It’s an open secret that when you’re looking for a job, you’ve got to repeat all the buzzwords the employer is looking for. Before you can get a resume in front of a hiring manager, or even an H.R. reviewer, you’ve got to get it past the computer. That’s why resumes are peppered with terms such as “results-oriented” and “impact.”
Job-hunter Hillary Clinton certainly got the memo.
In a recent Washington Post article, one of her spokesmen hit all the key liberal phrases. “Reducing income inequality and increasing upward mobility has been an uninterrupted pursuit of hers through every job she’s held,” Nick Merrill insisted.
That’s laughable. There’s no reason domestic “income inequality” would have colored her approach to foreign policy during her four years as secretary of state dealing with Syria, Libya and Iran should have been more than enough to occupy her time without her giving even a moment’s thought to “Occupy Wall Street.”
The Clinton electoral machine has run into a problem, but it isn’t buzz words. It’s that the entire family is part of the Beltway elite, safely cocooned from the concerns the rest of us deal with every day.
Consider Mrs. Clinton’s claim that she was “dead broke” when she left the White House in 2001. The comment came at the beginning of her latest book tour, as she promotes her memoir of the State Department years.
In his review of the book, David Shribman of the normally Clinton-friendly Boston Globe wrote: “‘Hard Choices’ is destined to be a book that is purchased but not read, a volume given but not opened. Indeed, it is impossible to imagine very many of the more than 318 million Americans alive sitting down and reading the whole thing.” Indeed.
And that’s by design. It’s a book meant to be seen, occasionally referred to, but not really read. Hillary Clinton pocketed a $14 million advance for this book, by the way. That’s about twice what Stephen King gets, and people actually read his books.
Mrs. Clinton is also overpaid for her speeches.
Many people, including the great cartoonist Scott Adams, have mocked motivational speakers. But there’s at least a chance that somebody walking out of a Tony Robbins presentation will be inspired, because Robins and others of his ilk actually aim to motivate people to do something.
Clinton collects some $200,000 per speech, but all she really wants to do is protect her reputation. She’s not trying to convince employees at Goldman Sachs to give up investment banking and become GS-13 American diplomats in Afghanistan. She’s simply presenting a sanitized version of her time at State and hoping to sell a few books to like-minded progressives.
This problem reaches to Chelsea Clinton as well.
As Ben Domenech wrote at The Federalist, the former First Daughter has wafted steadily upward, and seems to collect lots of money with very minimal effort. Her contract with NBC News pays her $600,000 a year -- more than many Americans will see in a working lifetime. She’s appeared about 14 times since joining the network in 2011. That figure can be broken down to roughly $26,724 for each minute,” FOX News notes.
“I was curious if I could care about [money] on some fundamental level, and I couldn’t,” Chelsea told the British newspaper The Telegraph. “It’s a funny thing to realize I feel called to this work both as a daughter and also as someone who believes I have contributions to make.”
Well of course she doesn’t care about money, because she never needs to worry about having it. And when she says “this work” she’s speaking of the Clinton Foundation, which is aimed at “helping” people.
Which should lead those of us in the middle class to respond: “Please: stop helping us!”
The Clinton family represents its profession. Politicians in Washington are confident they can manage the health care system better than patients and doctors can. They’re confident they can regulate the very temperature of the planet by controlling carbon dioxide emissions. They’re confident they can regulate all risk out of the financial industry. They’re confident they can “fix” income inequality by redistributing from the “rich” to the rest.
They’re wrong.
The best way Washington could help would be to do less. Stop regulating coal out of existence. Stop imposing regulations that delay the introduction of new drugs. Stop trying to set the price of healthcare through legislation and regulation. Just: Stop.
Say, that would make a nice campaign slogan. Even fits on a bumper sticker. Stop, Washington. Of such things, perhaps, campaigns are made.