Substance

Though I've never conducted a thorough study myself, I'm willing to accept as an article of faith that Barack Obama's speeches are less specific (policy-wise, anyhow) than are Hillary Clinton's. But that's not to say that Barack Obama's speeches lack all specificity or that Hillary Clinton's contain no flourish. Quite the contrary.

Still, read enough stuff like this and you might become convinced that voters far and wide are crying out for more, more, more specificity--that they dislike Barack Obama for failing to deliver, and reporters have picked up on the trend.

What's actually happened, though, is that Barack Obama spent months speaking more loftily (if, perhaps, less substantively) than Hillary Clinton and quietly watched his campaign collapse advanced from a distant second place to being the presumptive nominee. Then Hillary Clinton's campaign decided to attack Barack Obama for lacking specificity, and instead of conveying something approaching the truth (that though Obama speaks in less detail about policy than Clinton does, he does indeed get wonky quite a bit, and in fact offers policy prescriptions that closely mirror those of the slightly more specific senator from New York) the press decided to just relay her attack to the public. That led to things like this:

“If you’re an unemployed steelworker, a former coal miner, you want to know about job training, who pays your health care,” Dr. Madonna said. “Obama’s speeches are uplifting but without much specificity, and that’s a tough sell for working people who don’t live in a world of ideas.”

To which Barack Obama has reacted by toning down his speeches and rolling out the specifics that no evidence suggests anybody prefers, and deep into political stagnancy we fall.