Bill Clinton's Democratic Convention Speech: The Power of a Hug
Clinton started with a favorite subject of his: the coöperation that he sees among parties trying to solve problems around the world through his work at the Clinton Global Initiative. However, here in the U.S., despite President Obama’s best efforts, an unreasonable and ideological political faction has made coöperation impossible. From there he pivoted to recent history, making a seemingly dispassionate case for why no President, even Clinton himself, could ever have repaired in four years all the damage Obama found when he arrived in the White House in 2009. But despite that, Obama’s record, told with excruciating but powerfully persuasive detail, has been far better than is popularly understood. Now he just needs his contract renewed to finish the job. Clinton made it all sound so simple.克林顿用他喜欢的话题作为演说的开场白：他发现，在克林顿全球倡议机构的工作中，各党派能通过合作处理全球性问题。但在美国国内，不理性、理想化的政治派别让奥巴马即使费尽心思也无法实现合作。紧接着他将话题转向一个看似无关的事件：在过去几年里，为何没有一位总统，包括克林顿自己在内，能够解决2009年奥巴马入驻白宫时发现的所有问题。尽管如此，那些令人揪心却极具说服力的事实表明，奥巴马的政绩已大大'超出公众的理解。现在，奥巴马只需获得连任就能完成他的任务。克林顿的演说让这一切听起来如此简单。
This was the anti-Michelle speech. While she naturally gave personal testimony about Barack Obama’s character and urged voters to support him on that basis, in the story Clinton told Obama was an ephemeral figure. There were few personal details or anecdotes about the President because Clinton isn’t particularly close to Obama. It was a speech about facts and three and a half years of decisions made and outcomes achieved. By the end of it, the only logical conclusion, Clinton argued, is that Obama would do a better job than the alternative.
演说中克林顿对米歇尔•奥巴马持反对态度。尽管米歇尔•奥巴马理所当然地从个人角度佐证了奥巴马杰出的品质，并借此呼吁选民支持奥巴马，但克林顿用事例表明奥巴马良好的个人形象并不是长久之计。由于克林顿与奥巴马的关系并不怎么亲密，因此演说中未提及奥巴马的个人细节或轶事，而只有诸多事实以及三年半以来奥巴马所做的决定和结果。最后，克林顿顺理成章地总结道，奥巴马会比其他候选人表现得更好。
In a sense, Clinton’s reluctance to embrace Obama personally, and his own fraught history with the President, which I explored in a piece for The New Yorker this week, makes him the ideal spokesman to appeal to those skeptical former Obama voters that his campaign is trying to win back. In an interview with Brian Williams earlier in the day, Clinton said of Obama, “We haven’t been close friends a long time or anything like that, but he knows that I support him.” I found it an amazingly honest statement considering that politicians often go out of their way to exaggerate their fondness for one another.
克林顿不愿以个人名义支持奥巴马，其执政历史也并不顺坦（在本周纽约客中，我发表文章深入讨论了这点）。总某种意义上讲，要告诉那些心存疑虑的奥巴马曾经的拥护者，奥巴马正在力挽狂澜赢得本次大选，克林顿是最理想的演说人选。今天早些时候在布莱恩 威廉姆斯的采访中，克林顿这样评价奥巴马，＂我们一直以来都不算是密友，但他知道我支持他。＂政治家通常会不遗余力地夸耀自己对某人的崇拜之心，因此，克林顿诚恳的言辞让我感到吃惊。
And it was exactly their lack of personal chemistry and failure to become “close friends” that gave Clinton’s speech its lift. A subtext of the address was that, just like Bill Clinton, wavering voters need not love Obama to understand that he’s a better choice than Romney. When the two Presidents came together and hugged after the speech was (finally) over, the distance between them made their embrace all the more powerful.
正是由于两人之间并不来电，关系也没那么铁，克林顿的演讲便更具说服力。演说的主旨在于，忠诚簇拥的支持者应该像克林顿那样，没有必要因为视奥巴马为偶像才认为他比罗姆尼好。演讲最后，两位总统走到一起相互拥抱，他们之间依旧保持的那份距离让一切变得更具影响力。
For more of The New Yorker’s convention coverage, visit The Political Scene. You can also read Ryan Lizza on Julián Castro’s keynote address and the relationship between President Obama and Bill Clinton; John Cassidy on Michelle Obama’s convention speech and Obama’s and Paul Ryan’s false statements about the economy; Amy Davidson on what Bill Clinton didn’t say; the First Lady’s speech, the gay-rights platform, and whether Democrats are better off than they were four years ago; Hendrik Hertzberg on renewed Democratic enthusiasm; and Alex Koppelman on Obama and the American Dream.
想了解纽约客关于民主党大会的报道，您可以访问政治动态专栏。你也可以阅读Ryan Lizza对朱利安•卡斯特罗的演讲以及对奥巴马与克林顿关系的评论。John Cassidy 对米歇尔•奥巴马的大会演讲以及奥巴马和保罗 · 瑞恩对经济错误的观点。Amy Davidson的克林顿没有说出的那些话；第一夫人的演讲，同性恋权益保障，以及民主党人是否过的比四年前好；Hendrik Hertzberg关于重燃民主党的热情；以及Alex Koppelman关于奥巴马和美国梦。
Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty Images.
照片由Getty图片网站的Alex Wong提供。
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