Here’s the problem with Hillary Clinton

When it comes to electing or otherwise supporting any political figure the central criterion must be the person’s policies. These policies must be analysed based on present realities, historical fact and future desires. Beyond this though, and especially when one is dealing with the election of an individual as opposed to a party, one must examine the nature of the person. When it comes to Hillary Clinton, something just isn’t right.

In her speech accepting the nomination of her party for President of the United States, she devoted barely five minutes to foreign affairs in a speech that lasted over an hour. I’m a firm believer that foreign affairs is the axis round which all other matters revolve. It effects the very lives and quality of life of all people. It has an impact on trade, monetary policy, fiscal policy and the ability of governments to support the rights and privileges of her citizens. On foreign affairs, all other matters except for the very most mundane, depend.

In the five minutes she devoted to foreign affairs, she said very little other than she plans to continue 15 years of a monumentally disastrous policy in the Middle East, that she feels Donald Trump is irresponsible and that Russia is a threat; all of it predicable to the point of inducing sleep. The vast majority of people in America, like the vast majority of people in the world, know exactly what forces threaten world peace and stability and they all know who does not do so. Russia simply does not do so and does not want to. If Hillary Clinton’s closest comrades are to be believed, Russia personally threatens her dodgy email accounts, but even this is farcical to most grown up individuals.

But on to a more metaphysical analysis of the speech and of the person. A politician’s rhetoric, manner of speech and personal character traits are the first line of connection a politician has with the world. Before a bomb is dropped, before a treaty is signed, before a budget is passed, it is one’s presentation, speech in particular, whereby a populace form an opinion on an individual politician.  Over the years the world has seen a great variety of rhetorical styles from patrician (Harold MacMillan, John Kennedy, Benazir Bhutto) to impassioned (Nikita Khrushchev, Enoch Powell), humorous (Silvio Berlusconi), calming (Ronald Reagan, Kenneth Clarke, Leonid Brezhnev) to an everyman approach (Harold Wilson, Bill Clinton, Donald Trump). Yet Hillary Clinton seems to defy all of these categories. There is something deeply unhuman about the way she speaks, it is robotic to the core. 

One finds it hard to believe that a human being can speak so monotonously, let alone in her native language. Even those learning a foreign tongue are generally able to adopt a proper rising and falling inflection and illustrative timbre without a great deal of practice. One of the appeals of Bill Clinton was that ‘he spoke like someone you could sit and have a beer with’. Whilst this isn’t a qualification for leadership, there is a certain appeal to this phenomenon. Likewise, a politician whose oratory is inspired and grand like Churchill for example, is compelling to the point that one can listen to Churchill speeches for their poetic qualities even after decades have passed since the events about which he spoke. 

The fact that Hillary Clinton’s history of corruption and recent scandals prove that she is manifestly insincere isn’t helped by that fact that even if she were sincere, she simply doesn’t sound it. There’s something terribly fake about this person. Not only will she say and do anything to attain power but she is willing to do it employing a computerised aesthetic. Something is truly not right about this.