How High Is The Bar?

Lately, I have been watching “The Circus: Inside the Greatest Political Show on Earth” on Showtime. It is a weekly recap of the Presidential campaign hosted by Mark Halperin and  John Heilemann of Bloomberg news and Mark McKinnon, an American political adviser, reform advocate, media columnist and television producer. The thing I like best about “The Circus” is that it brings an element of humor into the realm of usually dry political reportage

On last week’s show,  John Heilemann commented that “Trump’s convention speech was a bad speech badly delivered and Hillary Clinton’s convention speech was a mediocre speech mediocrely delivered.” I take issue with that statement because I thought Hillary’s speech was a very good speech and gave an insight into who she was more so than I have seen. I guess my question is how high a bar has been set for Hillary Clinton and how low are the expectations for her rival? I finally realized that deep down, Hillary Clinton is a wonk and knows better than probably anyone on the political landscape these days how government works and how to get things done in Washington.

Very rarely in this country do things change in sweeping reform. It is an incremental governmental system and a series of small changes eventually lead to real change. It takes time and is based on what a politician thinks can make it through Congress rather than what might be good for the country as a whole. The fact that the party in the White House has never been in power for more than twelve years in a row in the modern era (since Truman) speaks to why things change so slowly.