By Roger Simon
At some point in a political campaign, a candidate is always advised to “just be yourself.”
It
is almost always terrible advice. Though the candidate usually finds it
appealing. No more phoniness! No more artifice! No more pretending to
be something he or she is not!
Campaigns
are about artifice, however, about presenting appealing images, about
submerging the personal quirks of the candidate to what is needed for election.
Still, one faction of the campaign — and campaigns nearly always
break down into factions — always ends up urging “let the candidate be
the candidate,” largely because nothing else has worked.
No doubt Mitt Romney
was told to be Mitt Romney, and no doubt the warm and personal side of
Mitt was warm and personal. But that doesn’t mean it played that way on
the national stage. Ask people what they remember of him today, and they
will say putting the dog on the car roof, getting zoning permission for
a car elevator in his La Jolla mansion and his 47 percent statement.
All of those were Mitt without artifice. All were Mitt being Mitt. And all were disasters.
Hillary Clinton is
currently running vigorously for president under the guise of selling a
656-page doorstop of a book that Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times
said presents “little news.” And this was one of the positive reviews.
No matter. The book itself is mere window-dressing so that Hillary
can go out among the people at a variety of locations — including a
Costco in suburban Virginia this past weekend — to reveal the “new,
improved” Hillary Clinton, not the Hillary Clinton who hired an
inexperienced, often quarrelsome staff in 2008 that spent more time
fighting one another than Barack Obama.
But now Clinton gets a mulligan, a do-over, a second chance to make a
first impression. Six long years have passed since her last
presidential run, and she is a totally different person. She is more
relaxed, more warm, more human, more connected to the American people.
Except she’s not.
Her current rollout has gotten steamrollered by the media. She has
been eviscerated for saying she was “dead broke” when she left the White
House and portrayed as testy and irritated when a reporter dared ask
follow-up questions.
“Clinton seems to be repeating the central mistake of her 2008
presidential campaign,” wrote Ron Fournier of National Journal, “burying
her personality and passion beneath redundant layers of caution,
calculation and defensiveness.”
I respect Fournier, but I think the opposite may be true. Clinton’s
personality and passion may be her problem and her layers of caution,
calculation and defensiveness may be her best way of disguising that.
Take her exchange with NPR’s Terry Gross. Gross tried to bore in
deeply with follow-up questions asking Clinton whether her views on gay
marriage had shifted with the shifting politics of the times.
“I have to say, I think you are being very persistent, but you are
playing with my words and playing with what is such an important issue,”
Clinton said.
“I’m just trying to clarify so I can understand … ,” Gross said.
“No, I don’t think you are trying to clarify,” Clinton snapped back, according to POLITICO’s
Maggie Haberman. “I think you’re trying to say I used to be opposed and
now I’m in favor and I did it for political reasons, and that’s just
flat wrong. So let me just state what I feel like you are implying and
repudiate it.”
Which is Hillary being Hillary. You can say it shows admirable
toughness, but when she ran last time, her campaign found out she had
toughness to spare. “Ironically, our early research found the Hillary
attributes that tested the highest were ‘tough, ready, strong,’” a top
Hillary staffer told me in 2008. The highest attributes for Barack
Obama, Hillary’s campaign found, were “empathetic, sympathetic, cares
about me."
And which set of attributes won?
Last Friday, at George Washington University,
Hillary faced a much kinder interview from a close friend and former
employee, Lissa Muscatine. Muscatine came to the startling conclusion
that the gaffes and heated exchanges during Hillary’s book tour meant
one thing: “You seem like you’re having a really good time,” Muscatine
said.
“Well, Lissa, I am having a good time,” Hillary responded.
“You’re really free to speak your mind these days,” Muscatine said.
“Maybe it’s because I am truly done with, you know, being really
careful about what to say because somebody might think this instead of
that,” Hillary said. “Whether you agree with it or not, you know exactly
where I come from, what I think, what I feel. It feels a little bit
liberating, to be honest.”
“And it’s great to watch,” Muscatine said.
Good drama is always great to watch. But I think Hillary Clinton feels about as free and easygoing as a tightly wound watch.
She claims she no longer has to be “really careful” about what she says.
I have difficulty believing that.
And, if it is true, I have difficulty believing it will get her to the presidency.
No comments:
Post a Comment