Salon: This is why people don’t trust Hillary Clinton [View all]

[EdwardBernays]

Every step of the way, her breaking of the rules and handling of the email flap reeks of one thing: deception


It’s not often I agree with David Brooks, but he asked an intelligent question in his column this week: Why is Hillary Clinton so disliked? She’s nearly as disliked as Donald Trump, whose unlikability is arguably the most explicable fact in the universe. But Clinton’s unpopularity is more complicated. She’s an accomplished and tireless public servant who has worked very hard to be liked by the people she serves. So what’s the problem?

Brooks comes close to an answer: “At least in her public persona, Clinton gives off an exclusively professional vibe: industrious, calculated, goal-oriented, distrustful. It’s hard from the outside to have a sense of her as a person; she is a role.” This is true enough, but I’d emphasize “calculated” and “distrustful.” She appears machine-like because she’s so afraid to let the mask slip, to expose herself to any risks whatsoever. There’s a certain wisdom in that, but taken too far it becomes an albatross.

The private email server is a direct result of Clinton trying too hard to protect herself. To the uncommitted voter, it looks less like cautiousness and more like deception. And it feeds the narrative that will plague Clinton for the rest of the election: She’s untrustworthy and inauthentic.

http://www.salon.com/2016/05/28/this_is_why_people_dont_trust_hillary_clinton_email_scandal_is_a_reminder_that_her_guardedness_is_ultimately_self_defeating/