "I'm A Health Care Voter" people after Hillary's event and she was whining that Hillary did not answer the questions people had asked. Was this woman at the same meeting as I was? It just goes to show the way people read into things what they want. One finds it a lot in journalism. People are capabable of the most perverse misinterpretations of perfectly simple things - and they will ring and accuse you of writing quite the opposite of what you have clearly written. They are usually argumentative and negative people who operate from some stubborn mindset. This woman was of the ilk. I was gobsmacked.
Like most journalists, I am acutely aware of politicians who evade answers with artful sidetracks and I had just been marvelling at the thorough way in which Hillary Clinton had, indeed, answered the questions - including a deeply challenging question on farm subsidies. This is a crucial and complex issue. Hillary took her time extrapolating on the situation and its sensitivity, recognising small farmers as the core to the quality of life of rural America. Apparently there are 34,000 family farms in her state of New York. She suggested alternative conservation subsidies for such farms to help farmers to stay on the land "and be stewards of the environment" while allowing other countries also to grow crops.

She pulled no punches on the pro-choice issue - citing the Chinese government's enforcement of abortion and the Rumanian enforcement of a five-child policy as historic examples of the obscene folly of government control over women's bodies.
"No American wants police state interference with these personal decisions," said she.

At the end of these community events, it is traditional that the candidate presses flesh and chats informally to the people. I went to a lot of these events at the last NH Primary, but this was the first time I saw people being kept behind a rope. Hillary strolled the perimeter of the rope, rather like the Queen on walkabout. Then again, it was more the rock star scene since people were thrusting books and campaign posters at her for autographing, which she did in good cheer. I eased my way to the front and proffered a hand. As it happens, she has a lovely handshake - a warm, soft-skinned and dry hand with a grip that is neither weak nor fierce. I introduced myself and said I hoped that, when she was president, the outside world would be exposed to some less rabid Americana on ubiquitous Fox News. Clearly, it was a comment out of the ordinary and she asked me to repeat it, pulling my hand towards her as if to hear better. I repeated. Still holding my hand, she threw back her head and laughed, exclaiming "Yes! Yes!" before moving on, closely followed by the phalanx of secret service men.
Of course, it was a pretty silly comment of mine. I'm cringing about it now. Fox is not a government institution. It belongs to a yet more powerful force, Rupert Murdoch, my boss. I know Rupert's modus operandi. It is not naive. It responds to market and in the US the rabid right, especially under the Bush Administration, is a bubbling cauldron of a responsive market. For those of us not of the right, the O'Reilly/Hannity vehemence in Fox content often is hard to stomach - but we pay Fox its due for technical expertise, most particularly in coverage of major news crises when it is peerless.
I also know that Murdoch has expressed his approval for Hillary Clinton in this presidential race. And, I have no doubt, that if she or the Democrats win office, the global news station will moderate its content accordingly to meet and reflect the tenor of the country.