Hillary Clinton

IamMab

(1,359 posts) Thu Apr 14, 2016, 08:31 PM Apr 2016

The Mystery of the Two Hillarys

Last edited Thu Apr 14, 2016, 09:02 PM - Edit history (1)

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/04/hillary-clinton-2016-the-mystery-of-the-two-hillarys-213813
(link is 3 pages, long read, fyi)

I thought this article had a lot of good points in it. I found it to be a pretty fair assessment of Clinton's struggles against negative perception against her when she campaigns.

I covered her as a candidate, and then as secretary of state—and it was like two totally different people.
By Indira A.R. Lakshmanan
April 14, 2016

What is her strong suit, Clinton says, is the nitty-gritty prose of governance. That’s when she truly finds herself. “I’m much better when I actually have a job to do, rather than trying to get the job, you know?’’ she said at the town hall. In a recent interview, she elaborated on the point, saying her effectiveness translates into likability: “When I have a position, whether it's first lady or senator or secretary of state and I'm doing the work, I'm really quite popular,” she said, citing high approval ratings as secretary. Her pitch boils down to a trust fall for American voters: You might not see it now, but if you elect me, I’ll be the president who inspires you with what I get done.

Can she really sell that to the American people? Over the past nine years I’ve had a unique vantage point on this question. Covering her for Bloomberg News, I traveled with her both on her last campaign and as secretary of state. In 2007 and 2008, I trailed Candidate Clinton from Iowa to Kentucky, watching her bristle at questions and struggle to inspire crowds. I was standing a few feet from her when she let down her guard in a rare moment, her voice cracking and tears welling in her eyes at a New Hampshire coffee shop. After the election, I was the only writer from that pack who joined the much-smaller State Department press corps, and traveled regularly on her plane for the next four years, from her first overseas trip to Asia to her last stop in Belfast.

Watching her on those two different stages, the contrast between the two Hillarys was stunning. Up close, it felt like The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. From the start of her first trip as secretary of state in February 2009, I was struck by how different she seemed from the presidential candidate she had been only several months before. Clinton was relaxed, at ease with the press and radiating charisma in front of crowds. In Indonesia, thousands of people crammed into a Jakarta slum, all wanting to touch her or catch a glimpse as she greeted new mothers at a maternal health clinic. A member of her American security detail joked privately that if she’d gotten this kind of reception at home, the U.S. election might have turned out differently. When I asked a couple of bystanders why they’d waited hours for a glimpse of a U.S. Cabinet secretary, they looked at me as if I were a moron: “She’s the most famous and powerful woman in the world. Who wouldn’t want to see her?”

.....

A rare departure from Clinton’s typical stiff stump speech came in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in 2008, when she was trailing Obama in polls after his upset victory in Iowa. She had come face-to-face with vicious misogyny in New Hampshire that week, where detractors had crashed her rallies, heckling and holding hand-made signs with the slogans “Iron My Shirt!” and “Beat the B***h.” Not long after one of these ugly outbursts, Clinton was meeting a small group of undecided voters at Café Espresso; I was wedged next to a camera a few feet away. A woman asked Clinton how she managed to get out of bed every day and keep going under the pressure, doing things as mundane as making her hair look good. As I watched Clinton’s face, it was obvious the personal question, coming at that moment, touched a nerve.

Clinton looked composed as always, with her short hairstyle perfectly in place and blue eye shadow matching her suit. Then something happened. “It’s not easy … and I couldn’t do it if I didn’t just, you know, passionately believe it was the right thing to do,” she began, choking briefly as tears seemed to well in her eyes. The 16 coffeehouse patrons applauded, encouraging her to go on. “This is very personal for me. It’s not just political ... I see what’s happening and we have to reverse it,” she continued, picking up steam. “Some of us put ourselves out there and do this against some pretty difficult odds,” she said, her voice cracking again, “and we do it each one of us because we care about our country.” By the time she finished, several of the undecided women voters were wiping their eyes.

.....

Her best speech of the 2008 campaign was her last. “Well, this isn't exactly the party I'd planned, but I sure like the company,” she began in her concession speech to a hall full of roaring loyalists at the National Building Museum in Washington. She thanked supporters, like a 13-year-old girl who used money she’d saved for Disney World to go to Pennsylvania to volunteer for Clinton. “Although we weren't able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it's got about 18 million cracks in it, and the light is shining through like never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path will be a little easier next time. That has always been the history of progress in America.”