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Hillary's Achilles' HeelIs Sen. Clinton warm enough to win?

By John Dickerson
Posted Wednesday, June 27, 2007, at 9:33 AM ET

This is the second in a series of articles about each presidential candidate's Achilles' heel. A companion video to this story appears on Slate V.

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(Continued from page 1)

The campaign will work to provide more opportunities for Clinton to show her softer side. An army of anecdotes may also be employed. She, or her surrogates, will talk about how she played pinochle on the cabin porch as a young girl, spent a summer sliming fish in Alaska, and worked for years as an advocate for children. Her loyal core of staffers, many of them women, are anxious to attest to her endearing behavior at wedding showers and late-night gossip sessions. At some point, sheer tonnage of people attesting to Clinton's humanity may convince voters. That many people couldn't fake it. The strategy is most likely to continue building Clinton's strength among women, a crucial bloc in the Democratic Party with whom she is deeply popular.

Will any of this solve Clinton's problem? Maybe a little, but every attempt to make Clinton appear more real can backfire and reinforce the very image it hopes to fix. Clinton's forced early Web videos, in which she offered voters a chance to engage in a "conversation" with her, were so inauthentic in their determined effort to show authenticity they were used in the famous guerilla attack video in which she played Big Brother in the parody of an Apple Macintosh ad based on George Orwell's 1984.

Clinton's hard work and hustle will lure voters more than the efforts to humanize her. That's what worked so well for her in her first Senate race, says Bill Dal Col, the campaign manager of Clinton's Republican opponent in the 2000. "She grew on people," he says of her famous "listening tour" in which she traveled around the state. Because of GOP efforts, New Yorkers expected her to be an "empress. [That] she would walk in, and it would be handed to her. Then they saw, oh wow, she really does want this. This isn't a show. That comes through. People were surprised."

The best evidence that Clinton can overcome her past may be that despite living in Washington for the last 14 years and competing against Barack Obama, who is the walking embodiment of freshness, Democratic voters nevertheless view Clinton as the candidate of change. That's a nifty trick, and it didn't happen because she produced a snappy Web video.

There is a lot of Clinton baggage, and though two recent biographies don't appear to have caused any big problems for the campaign, there is a lot of material for her opponents and enemies to use against her. But if there was ever an election where voters should care less about a candidate's softer qualities, this should be the one. Seventy percent of the public thinks the country is going in the wrong direction, and America is engaged in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. A country starving for competence after the Bush presidency could easily embrace a candidate who always shows up thoroughly prepared. In the polls where Clinton tanks on the likability questions, she still comes out ahead among Democrats and still beats potential GOP rivals among all voters. After the last Democratic debate in early June, voters didn't find Clinton any more huggable, but in one focus group her favorability increased by 21 points over the course of the two-hour forum. All her supporters may not love her, but they respect her, and that matters more.

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John Dickerson is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of On Her Trail. He can be reached at .
Photograph of Hillary Clinton and Robert Menendez by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.
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Remarks from the Fray:

I wonder if the sheer amount of "baggage" doesn't help Hillary to some extent -- it makes it hard for there to be any gross revelations about conduct or morality as we've heard it all before. It takes away the element of surprise that can be so damaging, and the discourse has gone on so long that I suspect many voters tune it out to some extent.

Not that this isn't inherently a disadvantage -- having so many voters with an unfavorable view of her is no easy hurdle, but it does make the goal clear (no where to go but up).

There will always be a core group of the population determined to hate Hillary. But there has been such an open marketplace on her for so long, we have a better understanding of her than any other candidate -- and it is emerging as increasingly positive.

--Willialm

(To reply, click here.)

Why must the discussion be about whether or not Hillary is warm enough or whether any other candidate is (insert favorite platitude here) enough? […]Why is the standard different for Senator Clinton than her male counterparts? As if having a vagina or penis makes any difference in an individuals' decision to send troops into battle or to broker peace through diplomatic means. Author bell hooks, a personal favorite of mine, refers in her books and articles to "feminist movement," a brilliant use of verb conjugation if I've ever read one, but, increasingly, I have begun to wonder if those who refer to it as "The Feminist Movement," as if feminism came and went in the 1960's, as if it was a brief moment in time, and not a continued struggle toward full equality, are correct in their linguistic assessment. Is Hillary warm enough? I think I just threw up in my mouth a little.

--WillJeff

(To reply, click here.)

Us hoi-polloi don't dislike HC because she's a woman. We dislike her because she's a tool. A tool of world-historical proportions: a tool who makes John Kerry look like John Sixpack.

She married Bill Clinton because she wanted to be president. She stayed married to Bill Clinton because she wants to be president. She was for invading Iraq because she wanted to be president. She now thinks Iraq was a mistake because she wants to be President.

She likes the Sopranos because she wants to be President. She'll let you pick her campaign song because she wants to be president (for some reason my suggestion, "Hit the Road Jack" got no play). She'll house-sit your dog to be President. Anything but give her own husband blowjobs. She's too good for that. You know, because she's so "prepared" and presidential.

To end this rant, the last thing anybody I know thinks when they think "change" is Hilary Clinton. I think more of an overrated do-nothing Clintonism. Sit on the wind and let it ride you in. That's the Clintons.

You do know that's why she is running this year (not 04, for example)? Because she wants to be president. She's "in it to win it." Were the winds not blowing the way Bush has fubared them she wouldn't be running. Thanks, Dubya, you screwed us again.

HC: a vessel into which whatever is considered "presidential" at the time is poured.

Hey, if the Surge keeps going so well, how long until she says, "Yes, I was for Iraq all along"?

--CutterMcCool

(To reply, click here.)

1. She reminds too many men of their third grade teacher.

2. Too many women think she looks down on them for not having gone to Wellesly and Yale and putting ambition ahead of conventional family life. She's never gotten over not baking cookies.

3. Too many other women won't forgive her for not having dumped her tailhound husband.

4. Because of her husband, her candidacy inevitably turns the national discussion to the events of 10 years ago.

5. The Democratic base is right to distrust her -- she is no more one of them than her husband was. Both believe sincerely in government of the people, by the meritocracy, for what the meritocracy thinks is good for the people. Neither believes government should take its values from hoi polloi of either the red or the blue persuasion.

--jack_cerf

(To reply, click here.)

(7/3)

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