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MANCHESTER, N.H.—The Barack Obama campaign seized this morning on a comment Hillary Clinton made in last night’s Democratic debate warning against raising “false hopes” in the campaign, seeking to portray the sentiment as a sign she lacks faith in the potential of America.
“It’s a bit breathtaking for somebody who would occupy the bully pulpit (to say) that we shouldn’t raise the expectations of the American people about what America can be,” Obama communications director Robert Gibbs told a group of reporters covering the campaign.
Since Obama’s victory in the Iowa caucuses, Clinton has intensified her efforts to contrast her lengthy record in public life with Obama’s thinner record in office as evidence that she is the candidate better equipped to “produce” change. At a Democratic party fundraising dinner on Friday night and again at the candidates’ debate Saturday night, Clinton warned against candidates who would raise “false hopes” change, clearly intending the remark as a jab at Obama’s ability to deliver on his promises.
“I think it is clear that what we need is somebody who can deliver change,” Clinton said at the Saturday night debate. “And we don’t need to be raising the false hopes of our country about what can be delivered. The best way to know what change I will produce is to look at the changes that I’ve already made.”
Clinton spokesman Phil Singer said the Obama campaign was “grasping at straws.”
“As she has said many times, Senator Clinton was saying that Senator Obama’s words and rhetoric are no substitute for action and results on behalf of the American people. It’s
not enough to promise change, you’ve got to have the record to back up your
claims and the ability to deliver change,” Singer said.Obama also referred to Clinton’s comment in his first speech of the day, delivered to an enthusiastic crowd that packed Manchester’s Palace Theater and that the Obama campaign said reached 950. Though he did not mention Clinton by name, he used the phrase to cast her as a doubter of the dreams and ambitions of those who yearn for change.
“For many months, I’ve been teased, almost derided for talking about hope. We saw it at the debate last night. You know, one of my opponents said, you know, we can’t just offer the American people false hopes of what we can get done.”
“False hopes,” he repeated the phrase, as if in amazement.
“Well, it’s true I talk about hope a lot. Out of necessity. I was not born to wealth or privilege…The odds say I should not be standing here today…But the implication is if you talk about hope, then you must be engaging in wishful thinking, your head must be in the cloud, you must be naive.”
“That’s not what hope is. Hope is not blind optimism,” Obama continued, transitioning into a meditation on the meaning of hope that he has been including in his stump speeches recently. “Hope is the complete opposite. I know how hard it will be.”
As Obama regularly does in campaign appearances, he portrayed hope as the animating force behind great movements in American history running from the Revolutionary War through World War II-era struggles of the Greatest Generation and onto the Civil Rights movement and a bond that joins his followers with those moments.
It is one of the emotional high points of his stump speech and today he used Clinton’s comments as a foil. He offered his definition of hope—familiar to many Christians because it draws language from a Biblical definition of faith as belief in “things unseen”–as a defense against her statement, which he appeared to connect with cynicism.
“That’s what hope is: imagining, imagining and then working for and fighting for what has not been done before. Believing in things unseen. Believing despite evidence to the contrary that there is nothing we cannot do as long as we’re willing to make the effort and cast aside the fear and the doubt and the cynicism.”
Update:
Obama raised Clinton’s comment at every campaign stop Sunday, his remarks growing more pointed as the day wore on.
“False hopes, what does that mean? Is that the message we want to send the American people? To focus on constraints instead of possibilities?” Obama told a crowd that packed a high school gymnasium in Salem, N.H. “Did JFK say, ‘The moon, it looks too far, let’s have a reality check here? We can’t do it.'”
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“We don’t need leaders who will say what we can’t do,” he continued. “We need leaders who will inspire us and tell us what we can do.”