New York Observer: Hillary Clinton Goes Back In Time to America's Roots

The Smallville Campaign:
Hillary Goes Back in Time

By Niall Stanage

Until I saw her on the stump these past few days, I’d never have believed that Hillary Clinton could attract voters by appealing to their sense of yearning for the 1950’s.

It seems, on the face of it, an absurd idea. The only thing that Mrs. Clinton’s most zealous fans and shrillest critics agree upon is that her Presidential candidacy represents a decisive and potentially transformative break with tradition. To her fans, she’s a courageous trailblazer; to her critics, she’s a radical feminist in disguise.

But the language that she uses on the campaign trail—beyond the rote answers to the policy and process questions she gets at each campaign stop—is that of a sentimental nostalgist.

As the Senator made a quick swing through Iowa on Sunday and Monday, the frequency with which she invoked a lost American golden age was striking. Her comments went far beyond the de rigueur Democratic lamentations about the current administration and its effects upon the nation.

Often sounding startlingly conservative—in the literal, traditionalist sense of the word—Mrs. Clinton harked back repeatedly to her youth, citing the era of Eisenhower and Kennedy as a shining example of how government and citizens can work together for the greater good.


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