Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton addressed the unrest in Baltimore and the need for trust in society
in a speech Wednesday at Columbia University that received mixed reviews.
Jonathan Allen,
writing for Vox, praised the speech in an article titled "Hillary Clinton just gave one of the most important speeches of her career."
Allen praised the former secretary of state for sounding warmer and less stilted, programmed, and cold.
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Allen noted that Clinton used Baltimore's protests and rioting in response to the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died while in police custody, to make a larger point.
"From Ferguson to Staten Island to Baltimore, the patterns have become unmistakable and undeniable," Clinton said. "Let’s take on the broader inequities in our society. You can’t separate out the unrest we see in the streets from the cycles of poverty and despair that hollow out those neighborhoods."
She also praised the work of police officers, saying, "Everyone in every community benefits when there is respect for the law and when everyone in every community is respected by the law."
She called for police body cameras and lamented that black men are still more likely to be stopped by police and incarcerated than are whites.
She also pointed out that white women without an education and black women have a life expectancy 20 years shorter than others.
"We have learned in the last few years that life expectancy, which is a measure of the quality of life, manifests the inequality that we see in so many other parts of our society," she said.
Allen said Clinton clearly showed she is different from her 2008 persona and that "this time, it's about everyone else."
Though Clinton impressed the Vox writer, she didn't impress everyone.
"She left out the 60,000 children who will go to bed tonight in youth prisons and out-of-home placements in the justice system," You First CEO Liz Ryan said. "Kids should be a high priority as we attempt to end the age of mass incarceration."
The conservative
NewsBusters website noted that the Vox author left out a line from the speech that received ridicule on Twitter:
"We must urgently begin to rebuild the bonds of trust and respect among Americans. Between police and citizens, yes, but also across society, restoring trust in our politics, our press, our markets, between and among neighbors, and even people with whom we disagree politically."
National Journal's Ron Fournier wasn't impressed with that line either.
"I banged my head on my computer when I saw that," Fournier said on Fox News Channel's
"Special Report," adding that Clinton's actions are "an assault on the public trust."
"If you're someone like me who actually thinks judicial reform is a very important policy and actually agrees a lot with what she had to say, this is especially frustrating because you can't lead, you can't get anything done if you can't be trusted," Fournier said.
Clinton has violated ethics laws on both her personal emails and in foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation, he said.
'You can't on one hand talk about how we have to mend our political nature and mend our political ways and literally be assaulting the public trust," Fournier said.
Clinton still may be able to win the election if she is unable to get the controversy over donations to the foundation and her emails behind her, Fournier acknowledged.
"Fifty-one percent of the public may find the Republican nominee even less acceptable, even more repulsive than the Democratic nominee," he said.
"So, you've won the election and then what do you have? You're leading a country that is more polarized and has less trust in politics than you did before you came into office, and won't be able to get anything done."
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