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Andrew Malcolm introduces us to ‘Hillary Day’ as we look back at her horrible week.
… Hillary Clinton is doing everything you’d expect from someone setting up a presidential attempt in two years.
She’s publishing a book today that’s unlikely to offend anyone important. “A newsless snore,” wrote Politico’s Mike Allen, no doubt earning a prominent spot on Team Hillary’s enemies list.
The reviews of the 656-pages have been not so good. “This volume,” wrote the N.Y. Times, “is very much the work of someone keeping all her political options open.” The NewRepublic slammed its “dullness and lack of critical energy.” Slate said “Hard Choices ” is a “low-salt, low-fat, low-calorie offering with vanilla pudding as the dessert. She goes on at great length, but not great depth.”
Allen added Clinton’s book was “written so carefully not to offend that it will fuel the notion that politics infuses every part of her life.” No kidding! Politics and the Clintons? Do ya think?
These reviews miss the point. “Hard Choices” is less a book and more a political bus shelter awaiting the campaign. Anyone remember anything from Romney’s book or Huckabee’s or Obama’s? (Besides all the drugs.)
Most Americans will not read the book. So, the message from the book is whatever Clinton says it is. She’s got no grand peace treaty or accomplishment to cite.
But she worked hard as Obama’s teammate, admires him. But, you know, she’s been out a while now, so doesn’t know a lot of inside details, despite her secret lunch with POTUS the other day. …
After watching Clinton’s performance this week, Jennifer Rubin thinks the GOP is praying Hillary is nominated.
At some point during Hillary Clinton’s book rollout — perhaps it’s already happened — some Democratic activists will look at one another and ask: Really? That’s who we want to just hand the nomination to?
In the media blitz Democrats may be reminded of some old faults and some new problems that would plague her candidacy. She doesn’t handle intense scrutiny very well. (Her first interview necessitated immediate damage control on her plea of poverty.) She too often plays the victim (broke, was she?). And her “accomplishments” on further scrutiny turn out to be slight. Her refusal to recognize her own failures suggests either arrogance or cluelessness, as we saw in her unconvincing Benghazi defense. There is a reason why her popularity goes up when she is not running for something. With no declared opponent, no negative ad and no real new information about her favorability has dropped five points in 4 months — and that is before her rotten interview performance has percolated fully. Imagine a few more of those interviews, an informed and capable opponent and a series of ads featuring nothing but Hillary’s own words. You can see how beatable she might be. …
Similar thoughts from Paul Mirengoff.
Democratic operatives must be nervous, if not panicked, after Hillary Clinton’s interview with Diane Sawyer in which Sawyer, to quote the Washington Post’s headline, “destroyed” the former Secretary of State. It’s common knowledge that Clinton is anything but a natural on the campaign trail. But the tone deafness of some of her responses (e.g., we struggled to piece together the resources for mortgages for houses) suggests that Clinton may be a gaffe machine with little ability to connect with ordinary voters. …
And from Jonathan Tobin.
… to speak of the Clintons as broke in 2001 is to engage in the kind of deceit that voters can smell a mile away. Like all ex-presidents and first ladies, but especially those who were both popular and engaged in heated controversies like the Lewinsky scandal, their financial prospects were, to put it mildly, rosy. In the 13-plus years since leaving the White House, Bill Clinton has earned more than $100 million in speaking fees and both made fortunes writing their memoirs. They may have had a temporary cash flow problem in January 2001, but were soon rolling in it. Thus, for her to speak of their plight in 2001 when, as she put it:
We had no money when we got there, and we struggled to, you know, piece together the resources for mortgages, for houses, for Chelsea’s education. You know, it was not easy.
No, I suppose it wasn’t. But somehow with the help of generous donors, publishers, and those eager to pay six-figure fees for the honor of hosting the ex-president, they managed to pay their l’affaire Lewinsky lawyer fees as well as obtain multiple mortgages and houses that Clinton referenced when she used those words in the plural. But then again, Clinton had already gotten an $8 million advance for her memoirs even before her husband’s term ended. …
Seth Mandel says Hillary’s task is to spin the unspinnable.
Hillary Clinton’s memoir, Hard Choices, was apparently assembled “with an assist”–according to New York Times reviewer Michiko Kakutani–from what Clinton calls her “book team.” And if Kakutani’s review is any indication, Clinton’s team was burdened by its task.
The book is understood to be Clinton’s campaign manifesto, and the book’s release–officially, tomorrow–is being treated as a campaign launch. Clinton has been dogged by one question in particular: What did she accomplish as secretary of state? She has even been unable to answer the question herself. And though I (like Clinton, presumably) haven’t read her book, early indications are that her book team was unable to answer it as well.
After an undistinguished and at times dismal term as secretary of state, the book had two basic objectives: show Clinton to have accomplished something–anything really; and dispel the image Clinton cultivated of using the prestigious perch as an Instagram-based travelogue. …
Erik Wemple of WaPo on how Diane Sawyer “destroyed” Hillary in her ABC interview.
… In an interview with Clinton that aired last night on ABC News, anchor Diane Sawyer threw the ARB right back in the face of the former secretary of state. The two tangled over the preparedness of the U.S. diplomatic installation in Benghazi for a terrorist attack. In defending her work on this front, Clinton stressed that she had delegated the particulars of security to the experts in the field. “I’m not equipped to sit and look at blueprints to determine where the blast walls need to be, where the reinforcements need to be. That’s why we hire people who have that expertise,” said Clinton, who did the interview as part of the tour for her book “Hard Choices.”
Sensing an opening, Sawyer cited the document that Clinton herself has so often cited: “This is the ARB: the mission was far short of standards; weak perimeter; incomplete fence; video surveillance needed repair. They said it’s a systemic failure.”
Clinton replied, “Well, it was with respect to that compound.”
The anchor continued pressing, asking Clinton whether the people might be seeking from her a “sentence that begins from you ‘I should have…’?” Clinton sort of ducked that one. The accountability-heavy moment came when Sawyer’s slow and steady line of questioning on Benghazi security prompted Clinton to utter this self-contradictory and sure-to-be-repeated statement: “I take responsibility, but I was not making security decisions.”
For the record, possible-presidential-candidates-in-abeyance should never attach conjunctions to their declarations of responsibility-taking.
Another telling moment came when Sawyer placed before Clinton all the warnings that bad things were afoot in Benghazi. “Did you miss it? Did you miss the moment to prevent this from happening?” Sawyer asked. Clinton’s response started with these two words: “No, but …” …
Jennifer Rubin posts on the Sawyer interview too.
Diane Sawyer is deservedly receiving kudos for her news-making interview with Hillary Clinton. In one interview she obtained more revealing information about Clinton’s values and mind-set than we’ve gotten in literally decades of questioning. For other interviewers and for Clinton’s Republican opponents-in-waiting, there are lessons to be learned:
1. Stop obsessing on what Clinton said; focus on what she did. The Benghazi talking points memo has been plowed and re-plowed, but Clinton’s own culpability in the security failures and her management style more generally at the State Department have not. The latter goes to the heart of her legacy and her qualifications as president. She talks a good game about “inputs” — meetings held, countries visited and orders given — but is easily flummoxed when pressed to talk about what outcomes she achieved. Questions about her failure to speak out against the president or secretary of state are among the most useless. Who cares? (She is a loyal Democrat. Hardly news.) What matters is the policies she followed and favors.
2. Clinton’s image as a protector of the needy, especially women and children, is overblown. Getting at her fixation with wealth (a fault line that runs back to the Whitewater and cattle futures scandals) puts a dent in that image of selfless protector of the weak. …
Maybe Hillary was listening to Sam Cooke rather than studying. Remember his lyrics in the song Wonderful World? “Don’t know much about history Don’t know much biology Don’t know much about a science book Don’t know much about the French I took …” Free Beacon posts on her fail.
The terrible week continues for Hillary Clinton.
At Wednesday’s Rahm Emanuel-Hillary Clinton show for her book tour, she was responsible for another unforced error.
“I actually write about Rahm in the book,” Clinton said. “I asked him not to read it before we sat and did our interview! But it was in the very first chapter, the chapter I rightly call ‘Team of Rivals’ because that’s what it was in the beginning. A senator from Illinois ran against a senator from New York just as had happened way back with a senator from Illinois named Lincoln and a senator from New York named Seward. And it turned out the same way.”
Maybe Hillary is not ‘ready’ as Lincoln was never a senator because he lost that election to Stephen A. Douglas.
John Hinderaker posts on the fail too.
We have commented a number of times about Barack Obama’s below-average knowledge of history. But he is not alone: his would-be successor in the White House, Hillary Clinton, wouldn’t fare well in a high school American history class, either. The Free Beacon covers her book-promoting appearance with Rahm Emanuel. Note that her blunder isn’t a mere slip of the tongue, but rather part of an extended analogy that she draws between herself and William Seward, which evidently had been thought out ahead of time:
“I actually write about Rahm in the book,” Clinton said. “I asked him not to read it before we sat and did our interview! But it was in the very first chapter, the chapter I rightly call ‘Team of Rivals’ because that’s what it was in the beginning. A senator from Illinois ran against a senator from New York just as had happened way back with a senator from Illinois named Lincoln and a senator from New York named Seward. And it turned out the same way.”
Lincoln, of course, lost his Senate race to Stephen Douglas in 1858. Hillary is having a tough go of it these days.