One of the craziest moments in a crazy primary season came on Sept. 7, when the New York Times decided to publish some campaign propaganda from Clinton strategists — a managed “leak” of Clinton’s scheduled plan to mimic spontaneity:
There will be no more flip jokes about her private email server. There will be no rope lines to wall off crowds, which added to an impression of aloofness. And there will be new efforts to bring spontaneity to a candidacy that sometimes seems wooden and overly cautious.
Hillary Rodham Clinton declared her campaign for president nearly five months ago, before the startling rise of Senator Bernie Sanders, the volcanic candidacy of Donald J. Trump and the very public exploration of another White House run by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
In extensive interviews by telephone and at their Brooklyn headquarters last week, Mrs. Clinton’s strategists acknowledged missteps — such as their slow response to questions about her email practices — and promised that this fall the public would see the sides of Mrs. Clinton that are often obscured by the noise and distractions of modern campaigning.
“Overly cautious?” This would be the same Hillary Clinton that has lately been comparing her Republican opponents to the murderous ISIS and Nazis, right?
Of course, you’re supposed to obediently forget all of her shrill desperation, hateful rhetoric and email recklessness, and just accept the new script that says that Clinton hasn’t been showing enough of her “humor” and “heart” because she’s a modest, motherly soul who didn’t realize how rough the GOP wanted to play until now.
The most corrupt candidate of the modern era – the woman who set up a massive money-laundering operation disguised as a charity, the woman who shielded her government correspondence from Congress and the public – is going to reinvent herself as a nice church lady. She’s going to demand you believe that she got a nasty lesson in bare-knuckle politics from Republican street fighters, and is now ready to roll up her sleeves and fight back for the children, armed with nothing but here huge heart and spontaneous self-deprecating sense of humor.
I don’t know… maybe the NYT is trying to hurt Clinton by publishing the planned fakery. Maybe the NYT people are still sore about her henchmen jumping on them after they broke the story of the FBI investigation into her email server, and they’re looking for a bit of payback.
What could be funnier than the image of Clinton campaign strategists discussing her plans to schedule greater spontaneity in the future? There’s a Power Point presentation to go along with this, isn’t there?
Clinton’s “spontaneous humor” initiative apparently involves going on silly fluff talk shows and holding “backyard parties with supporters that allow her to show a more informal side.” The latter should provide much more unintentionally funny material than anything Hillary says to Ellen DeGeneres. Clinton’s “informal” public events are usually shams packed with carefully-vetted political operatives. If she does that again, the embarrassing truth will get out; if she doesn’t, she runs the risk of encountering an actual yeoman voter who might ask her all sorts of uncomfortable questions. If Republican campaigns don’t slip a few people with hidden cameras into these “informal” events, they deserve to lose.
As the New York Times article wears on, we get a hilarious bit of spin from her campaign hacks that “any candidate, Republican or Democrat, would love to trade places with her” – followed by news about the FBI investigation, her top aide Cheryl Mills preparing to testify before Congress, polls showing her favorable-unfavorable numbers flipping in less than a month, and a few words about how she can’t draw crowds the way Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump do.
Clinton’s crew is also still pressing their argument that her voters are too stupid to realize how she’s entirely innocent. Good luck with that one, kids. It’s the intelligence and law-enforcement communities she needs to convince, and they sound pretty darn skeptical these days.
Her campaign team’s review of their highs and lows to date shows how hilariously out-of-touch they are:
Asked about the most powerful moments of the past several months, her strategists pointed to an impromptu exchange about race with an African-American owner of a smoothie stand in Detroit that went largely uncovered by the news media, and the New Hampshire gathering with recovering drug addicts that evolved into something of a therapy session.
“That captured the essence of her leadership style,” Mr. Mook said.
Asked about a moment they regret, Ms. Palmieri paused and then quickly settled on the rope the campaign used to corral reporters at a Fourth of July parade in New Hampshire that became a symbol of Mrs. Clinton’s distance from the small-town celebration. A less intrusive rope had also been used to control crowds at other events.
No, the “essence of her leadership style” was her decision to put her political interests before the nation’s interests.
She exposed classified and Top Secret information to America’s enemies, then lied extravagantly about what she had done for years, then deleted thousands of subpoenaed emails, and then embarked on a spin campaign that recently culminated in Clinton claiming she wasn’t thinking very much when she took over as Secretary of State.
It’s funny that they think using a rope to herd reporters around was their most regrettable moment. Sure it was a doozy, but obviously it sticks in the campaign’s craw because they know it embarrassed the allies in the media, and they can’t survive without epic levels of media bias in their favor. The notion that Clinton has been quietly displaying leadership and moral stature at smoothie stands, and the press either missed those golden moments or refuses to carry the news, is meant to be taken by the media herd as marching orders.
The entire New York Times piece is essentially a talking-points bulletin to the rest of the press, because Team Clinton knows how carefully the media establishment reads the Times.
“Spontaneous” moments of humor and heart will be scheduled, Big Media, and you had better plan ahead to broadcasst the fakery to the masses. But remember to switch those cameras off when it becomes necessary to eject any citizens who dare to ask Madame Secretary about the Top Secret documents on her email server.
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