The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

Polite Disagreement

As it happens, Dahlia, I watched all the candidates' speeches early this morning, (thank you, CNN International) and I thought Hillary's performance was notably worse than the others. She was the only one who seemed to be reading from notes, the only one who looked down at the podium more than out at the audience, the only one whose cliches grated. Everyone else seemed to be speaking more or less spontaneously. McCain was relaxed; Huckabee was funny; Romney was grim; Obama was inspirational; only Hillary seemed utterly humorless, completely emotion-free, and not even especially happy. Her rhetoric may sound good on paper, but she is incapable of delivering it in a way that seems convincing. This is not a remotely original observation, but it somehow seemed particularly stark last night.

Maybe this year she's unlucky with her competition: If she was up against notably poor public speakers like George W. Bush (or even George H.W. Bush) it might not matter, but if you listen to her right after hearing Huckabee, as I did—and I do not speak here as a potential Huckabee voter—she just sounds stiff and phony. Doesn't she have advisors who can get on top of this? It seems strange.