Hillary’s New Voice? Let’s Hear It.

Hillary’s just finished her victory speech, and I have now picked myself off the spot on the floor where I fell when she began her speech with the comment,

“I listened to you and in the process I found my own voice”.

Did she really just tell me that she has been campaigning all this time to become the leader of the free world, without having found her voice? Why isn’t she embarrassed to tell us? And whose voice have we been listening to?

In my ignorance, I’d expect that finding one’s voice would be something one does in one’s 20s or 30s when one first decides to go into politics… Not having done so seems to say that “I really am just that politician so many of you are worried about”.

If a campaign advisor came up with the line, I’d love to ask what exactly he was thinking. And if the line was Hillary’s own – an honest expression of what would have to be given the context, a near-spiritual realization – then I’d like to know what did finding her voice feel like: because I don’t think anyone could easily hide behind an answer to that question.

But, as my dear mother once told me, it’s not what you say – but how you say it.

Sure enough, Hillary looked and sounded a little different this evening. That may be no more than should be expected given the relief and success she must be feeling right now, but whatever the cause, there was a glimpse of something from within – from the gut – that I hadn’t seen.

Time will tell if this actually was her new voice, or whether we were just hearing someone who was having a good night. If there really is a new American zeitgeist, and a reasonable person could believe that there is, then she will need an authentic new voice if she is going to give Obama a run for his money. Indeed, if Hillary’s campaign strengthens from here, it will be because her success in New Hampshire finally enabled her to stop trying so hard, and perhaps even, to start having a bit of fun.