Hillary Clinton's evolving role at conventions
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This article covering the 2016 presidential election was written outside the scope of Ballotpedia's encyclopedic coverage and does not fall under our neutrality policy or style guidelines. It is preserved as it was originally written. For our encyclopedic coverage of the 2016 election, click here.
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July 27, 2016
By Jim Barnes
Philadelphia—Hillary Clinton has been on the political stage since the 1992 campaign, going from Democratic presidential nominee’s wife to the Democratic presidential nominee. Her roles at the quadrennial national party conventions have evolved from bit player to leading lady to star. And you can chart her growth as a political powerhouse by how she’s performed on the convention stage.
At the 1992 Democratic convention in New York City, Clinton did not have a high-profile role or even an official speaking slot. Her most memorable performance at that party confab came when she accompanied her husband, then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, and their daughter Chelsea Clinton, in a clever bit of convention stagecraft. On the night Bill Clinton was officially nominated, the Clintons were filmed live walking down Seventh Avenue and into the convention hall at Madison Square Garden to wild cheers from delegates in the middle of the television networks’ prime time coverage. Credit for that dramatic moment goes to the Clintons’ long-time Hollywood pals, television producers Harry Thomason and Linda Bloodworth-Thomason.
Four years later, it wasn’t a given that first lady Hillary Clinton would address the Democratic convention in her hometown of Chicago. That there was any doubt that Clinton would speak seems odd by today’s standards.[1] Moreover, four other first ladies—Eleanor Roosevelt, Pat Nixon, Nancy Reagan, and Barbara Bush—had addressed their husbands’ conventions where they were re-nominated.[2] Mrs. Reagan’s speech was punctuated by a video hook-up of her exchanging waves with her husband, who was watching her speech from a hotel room in Dallas.[3]
As first lady, Clinton had become more controversial than most of her predecessors for taking active policy roles in the White House, as with her unsuccessful effort to push comprehensive healthcare reform during Bill Clinton’s first term. At the time, some of President Clinton’s advisors thought it would be prudent to wait until after the Republican convention, which was held earlier in 1996, before finalizing the Democratic speaking line-up. When Elizabeth Dole, wife of Republican nominee Bob Dole, became the first presidential candidate’s spouse who was not a first lady to address a national party convention, it was hard to imagine that Mrs. Clinton wouldn’t be speaking as well.
On the second night of the Chicago convention, the first lady delivered a strong speech presenting the Democratic argument on family values that generally avoided partisan jabs.[4] While her speech in the United Center eschewed politics, Mrs. Clinton engaged in plenty of political activities around the convention.[5]
At the 2000 Democratic convention in Los Angeles, Hillary Clinton was a candidate in her own right, running for a New York Senate seat. It was Bill Clinton’s last convention speech as president, and there was some sensitivity on the part of the Democratic nominee that year, Vice President Al Gore, and his team, that the Clintons not overshadow the party’s 2000 ticket.[6]
Mrs. Clinton’s speech was primarily intended to introduce her husband’s address, but since the convention schedule was running late on the opening night of the convention, her remarks were pushed into prime time. But she was already emerging as a rising political star in the Democratic firmament. Very few senators, let alone first-time Senate candidates, do a round of featured interviews with all three broadcast network anchors at a convention.[7]
Mrs. Clinton was not on the initial list of featured speakers for the 2004 Boston Democratic convention when it was released by the campaign of the party’s nominee that year, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.[8] That move surprised some observers and disappointed Clinton’s growing number of fans. Some speculated that the Kerry team wanted to keep the focus on the 2004 ticket and not share it with Clinton, whom many Democrats already saw as their future presidential standard-bearer in four or eight years.
A few days later, it was announced that Mrs. Clinton would have a familiar role on the opening night of the Boston convention, a short address in prime time introducing her husband’s speech.[9] Even after just three and a half years in the Senate, Clinton was already such a political powerhouse in the party that her absence from the 2004 speaking line-up threatened to be more of a distraction to Kerry’s convention managers than any attention she might garner from addressing the delegates.
In her remarks, Clinton adroitly spent more time talking about Kerry and his qualifications than her husband, avoiding the suggestion that the Clintons were out to hog the convention limelight. Nonetheless, the Democratic Party’s ultimate power couple still garnered plenty of attention.[10][11] And while the former president still got top billing as a speaker, the Boston convention marked something of a turning point for the Clintons. Bill Clinton left Boston after this Monday night speech, while Sen. Clinton remained behind to make the rounds of meetings with Democratic constituency groups, elected officials, and party fundraisers—the normal convention work of someone who might one day seek the Oval Office. At the time, Harold Ickes, the long-time political consigliere for both Clintons, observed that the Boston convention was a sort of hand-off for the Clintons where the senator began to assert her preeminence as the leader of the powerful political clan.
In 2008, Hillary Clinton would be giving a major convention speech, just not the one on Thursday night that she had hoped for. After a bruising campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, which she lost to Barack Obama, Clinton found herself in the same position that Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders found himself in this week: he and his supporters still dealing with the catharsis of running a spirited but ultimately unsuccessful race for the White House. And just as Sanders did on the opening night here in Philadelphia, Clinton gave a rousing speech at the Democratic convention in Denver to rally her troops for Obama.[12] There’s little doubt that her gracious concession to Obama helped to lay the groundwork for her political success eight years later.
At the 2012 Democratic convention in Charlotte, Mrs. Clinton was completely absent from the proceedings. Indeed, she was half way around the world, wrapping up a tour of Pacific Rim countries while her husband delivered a powerful speech on Obama’s behalf at the Democratic confab. Although she wasn’t physically present, Mrs. Clinton was clearly on the minds of Democratic insiders looking toward the future.[13]
And in Philadelphia, she finally gets to give the big speech.
James A. Barnes is a senior writer at Ballotpedia who has covered every Democratic and Republican national convention since 1984. He is in Cleveland and Philadelphia for Ballotpedia in July. Contact media@ballotpedia.org with interview inquiries.
See also
- Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, 2016
- Democratic National Committee
- Democratic National Convention, 2016
- ↑ The New York Times, "More Angst for First Family: Convention Roles," July 15, 1996
- ↑ First Ladies, "Candidates’ Spouses Who Spoke at National Conventions," September 18, 2013
- ↑ CSPAN, "Nancy Reagan 1984," accessed July 27, 2016
- ↑ The New York Times, "Democrats Lay Claim to Family Values," August 28, 1996
- ↑ The New York Times, "Mrs. Clinton Invokes Memories of Famed and Faulted," August 27, 1996
- ↑ The New York Times, "THE 2000 CAMPAIGN: THE FIRST LADY; Clintons Promise Not to Step Into Gore's Spotlight," August 13, 2000
- ↑ The New York Times, "THE DEMOCRATS: THE FIRST LADY; For Mrs. Clinton, a National Stage To Promote a Candidate, or Two," August 15, 2000
- ↑ The New York Times, "Senator Clinton Will Be in Boston, but Not at the Lecturn," July 27, 2016
- ↑ The New York Times, "Mrs. Clinton Gets Speaking Role at Convention, After All," July 16, 2004
- ↑ The New York Times, "THE DEMOCRATS; Hillary Clinton: 'A Safer and More Secure Future,'" July 27, 2004
- ↑ The New York Times, "THE DEMOCRATS: THE FORMER TEAM; Crowned by Popular Acclaim, Clintons Return as Royalty to Spotlight," July 27, 2004
- ↑ The New York Times, "Clinton rallies her troops for Obama," August 27, 2008
- ↑ Government Executive, "Democratic insiders to Hillary Clinton: Run in 2016!" September 5, 2012
