Right now you’re probably asking yourself: What am I supposed to do with all this Hillary Clinton stuff? True, I am a concerned citizen, but I have a big deadline at work and a lot of social activities scheduled for the weekend.
We feel your pain, concerned citizen. It’s exhausting. The nation has been obsessed with the Hillary email crisis for more than a week now, but, still, so many unanswered questions.
One of which is: Clinton says she sent and received about 62,000 emails while she was secretary of state. By my extremely rough calculations, that comes down to about 42 messages in and out per day. How is this possible? Wouldn’t the Chelsea wedding alone have used up more than that quota? Don’t her friends mail her funny videos? Doesn’t anybody ever write to ask her to connect on LinkedIn?
Another question is about how a diligent voter is supposed to respond to this whole uproar. Test your political pulse. Would you say that the Hillary press conference on Tuesday was:
A) Maybe not her finest moment.
B) Better than the book tour.
C) Terrible! Awful! She’s going to lose!
The campaign will just be one big mess after another! Maybe the Democrats should be looking for a new face!
If your answer is C, then, wow, I can see why you’re upset. However, forget about looking for a new face. New faces are wonderful except that when they start to get old, they can turn into John Edwards or Herman Cain.
Or Scott Walker. The governor of Wisconsin is the new face in the Republican presidential race this year. He became famous with a rousing speech about how he stood up to his state’s public employees. So far, that’s pretty much the end of his persona. When he compared international terrorism to protesting union members, it may be because that’s the only crisis he knows about.
Even Democrats who are comfortable with the lack of newness in the Clinton candidacy have been dismayed about the email matter. The way she handled her communications was the exact opposite of transparency in public service. Particularly the part where she let some unidentified lawyers decide which messages belonged to the government and which ones were private conversations that ought to be expunged from history.
Then Clinton waited too long to respond to the ensuing political crisis. Finally, she held a chaotic press conference at the United Nations next to a big tapestry version of Picasso’s “Guernica,” which has to be the worst possible imagery you want to be associated with when you’re trying to tell the nation that everything’s hunky-dory.
Is this just a bad start or a preview of the next 20 months? Hillary supporters say everything’s fine: Her problems just stem from the fact that she’s a presidential candidate without a presidential campaign. Once she gets a staff in place and makes the announcement . an event that could come any time between Palm Sunday and Mother’s Day . she’ll be organized, focused and happily digging away at the Republicans who sent that snotty letter to the leaders of Iran.
Well, maybe. Sort of. If Hillary had been supported by a campaign staff this week, she definitely would have been doing her press conference alongside a better picture. But nobody’s going to make her into a different candidate in time for the presidential race. It’s like telling your older sister that you’d appreciate it if she’d develop a new personality before the family reunion.
Clinton is both the best and worst retail politician on the national stage. She’s not a gifted orator, and unless she’s coming back from some disaster, her speeches can be a snooze. But she makes terrific contact with average voters when she’s talking with them about boring, important issues. I have a fond memory of an event in New Hampshire early in the 2008 race in which she went on slowly and explicitly about why she wanted to get rid of a Wall Street tax break for financiers known as “carried interest.” It was an eat-your-vegetables kind of moment, but the audience was agog. (When the Clinton campaign launches, watch for the return of this particular crusade against Wall Street. If it doesn’t show up, feel free to throw in the towel. Really, there are limits.)
There won’t be a new Hillary. What voters can hope for is the best possible version of her flawed self. That while there will be messes, she will force herself to be open during the cleanup. That while she might not be a transformative speaker, she will be able to explain how she can take the issues she’s been pursuing for decades and turn them into a plan for serious change.
Also, she should keep building on her talent for holding firm during crises. But it’d be nice to have a little peace in between.
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