Election campaign in the U.S. & Italian left wing: Clinton vs Veltroni

(photo source)

Hi everybody!

On April 13 and April 14, 2008 a snap general election will be held in Italy after the defeat of the government of Prime Minister Romano Prodi. Under Italian law, elections must be held within 70 days of the dissolution of the previous government so, in April, we have to elect our next Prime Minister. The major competitors are Silvio Berlusconi, leader of PdL (Popolo della Libertà) and of the centre-right coalition, and Walter Veltroni, leader of PD (Partito Democratico), who chose to run alone with its own platform. On the other hand, November 4, 2008 is the United States presidential Election Day, and this date will mark the 56th consecutive quadrennial election for president and vice president of the United States. The candidates for the presidency are John McCain for the Republican Party and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the Democratic Party.

These are undoubtedly the two biggest political events of 2008 in the U.S. and in Italy, and there’s a question that links American and Italian people today: “Who will be the next?”. In both countries these are days of long political campaigns: right- and left-wing candidates have been campaigning throughout the countries and giving speeches about the main planks of their policy in order to persuade people to vote for them. It’s interesting, therefore, to listen to their talks and debates and try to identify key words and expressions that they use and also observe how they differently interact with their audience.
In this post I’ll analyze the language of Hillary Rodham Clinton (candidate for the Democratic nomination in the U.S. presidential election and current junior U.S. senator from New York) and Walter Veltroni (leader of the Democratic Party into the April 2008 general election in Italy).

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Hillary Rodham Clinton
By listening to Hillary Clinton's speeches, I found out that her way of speaking is characterized by the use of key words and expressions (see in bold) that reveal some topics that are central to her campaign:

- UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE
“health care, not for just some people or most people, but for every American”
- ECONOMY
”get the economy back on track”/ “for an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top, but every single hard-working American who deserves a shot at the American dream”/ “to turn our economy around”.
- NATIONAL SECURITY
“Protecting America is the first and most urgent duty of the president”/ “We're going to protect our country”/ “people need to take foreign policy and national security seriously”/ “strengthen our security”/ “to end the war in Iraq and win the war in Afghanistan”/ “safeguard our national security”/ “we need to keep our democracy strong and our nation safe”/ “Let's build a real coalition of allies to defeat terrorists in Afghanistan and other countries that provide a safe haven for al Qaeda. Let's make it clear that any terrorists who attack the United States, who have safe haven in any country, are putting that country at risk. That is one way for us to demonstrate that we will not be the aggressor, we will not engage in pre-emptive attacks, but we will defend our nation”.
- ENERGY
“We also do need to lead the world toward a sound energy policy that treats global warming as the crisis it is and not science fiction”/ “We need to demonstrate our commitment to home-grown energy”
- VALUES
“I will always protect and defend our nation and I will always advance the traditions and values that have made our country”
(the word values is repeated several times in Hillary Clinton’s speeches, and the values she wants to promote are usually presented in stark contrast to those of President Bush)

What are these values?

- diplomacy (not force/ military power)
- multilateralism (not unitaleralism)
- soft power (not hard power)
“Over the past seven years, we've seen what happens when the president presents the American people with a series of false choices and then is indifferent about the consequences: force versus diplomacy, unilateralism versus multilateralism, hard power versus soft”/ “our military power is absolutely essential but it cannot be viewed as the solution to every international problem.”/ “Yes, we must use force when necessary but as a last resort, not a first resort”/ “reviving old fashioned diplomacy”.
- moral authority & leadership
“I propose a new American strategy to restore our moral authority”, “re-establish moral authority and our leadership”
- honor
“Honor is important. It's important to our country. We are an honorable nation therefore we must do more to take care of those who sided with, protected and saved the lives of young Americans in Iraq”.

As for the way she interacts with her audience, she’s very smiling and friendly but also determined and resolute in her ideas. She usually starts her sentences by directly addressing her audience (“You know”, “You all know”, “This is your campaign and your moment and I need your support.”), or she uses the first plural pronoun we to involve the audience in her discourse (“we all know that…”, “We have two wars abroad. We have a recession looming here at home.”). However, she sometimes makes use of more impersonal forms such as they, Americans, people or America in general (“More and more people have joined this campaign”, “…they want their turn to help make history. They want their voices to count. And they should. They should be heard.”, “Americans don't need more promises”).

A significant instance is the speech she kept on March 4th after winning Ohio and Rhode Island primary elections (click here). In this video she is often interrupted by the applause of the audience, and she uses several expressions that are typical of propaganda speeches in order to encourage supporters to clap or sing “Yes, she will!”. Some examples are as follows: “The people of Ohio have said it loudly and clearly: we're going on, we're going strong, and we're going all the way”, “You know what they say, as Ohio goes, so goes the nation. Well, this nation's coming back, and so is this campaign”, “Ohio has written a new chapter in the history of this campaign, and we're just getting started”, “I believe I am the candidate most ready today to be that kind of president and commander in chief.”, “we're going to make history”/ “I have big dreams for America's future. The question is not whether we can fulfill those dreams, it's whether we will. And here's our answer: yes, we will.”

Furthemore, Hillary Clinton often puts the accent on how the next U.S. President should be, i.e. on how she would behave as President of the United States: someone who turns “promises into action, words into solutions, and hope into reality”, “Americans are looking for answers and they're looking for a president who will be a champion for them and start solving their problems”, “a president who will be a fighter, a doer and a champion for the American people again”, “ a president […] who will be ready to act swiftly and decisively in a crisis, who will pursue strategic demands of hard diplomacy to re-establish moral authority and our leadership, “a president who is tested and ready” (“also when that 3 a.m. phone call comes to the White House because an unforeseen crisis has erupted without warning. In that split second the president has to respond and make a decision that could affect the safety and lives of millions of people here in our country and around the world.”).

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Walter Veltroni
By listening to Veltroni’s speeches, I realized that he repeats words like change, new force, energy, growth, and simplicity several times in order to point out the need of our nation for reform, innovation and for becoming a freer, simpler and more open society. This idea seems to be a key concept in his campaign; as a matter of fact, with different words, he stresses that it’s time for Italy to change, breathe new and fresh air and put an end to its old-fashioned conservatorism and its static and frozen politics (“Il nostro paese è paralizzato dalla paura del futuro, dal demone del conservatorismo”, “Potere è mettere veti e bloccare il nuovo”). Veltroni’s commitment as next Prime Minister seems to go exactly in this direction: to build “a new, young and dynamic Italy”. Because of the different socio-political problems that affect Italy and America nowadays, Veltroni’s speeches – compared to Hillary Clinton’s – are less oriented towards terrorisms, the war in Iraq, and national security. On the other hand, special attention is given to topics that are particularly relevant to our national policy:

- protecting the ENVIRONMENT & developing alternative ENERGY from sun, wind and waste disposal (= SUSTAINABILITY)
- supporting the ENTERPRENEURSHIP by cutting down unnecessary BUROCRACY, i.e. by making the starting up simple and easy (“the less burocracy, the less corruption!”)
- assuring INDUSTRIAL SAFETY
- encouraging the ECONOMIC GROWTH of the country by making the demand rise again, in other words by increasing wages and pensions.
- assuring a “compenso minimo legale” (a minimum wage) of at least 1000-1100 euros/month to CASUAL WORKERS and discouraging JOB INSECURITY
- enhancing WOMEN’S EMPLOYMENT by doubling nursery places within 5 years
- helping FAMILIES WITH CHILDREN through a tax allowance of 2500 euros per child and building houses to be rent at no more than 300-500 euros a month
- building 100 UNIVERSITY campus within 2010 to avoid rooms being overrent to students on the side
- scientific RESEARCH as the key to innovation
- adjusting PENSIONS & WAGES to take inflation into account
- promoting SOCIAL MOBILITY by putting talent and merit in the front line so that “the son of a worker can become a lawyer”
- NATIONAL SECURITY means more policemen in the streets and “certainty of the penalty”
- TAX REDUCTION & fight against TAX EVASION (“everyboby pays taxes, everybody pays less”)

As for his way of interacting with his audience, Veltroni shows a good knowledge of rhetoric (he basically says what people want to listen to…) and makes use of a lot of encouraging and promising expressions: first of all “Si può fare!” (from Obama’s “Yes, we can!”), but also “Comincia un tempo nuovo. Tempo del coraggio e del cambiamento”, “Bisogna unire l’Italia e restituirle forza, ritrovare energia vitale, rischiare di nuovo, tornare ad avere voglia di futuro”); perhaps he aims at instilling a feeling of hope and confidence in his audience. He usually speaks in a deliberate and serious manner, and the handclaps of his supporters are rarer and more moderate in comparison to those of Hillary Clinton’s. In addition, he prefers canvassing by personally meeting people from different Italian towns to presenting his political plan through mass media and television debates as the American candidates and Silvio Berlusconi have been doing these days.