Hillary Has a Secret Weapon in the Town Hall Debate
She did scores of them around the world over four years as secretary of state—and got a lot of practice addressing women’s issues.
By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan
October 09, 2016
The conventional wisdom about town hall debates is that they’re all about empathy; in the past, the winners were deemed to be candidates who better connected with the problems of ordinary folks posing questions. By that measure Donald Trump’s No. 1 problem will surely be that he enters the hall at Washington University in St. Louis embroiled in the biggest controversy of his campaign—the continuing uproar over the appallingly non-empathetic things he has done to and said about women. But even before Friday’s story broke about the GOP nominee's lewd bragging on tape, he was already at a unique disadvantage.
The serious challenge Trump faces Sunday is that few candidates have ever been better prepared for this format than Hillary Clinton. Her secret weapon is that she revels in town halls—and she has practiced for them far more than people realize.
All told, Clinton held 60 town halls around the world in her four years as secretary of state, an average of more than one a month, and got a lot of practice answering tough questions, especially about women’s issues (a topic certain to be front and center Sunday night after Trump boasted in a video about groping women’s genitals). As a diplomatic correspondent who traveled with her, I was there for many of them, including her first and last town halls abroad, in Japan and Latvia. Clinton may have challenges seeming “relatable” to ordinary people, as comedian Kate McKinnon has mined for laughs on “Saturday Night Live” and as Clinton’s newly disclosed Goldman Sachs speech transcripts may suggest (or at least as some Republicans are contending). She also may not be the greatest public speaker or political talent of her time, especially compared with Barack Obama and her husband, Bill Clinton. But if you thought she was well prepared for the first debate with Trump, that’s nothing compared to the hundreds of hours she’s spent in town halls.
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http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/10/hillary-clinton-town-hall-debate-2016-214329?lo=ap_b1
