There’s More to the Story Behind Clinton’s Use of Vilsack’s Anecdote

[Commentary] Via Media Matters, the Des Moines Register recently suggested that New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton stole an anecdote from former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, when, in fact, she fully credited him in retelling the story. Media Matters is right to point this out, though the watchdog group is wrong to say that therefore “there is presumably no story.” Actually, the incident provides a valuable window into her Iowa campaign strategy.

From the Register’s piece, titled “Hillary uses story Vilsack had told”:

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has borrowed an anecdote about the war in Iraq from former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack.

Clinton told an audience of more than 300 people in Des Moines Tuesday about Bruce Smith, the West Liberty man killed in Iraq in 2003 when his helicopter was shot down.

Smith and his widow, Oliva Smith, were fixtures in Vilsack's standard speech during his brief campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination this year.

Later, the Register notes that “Clinton said Vilsack had told her the story, one he often used to end his remarks.” But the newspaper fails to mention that Clinton attributed the story to Vilsack (who has endorsed her) during her speech – not just to reporters afterward. In her speech, the presidential candidate said, “My friend, Tom Vilsack, told me about Bruce Smith and his courageous wife, Oliva,” before launching into the anecdote. Whether intentional or not, a reader of the Des Moines Register article would come away with the impression that Clinton acted somewhat nefariously.

Kudos to Media Matters for catching this somewhat shoddy journalism. Still, Clinton’s use of this anecdote isn’t a non-story – it's a useful tool to analyze her Iowa campaign strategy.

During Vilsack’s short-lived run for the Democratic nomination, he ended nearly every stump speech with that anecdote, and it worked. At the close of a somewhat boring address, the story added an enormous amount of pathos to the otherwise stiff candidate. I’ve heard it a half-dozen times, and it’s just as powerful every time. When Vilsack had the unfortunate responsibility of speaking during lunch at last year’s Take Back America Conference in Washington, D.C., the centrist Midwesterner silenced the crowded (and hungry) room with the anecdote and received a standing ovation from the crowd of liberal activists.

Now, Clinton has adopted the anecdote perhaps to better feel voters’ pain. But for Clinton, the story does more than humanize her. It’s also her attempt to thread the needle of the Iraq War, an issue that has troubled her campaign from the start — especially in the Democratic cornfields of anti-war  Iowa. The anecdote has shades of pro-troops, anti-war rhetoric as voters learn of another tragedy the war has produced, but it also takes the focus off her Iraq position, which has not been forceful enough for many anti-war Democrats. Clinton also might be hoping to associate herself with Vilsack, the popular two-term governor whose opposition to the war, it should be noted, had become more and more fervent by the end of his campaign. But while Clinton’s message might echo Vilsack’s, she’s likely hoping that the trajectory of her campaign looks a little different.