Coming soon to a Web site, campaign rally or TV interview near you: “The Woman From Park Ridge.”
Americans want a president who has suffered adversity and overcome hardship – or at least knows people who have. But what many voters know about Hillary Clinton is just the opposite: high-powered lawyer, wife of a president, U.S. senator, rich and privileged insider with unlimited ambition and uncertain ethics.
Her husband, Bill, faced a similar problem in 1992. His staff was appalled to discover that the public saw him as an elitist with glossy degrees from Georgetown, Yale and Oxford. That’s when he was rebaptized as “The Man From Hope,” the son of a single mom whose father was killed before he was born.
As a campaign narrative, “The Woman From Park Ridge” has the same purpose as “The Man From Hope”: to make the candidate more appealing and authentic, to send the message: I’m one of you, I understand your lives.
But Hillary has been in the national spotlight for 15 years; 2-in-5 Americans say they’ll never vote for her. It won’t be an easy sell.
As outlined on her Web site (and increasingly in public appearances), Hillary’s story stresses her parents’ modest origins. Her father, Hugh Rodham, “was the son of a factory worker in Scranton, Pa” (a key swing state).
He “trained sailors in the Navy during World War II” (her father served, even if her husband didn’t) and imbued her with “a deep sense of patriotism” (which survives, despite her opposition to the Iraq war). A small business owner, he “was so frugal that he used to turn the heat off overnight” (no big-spending liberals here).
Hillary’s mother, Dorothy, “the daughter of a firefighter” (remember the heroes of 9/11), was shipped across country at age 8 to live with a “strict grandmother” and “her mother’s difficult childhood imbued in Hillary a fierce sense of justice” (and taught her about life on the other side of the tracks).
Clinton has been talking about her parents more lately, and the home they made for their children in suburban Chicago, far from the fancy houses she now owns in New York and Washington. As luck would have it, Illinois is right next to Iowa, the site of the first caucuses, and in case any voters miss the point, her campaign literature stresses her “strong Midwestern roots” and “the sense of community we Midwesterners hold dear.”
If chapter one of “The Woman From Park Ridge” is aimed at hardworking, heartland suburbanites of both genders, chapter two is pitched more directly at women. A section of her biography, entitled “Mother and Advocate,” runs less than 400 words, but it mentions “children” and “families” 15 times. Her campaign theme, “Let the Conversation Begin,” strikes a distinctly feminine note.
