In a brief interview with The Washington Post, Clinton said she had developed a plan to overhaul the way money is spent in political campaigns. Earlier in the day she said she wanted to fix the country’s “dysfunctional” campaign finance system, even backing a constitutional amendment if necessary.Asked about her campaign finance agenda, Clinton said, “We do have a plan. We have a plan for my plan.”Clinton added, “I’m going to be rolling out a lot of my policies…Stay tuned.”When The Post asked about the role of Priorities USA Action, a pro-Clinton super PAC currently trying to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to help her campaign, Clinton shrugged her shoulders and said, “I don’t know.”
In other words, it’s time to get other peoples’ money out of politics. And she isn’t yet prepared to tell us what her “plan for a plan” is. And remember this is the woman who socked away millions from giving speeches to Wall Street firms, allowing her to be more than comfortable and unemployed while running for office.
She is not at ease in trying to meet with “everyday” folks for good reason. She hasn’t been in elective office for seven years, and wasn’t a naturally gifted pol when she was. But she has painted a target on herself by being so lacking in substance and making it all about identifying with the plight of “everyday” Americans. That only puts the spotlight on her extraordinarily insular life and wealth.
Her “van” turns out to be a luxury vehicle. Her drink at a local Iowa coffee shop sounds straight out of a Manhattan Starbucks (“a caramello latte and a Masala chai tea.”) There is nothing wrong with all that or with her luxurious lifestyle, including her 5,200-square-foot mansion (currently worth about $2.3M); she earned it, parlaying her role as first lady to the Senate to State and to $300K speaking fees. But then she should not lament the salaries of CEOs or fashion herself as uniquely in touch with “everyday” Americans. She is trying too hard, and in the process underlying how little first-hand experience she has with normal life in America. Her refusal to talk in depth with the media, as GOP candidates are routinely doing, conveys both a lack of confidence and the realization any interview is fraught with danger (the e-mail scandals, Benghazi, foreign donors).
Maybe she would have done better to have kicked off her campaign with a rally in her home town (well, probably not Chappaqua), ‘fess up that life has been very, very good to her and then tell voters what she is going to do for them. In other words, Hillary being Hillary may be a bad idea; Hillary the Policy Purveyor might be a more comfortable role for her. You understand the dilemma: She is not trustworthy according to multiple polls, and she is extremely polarizing. The impulse is then to “humanize” her, but it’s working about as well as when George H.W. Bush inadvertently read the stage directions to an audience. (“Message: I care.”) It’s as if she has a big sign reading, “See, I’m being normal and spontaneous!”
The beauty of early small state primaries is that retail politics can be spontaneous and regular voters can spot phonies. In the case of Hillary Clinton, weeks and months of that may be a fate worse than a slew of Sunday morning shows and a big policy address. She should figure out what she believes, what she wants to do and tell the country. (That’s in essence what New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was saying when he complained that she’s been out of domestic policy for years, “This is a different country we’re living in right now, and I think we need to hear a vision that relates to this time, not eight years ago – this time.”) In any event, all this faking sincerity is cringe-inducing.