Presidential Candidate, The Fourth (Part 1)

Yesterday I was extremely excited, and a bit apprehensive, because Hillary Clinton came to town. Excited because at the moment she's the person I'm most likely to vote for and I was looking forward to seeing her in person, and apprehensive because after Bill Richardson's abysmal visit, I was worried that Senator Clinton would also crash and burn.

Luckily, I was very pleasantly surprised and impressed. I thought Senator Clinton came off as professional, intelligent, powerful, and even charismatic. She projected just the image I would want for the president of the United States. I took a bunch of notes about what she said on my laptop, but due I managed to lose them somehow (I can only imagine it must have been a secret service mission in which they replaced my laptop with one that was identical except for the deletion of the mail I sent to myself with my notes!). So unfortunately, you'll have to be content with a few thoughts about what I remember:

• Clinton's speech was the first one of all the politicians I've heard that was organized and logical. She laid out her four issues and throughout her speech you could see she was going through them in a methodical way. It seems like a small thing, but it really made what she said hang together. So what were her 4 issues? Well due to my email screw-up and pathetic short-term memory, I can only remember the last three:
  2. Strengthening the Middle Class - basically improving on health care, infrastructure, and economics
  3. Comprehensive government reform - specifically getting competent people back in government
  4. Restoring America’s standing in the world - can't really argue with that, can you?
• She told a charming personal story about Sputnik (and no, it wasn't quite as moving as Elaine's). She did say that at the time, everyone felt like the US was in charge and going strong - we'd won the war, we were the only real superpower, etc, and that when the Russians launched this "piece of junk" into space, the Republican president called in the best scientists of the time, created agencies that became DARPA and NASA, and pushed young people into math and science. She said that she was in 5th grade at the time and her teacher told her that President Eisenhower wanted her to learn math and science, and she believed that the President had actually called up her teacher to talk to her personally. Her point, of course, was that at some point in the past Republicans actually listened to scientists, and she took the opportunity to talk about her science agenda, which involves bringing politics out of science while raising the federal funding levels for science organizations.

More tomorrow...