No matter how you feel about Hillary Clinton, Friday’s strange if not downright bizarre hostage standoff is yet another sign that our political process, and in particular the reporting on that process, is completely broken.
If it isn’t FOX News turning the situation into a circus of absurdities…
Fox News has a novel way of covering the election, the Election Link vehicle. Inside, the reporter (today it’s Carl Cameron) does live streaming coverage from the passenger seat alternating with dashboard shots of the road ahead. As Cameron sped towards the Rochester, NH headquarters he said, “This is exactly why the election link vehicles are going to deployed by Fox News in New Hampshire and Iowa.”
…it’s the all too predictable reaction to the story.
But the real cake winner is, of all people, The Nation’s John Nichols with that lovely chestnut, “blame the victim”.
The problem for Hillary Clinton that arises from the incident in which a disturbed man invaded her Rochester, New Hampshire, campaign headquarters is not any kind of physical threat. Clinton is the most carefully-managed and thoroughly-secured presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan, who when he began to show the first signs of the dementia was placed in a sort of protective custody during the 1984 campaign. Clinton is is no greater danger now than she has been in since the start of her campaign; and neither, thankfully, were her New Hampshire supporters, who exited the headquarters without injury.
With you so far.
The problem for Clinton is a political one.
Wait, what? This is a problem for Clinton?
The incident in Rochester reminds prospective Democratic primary voters and caucus-goers that the front-runner for the party’s presidential nomination is a celebrity candidate who attracts controversy, who is legitimately seen as divisive and who– barring a major shift in tone and style — will always campaign at a distance from the American people.
Read, “Hillary’s a bitch.” Sigh.
This is not entirely fair to Clinton. She has indeed been the victim of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” that she named after millionaire conservatives and their paid minions defining her as a cruel and conniving egomaniac who would stop at nothing to obtain power and position.
No shit, but I smell a huge “but” coming, and I don’t mean Rush Limbaugh.
But there is nothing fair about American politics. And, while Clinton has made some progress when it comes to softening her image, she has not begun to transform herself so successfully as did the “ruthless” Bobby Kennedy in 1967 and 1968 — or even the “boring” Al Gore in the period since he ceded the presidency to George Bush.
Hillary Clinton remains a charged figure who excites great passions. She is a highest-profile politician whose fame is both blessing and curse. The blessing is that, without offering much more than platitudes, she has been able to wink and nod her way to the top of most Democratic polls. The curse is that, if an desperate man in Rochester, New Hampshire, is looking for a campaign headquarters to invade, it’s going to be Clinton’s.
If a few other desperate men target the Clinton campaign in coming weeks — or even a desperate woman as hyped up as the one who called the Democratic senator a “bitch” at a recent John McCain event — the contender who so recently seemed inevitable will be in trouble.
Wait, what? It sounds like what you’re saying is “Hillary is a bitch, it’s not really fair, but it’s the truth As a result all the whack jobs who hate her unfairly will only serve to remind voters how much of a bitch she is. What a shame. Bitch.”
Stop me if I’m wrong.
It’s won’t be Clinton’s fault, at least not wholly. But incidents of this kind will make Democrats, who think they have a good chance of winning the presidency in 2008, start asking: Why invite the volatility that goes with Hillary Clinton? Why not nominate someone — a John Edwards, a Barack Obama, even a Bill Richardson — who provokes a little less passion?
To deny that such thinking will go on in the heads not just of pundits but of grassroots Democrats would be absurd as the calculus that said John Kerry was the most electable Democrat of 2004.
You’re not stopping me, in fact you’re validating every word of the whole Village moron “the perception is Hillary’s a bitch” thing.
The challenge for Clinton, then, is not to avoid the issue. She must confront it. She must turn her volatility to her advantage. She should take a risk that puts her outside the comfort zone of her own campaign — and of contemporary politics. She should speak bluntly about the bitter partisanships, the crude tactics, the open hatreds that now characterize campaigning and that so undermine the ability of elected leaders to govern in a functional, let alone inspiring, manner.
The incident in Rochester was not a big deal. It was overplayed by the media. Clinton and her aides are safe, as safe as any serious presidential contenders and their hangers on. But the Friday’s headquarters invasion got the attention it did for a reason. Everyone recognizes the emotions — both positive and negative — that Hillary Clinton inspires. And everyone suspects that they could boil over again, either physically or politically.
So, the media’s unfair portrayal of Hillary as Ultra Harridan 5000 is best solved by admitting that everyone believes she can castrate men and seduce women with just her stare. How nice. The best way to dispel a myth is to not only acknowledge it, but for Hillary to waste time denying it, which won’t fuel more of the same ridiculous accusations and innuendo. Brilliant.
Clinton needs to address her perception and her reality as a remarkable political figure who has already made a great deal of history and could make a great deal more. She cannot do it with spin. The reliance on spin, on managed messages and manipulated moments, is a big part of what Americans — even some of her supporters — distrust about her.
Hillary Clinton needs to open up. She needs to speak frankly. She needs to acknowledge that, for better or worse, she inspires intense reactions. She needs to start talking about that intensity. And she needs to explain to the American people — if she can — how that intensity, as opposed to silly spin about “bringing us all together, is what this country needs after George Bush’s sleepwalk across the minefield.
If Clinton does this, it will not matter what passions play out during the course of the coming campaign. She will be on her way to the Oval Office. If she fails to do so, Clinton will remain vulnerable to the incidents that are all but certain to unfold, and that vulnerability will beg questions that could well cost her the presidency.
So the best way to prove that the accusations of Hillary being a purely political animal and fight the perception of her being a ballbreaker (instead of being the first woman in our country’s history with a real shot of being President) is to do the purely political thing and stop being such a ballbreaker.
Now look. I have problems with Hillary, but it’s because of her record, not the fact that she’s a woman who knows how to play politics. But because she is arguably the most successful woman in recent history to play the game, she has to be attacked for all the wrong reasons. Attack her on her voting record. Attack her on her policies. But “she’s a bitch, ergo she needs to stop being a bitch” is the most idiotic piece of Rahm Emmanuel bullshit I’ve heard in a long time.
It’s the “her outfit and her manner meant she was begging for it, your honor” argument. What is being overlooked is the fact that the whackjobs are going after Hillary not because she’s a “bitch” but because she is so despised and hated by the right wing media that the freaks come out for her blood.
It’s not Hillary Clinton that created this problem. It’s the so-called “liberal” media that has gotten so out of hand that Hillary’s “bitch” status is now a given truism of political life. But according to “the media” it’s Hillary’s fault for having the balls so to speak to run for President.
And since it’s Hillary’s fault, she is the one who has to change, not the crazy ass Village press.
Screw that.