July 7, 2015 Before Hillary Clinton spoke to a crowd of roughly 250 supporters in the Iowa City Public Library on Tuesday, a young female campaign staffer had a few requests for the attendees. First, she asked those in attendance to pull out their smartphones and "like" Clinton's local Facebook page for Iowa and Johnson County. Then, she rattled off a phone number for the supporters to text in exchange for "updates" (aka donation pleas) from the campaign, which announced that it added 20 field organizers to its already large Iowa staff Tuesday.
But the actual content of Clinton's speech was refreshingly free of campaign artifice. Yes, she began with her routine spiel about income inequality, health care, and her excitement at becoming a grandmother, but her remarks felt more off-the-cuff than usual. Perhaps in an attempt to embrace her inner nerd, Clinton recalled spending hours in her local library during summer vacations while growing up.
One anecdote from her career as secretary of State in particular stood out as something new not only to the attendees, but to the reporters who obsessively cover the Clinton campaign as well. She told a story about the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. Clinton and President Obama were trying to negotiate terms with India and China—two of the fastest-developing countries in the world—for a climate change agreement.
The problem: China and India's leaders were nowhere to be found. Clinton said she and Obama "sent out scouts," who found that the leaders were meeting in a clandestine conference room. Clinton and Obama marched to the room, she said, and pushed past Chinese security guards to confront the heads of state. As a result, the assembled countries signed an accord outlining emissions pledges and other goals for energy use, though much of the text was nonbinding.
