"In the spring of 1971, I met a girl."
And so it began, truly one of the greatest convention speeches ever written, both on the Democratic and Republican sides. The crowd in Philadelphia was truly captured by Clinton's story, one that showed another side of Hillary Clinton, a side we haven't gotten to know yet. So, let's get right to it with why Bill Clinton's speech changed the course of this election.
We know she was the First Lady of the United States. We know she was the Secretary of State. We also know she was a senator from the state of New York, but that's all most of us know, until Bill Clinton delivered his speech. He portrayed a side of Hillary Clinton we never knew, the studious young girl at Yale, studying to become a lawyer and truly make a change on the world. He talked about the way he courted her, the way they met, and all the other things that normal people in their 20's and 30's do. Being able to relate to a voter is key for any campaign, and with this speech, Bill Clinton showed just how normal their relationship was. With the polls showing Trump and Clinton locked in a tight battle, and continuous scandals rocking the Clinton campaign, Bill Clinton chose the perfect time to show who Hillary was, is, and will be in this election.
Throughout his speech, everyone reminisced their own grandfather telling them a story from years earlier Bill Clinton has never called his speeches a speech. Instead, he calls them talks. As a casual listener tuning in, I'm expecting a convention speech with jargon, some negative attacks on the other candidate, and a little bit of policy issues that I try to look into, but nothing much more. And then Bill Clinton came on, and just talked. He talked about how he met Hillary, how he played with Chelsea, how he was a normal father living in a normal household in Arkansas and that's exactly what we needed to hear. I was truly entranced by his speech, a speech that was able to transcend the barrier between politician and voter. I understood every single word of speech, and could picture in my head exactly how their life was like. His anecdotes were filled with imagery and figurative language, all the things I had learned in English class he had applied in real life, and that's something only a great orator like Bill Clinton could ever do.
Bill Clinton was an inspirational man, an unconventional speaker who knew exactly what to say at any point in time, and exactly what to do to get his point across. Before the conventions even began, Hillary was only up by three points in most polls, but by the end, this expanded to a commanding 11 point lead. There are definitely other reasons for this rise, like Michelle and Barack Obama's speeches, but Bill Clinton's talk truly defined the momentous occasion of the first woman to ever be nominated to be President of the United States of America, and that too with historic fashion. And to Bill Clinton, the First Gentleman of the United States, what a grand way to make history.
