Bryan D. Brown

So the big buzz around the UCSB campus last Thursday was the arrival of Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton. My employer, the ever mighty Santa Barbara media powerhouse that is KCSB-FM, broadcast Hillary Clinton’s speech and following “town hall” live as it happened. A bit of Bryan-based trivia, I have engineered live broadcasts of both Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton within the last 15 months for KCSB-FM. Before I appear too think to highly of myself, we actually had our broadcast equipment under the press platform for the Hillary Clinton event to make room for the “important” press. Because that’s how we roll…

While everything inside the event was orderly, Jennifer’s experience in the line outside was not. She failed to gain entrance after waiting in line for 4 hours and being told she was 634th in line. At some point, the integrity of the line was entirely compromised, and fights nearly broke out. Jennifer made it out unscathed, thankfully, but… I don’t think Hillary earned a vote there.

As for the speech itself, I was less than… I don’t think she’s convinced me. The Iraq War was paid a lot of easy talk. Her immigration policies made me want to pull the plug on the whole broadcast (not my call, thankfully). Issuing a fine to immigrants and forcing them to pay back taxes doesn’t address the real issue at all - which are our current trade policies with Mexico (NAFTA) which have decimated the employment opportunities in our southern neighbor. Incidentally, she dodged the “revoking NAFTA” question - but NAFTA ain’t juicy, so there you go.

On the plus side, she was a dynamic speaker and extremely articulate, which is striking compared with our current President.

One of the things that really struck me was the “town hall” - which was really a Q&A. I’ve experienced quite a few Q&A’s when it comes to public speaking events, and the Hillary Clinton town hall was atypical of every single Q&A I’ve ever experienced. First, the structure was different, with Clinton pointing at members of the crowd who had their hand raised and taking their questions - with every “questioner” being articulate and every question relevant and topical. Trust me - that never happens at Q&A’s.

Secondly, the questions seemed to hit almost every topic of interest in the current campaign - from immigration, the questionable results of the 2000 election, U.S. involvement in Israel-Palestine… with no follow up and nothing really “challenging” the candidate. I mean, you have a chance to ask a question of someone who claims “35 years of experience” and who has spent six years in the Senate, which has largely been viewed as a lame duck to an unpopular President, and there’s no questions challenging her claims? Seriously?

Now, I am not trying to suggest that Hillary Clinton had “plants” or that her modus operandi is any different than any other presidential candidate - but it definitely struck me as an odd situation. Or maybe I just expect too much from this “democratic process” that we are exporting around the world.