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What we’ve learned from Hillary Clinton’s book tour
By MAGGIE HABERMAN | 7/4/14 6:48 AM EDT Updated: 7/5/14 4:30 PM EDT
From endless coverage of “dead broke” to flagging sales of her new book, Hillary Clinton has had a rough couple of weeks.
But Clinton has nevertheless accomplished much of what she set out to do with the rollout of “Hard Choices,” her memoir of her time as secretary of state. She flogged the book to big crowds, though her publisher still needs to sell several hundred thousand more copies to cover her multimillion-dollar advance. She showed she could endure the media meat grinder. She demonstrated that her record as secretary of state can withstand tough scrutiny.
And Clinton put to rest any lingering doubts about her stamina, sitting through what her aides tallied at more than 25 hours of interviews and running nonstop for weeks — a gantlet that no other potential 2016 candidate can claim to have withstood.
At the same time, the book tour has highlighted both strengths and weaknesses for Clinton ahead of a potential 2016 campaign.
Here are POLITICO’s takeaways from the first three weeks of the “Hard Choices” tour.
Coming back to earth is hard
There’s been a conflation of different issues involving Clinton — her wealth, and the rarefied world she inhabits. They aren’t the same thing. Plenty of rich people manage to relate to working-class voters. But the fact that Clinton’s lifestyle has been hermetically sealed since she went to the State Department is something she’ll have to contend with.
She spent four years flying on a government plane, traveling constantly. Since she left Foggy Bottom, her life has largely been a whirlwind of speeches that have included travel on private jets and the attendance of large security details.
The book tour has put her in front of thousands of people but can’t be mistaken for a listening tour: Signings have not been forums for active, engaged dialogue with voters.
How Clinton explains her family’s immense wealth (and it is immense) and how she takes to engaging with everyday people remain to be seen.
‘Radical candor’ versus the canned variety
When CNN hosted a town hall with Clinton last month, interviewer Christiane Amanpour asked her about marijuana. Clinton said she was “committing radical candor” in her answer, a reference to the newfound freedom she said she was enjoying. (Clinton said it should be available medicinally for people with “extreme conditions” and that she wants to “wait and see” the evidence in states legalizing it for recreational use before taking a position.)
It’s true that Clinton has been blunt on some topics. She acknowledged she has “evolved” on gay marriage, and stated in her book that she got it “wrong” in her vote on the Iraq War, a vote that helped cost her the 2008 presidential nomination.
But that declaration about “evolving” came only after a contentious interview with NPR host Terry Gross, whose program is a favorite of liberal voters who have genuine questions about how she arrived at her new position. And she has said relatively little about why she wouldn’t say she was “wrong” in 2008 about Iraq. She wrote in the book that sometimes it’s seen as a sign of weakness to admit a mistake in politics. But in Aspen, Colorado, this week, she described herself as reluctant to call it a “mistake” while there were still U.S. troops fighting in Iraq.
Both cases show Clinton is willing to pull back the curtain only so far. That guardedness can be tricky at a time when authenticity matters more than ever for politicians and faux authenticity isn’t enough. The interviews gave her a chance to test her comfort zone, but she’ll get pushed harder in the future.
Clinton has a very thin infrastructure …
For all the talk about how 2016 will have to be different from 2008 in terms of staffing and advisers, Clinton is still subsisting on a tiny infrastructure. The press team is small, and she has few paid advisers. She outsourced the work of managing surrogates during the book tour to longtime allies. But she has no polling operation to test what she’s saying and no raft of campaign advisers instructing her answers.
Clinton is trying to delay being treated like a candidate as long as possible, and hiring people would only trigger new scrutiny. And the book tour was a large undertaking to go through with a relatively small team. That can only last for so long.
… but it’s clear that Abedin is in charge
One recurring question reporters and donors have had is whether Huma Abedin, Clinton’s longtime aide, has resumed her central spot in Clinton’s orbit after the messiness surrounding her husband, Anthony Weiner, during the 2013 mayoral race.
The book tour provided a very clear answer: yes. Abedin is, unequivocally, running the vast majority of the Clinton operation that involves her personal staff.
She was in charge at every book signing event, keeping things moving at a Costco in Pentagon City, directing staffers at a signing in Clinton’s hometown of Chappaqua, New York. Other Clinton aides on hand were deeply deferential to her. And she’s coordinating Clinton’s upcoming political appearances for Democrats in the midterms.
The 1990s live on …
Some of the younger voters who Clinton will need to appeal to weren’t born when her husband was first elected president. They have no context for or memory of the searing battles of the 1990s Clinton White House.
But Hillary Clinton remembers very clearly, and she is still raw over the partisan wars that hindered her husband’s legacy and left the couple with millions of dollars in legal debt.
Her comment about being “dead broke” came from a place of frustration over the legal bills and their cause. So does a lot of her lingering distaste for a national press corps, which savaged her husband during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Her anger in both cases, her allies argue, is justified. But voters who didn’t live through that decade have no context with which to understand it. In the 1990s, it was breathtaking for Democrats that a sitting president had to establish a legal defense fund for himself, and there was instant sympathy evoked whenever the Clintons talked about being persecuted by political rivals. Both Clintons remain angry that their friends and donors ended up spending gobs of money, and Hillary Clinton hated the notion that they had millions of dollars’ worth of debt.
The problem for Clinton is that, 20 years later, that prism may still exist strongly for her, but for the public it has faded from view.
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/hillary-clinton-book-tour-108571.html
From endless coverage of “dead broke” to flagging sales of her new book, Hillary Clinton has had a rough couple of weeks.
But Clinton has nevertheless accomplished much of what she set out to do with the rollout of “Hard Choices,” her memoir of her time as secretary of state. She flogged the book to big crowds, though her publisher still needs to sell several hundred thousand more copies to cover her multimillion-dollar advance. She showed she could endure the media meat grinder. She demonstrated that her record as secretary of state can withstand tough scrutiny.
And Clinton put to rest any lingering doubts about her stamina, sitting through what her aides tallied at more than 25 hours of interviews and running nonstop for weeks — a gantlet that no other potential 2016 candidate can claim to have withstood.
At the same time, the book tour has highlighted both strengths and weaknesses for Clinton ahead of a potential 2016 campaign.
Here are POLITICO’s takeaways from the first three weeks of the “Hard Choices” tour.
Coming back to earth is hard
There’s been a conflation of different issues involving Clinton — her wealth, and the rarefied world she inhabits. They aren’t the same thing. Plenty of rich people manage to relate to working-class voters. But the fact that Clinton’s lifestyle has been hermetically sealed since she went to the State Department is something she’ll have to contend with.
She spent four years flying on a government plane, traveling constantly. Since she left Foggy Bottom, her life has largely been a whirlwind of speeches that have included travel on private jets and the attendance of large security details.
The book tour has put her in front of thousands of people but can’t be mistaken for a listening tour: Signings have not been forums for active, engaged dialogue with voters.
How Clinton explains her family’s immense wealth (and it is immense) and how she takes to engaging with everyday people remain to be seen.
‘Radical candor’ versus the canned variety
When CNN hosted a town hall with Clinton last month, interviewer Christiane Amanpour asked her about marijuana. Clinton said she was “committing radical candor” in her answer, a reference to the newfound freedom she said she was enjoying. (Clinton said it should be available medicinally for people with “extreme conditions” and that she wants to “wait and see” the evidence in states legalizing it for recreational use before taking a position.)
It’s true that Clinton has been blunt on some topics. She acknowledged she has “evolved” on gay marriage, and stated in her book that she got it “wrong” in her vote on the Iraq War, a vote that helped cost her the 2008 presidential nomination.
But that declaration about “evolving” came only after a contentious interview with NPR host Terry Gross, whose program is a favorite of liberal voters who have genuine questions about how she arrived at her new position. And she has said relatively little about why she wouldn’t say she was “wrong” in 2008 about Iraq. She wrote in the book that sometimes it’s seen as a sign of weakness to admit a mistake in politics. But in Aspen, Colorado, this week, she described herself as reluctant to call it a “mistake” while there were still U.S. troops fighting in Iraq.
Both cases show Clinton is willing to pull back the curtain only so far. That guardedness can be tricky at a time when authenticity matters more than ever for politicians and faux authenticity isn’t enough. The interviews gave her a chance to test her comfort zone, but she’ll get pushed harder in the future.
Clinton has a very thin infrastructure …
For all the talk about how 2016 will have to be different from 2008 in terms of staffing and advisers, Clinton is still subsisting on a tiny infrastructure. The press team is small, and she has few paid advisers. She outsourced the work of managing surrogates during the book tour to longtime allies. But she has no polling operation to test what she’s saying and no raft of campaign advisers instructing her answers.
Clinton is trying to delay being treated like a candidate as long as possible, and hiring people would only trigger new scrutiny. And the book tour was a large undertaking to go through with a relatively small team. That can only last for so long.
… but it’s clear that Abedin is in charge
One recurring question reporters and donors have had is whether Huma Abedin, Clinton’s longtime aide, has resumed her central spot in Clinton’s orbit after the messiness surrounding her husband, Anthony Weiner, during the 2013 mayoral race.
The book tour provided a very clear answer: yes. Abedin is, unequivocally, running the vast majority of the Clinton operation that involves her personal staff.
She was in charge at every book signing event, keeping things moving at a Costco in Pentagon City, directing staffers at a signing in Clinton’s hometown of Chappaqua, New York. Other Clinton aides on hand were deeply deferential to her. And she’s coordinating Clinton’s upcoming political appearances for Democrats in the midterms.
The 1990s live on …
Some of the younger voters who Clinton will need to appeal to weren’t born when her husband was first elected president. They have no context for or memory of the searing battles of the 1990s Clinton White House.
But Hillary Clinton remembers very clearly, and she is still raw over the partisan wars that hindered her husband’s legacy and left the couple with millions of dollars in legal debt.
Her comment about being “dead broke” came from a place of frustration over the legal bills and their cause. So does a lot of her lingering distaste for a national press corps, which savaged her husband during the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Her anger in both cases, her allies argue, is justified. But voters who didn’t live through that decade have no context with which to understand it. In the 1990s, it was breathtaking for Democrats that a sitting president had to establish a legal defense fund for himself, and there was instant sympathy evoked whenever the Clintons talked about being persecuted by political rivals. Both Clintons remain angry that their friends and donors ended up spending gobs of money, and Hillary Clinton hated the notion that they had millions of dollars’ worth of debt.
The problem for Clinton is that, 20 years later, that prism may still exist strongly for her, but for the public it has faded from view.
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/hillary-clinton-book-tour-108571.html
Personally, I think Monica's old news. Woman's gotta be sick to save a stained dress for 20 yrs, just to drag it up when Hillary's getting ready to run for President. All she's going to do is bring up the sympathy for Hillary, again.
Monica? My wife told me Monica is going to have a paying gig on a talk show... If that's the case, I know she will be above me on the pay scale.
LOL
I'd think Bill would be more in tune with the downwardly mobile...what was her name?
Hillary is the last person I'd trust to be in tune with the downwardly mobile.
"...it's a gamble worth taking."
Really? Again? I'm hopeful that one day someone will learn from all of this BS.
Really? Again? I'm hopeful that one day someone will learn from all of this BS.
Though you might disagree with Reich's conclusions/solutions, I think he lays out the problems that all candidates will have quite well.
http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/reich/article/Hillary-Clinton-faces-tough-road-on-rising-5599204.php
"What's the reason for the tempest in the teapot of Hillary and Bill Clinton's personal finances?
It can't be about how much money they have. Wealth has never disqualified someone from high office. Several of the nation's greatest presidents, who came to office with vast fortunes - John F. Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and his fifth cousin, Teddy - notably improved the lives of ordinary Americans.
The tempest can't be about Hillary Rodham Clinton's veracity. It may have been a stretch for her to say she and her husband were "dead broke" when they left the White House, as she told ABC's Diane Sawyer. But they did have large legal bills to pay off.
And it's probably true that, unlike many of the "truly well off," as she termed them in an interview with the Guardian, the Clintons pay their full income taxes and work hard.
Nor can the tempest be about how they earned their money. Most has come from public speaking and book royalties, the same sources as for most ex-presidents and former first ladies.
Then what's it about?
The story behind the story is that America is in an era of sharply rising inequality, with a few at the top doing fabulously well but most Americans on a downward economic escalator.
That's why Sawyer asked Hillary about the huge speaking fees, and why the Guardian asked whether she could be credible on the issue of inequality.
And it's why Hillary's answers - that the couple needed money when they left the White House, and have paid their taxes and worked hard for it - seemed oddly beside the point.
The questions had nothing to do with whether the former first couple deserved the money. They were really about whether all that income from big corporations and Wall Street put them on the side of the privileged and powerful, rather than on the side of ordinary Americans.
These days, voters want to know which side candidates are on because they believe the game is rigged against them.
According to a new Pew survey, 62 percent of Americans now think the economic system unfairly favors the powerful, and 78 percent think too much power is concentrated in too few companies. Even 69 percent of young conservative-leaning voters agree the system favors the powerful.
Other potential presidential candidates are using every opportunity to tell voters they're on their side. Speaking at last month's White House summit on financial hardships facing working families, Vice President Joe Biden revealed he has "no savings account" and doesn't "own a single stock or bond."
The same concern haunts the Republican Party and is fueling the Tea Party rebellion. In his stunning Virginia congressional primary upset, David Brat charged that Eric Cantor "does not represent the citizens of the 7th district, but rather large corporations seeking insider deals, crony bailouts and a constant supply of low-wage workers."
But the Republican establishment doesn't think it has to choose sides. It assumes it can continue to represent the interests of big business and Wall Street, yet still lure much of the white working class through thinly veiled racism, anti-immigrant posturing, and steadfast opposition to abortion and gay marriage.
The Democratic Party, including Hillary Clinton, doesn't have that option. Which means that, as the ranks of the anxious middle class grow, the winning formula used by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama may no longer be able to deliver.
That formula was not just to court minorities and women but also to appeal to upscale Republican-leaning suburbs, professionals, moderates on Wall Street and centrist business interests.
Accordingly, both Obama and Bill Clinton's economic plans called for deficit reduction as part of a "responsible" fiscal policy, trade expansion, and "investments" in infrastructure and education to promote economic growth.
But in a world of downward mobility for the majority, Democrats need to acknowledge the widening divide and propose specific ways to reverse it.
These might include, for example, raising taxes on the wealthy and closing their favorite tax loopholes in order to pay for world-class schools for everyone else; enacting a living wage and minimum guaranteed income; making it easier to unionize; and changing corporate and tax laws to limit CEO pay, and promote gain-sharing, profit-sharing and employee ownership.
In this scenario, Democrats would seek to forge a new political coalition of all the nation's downwardly mobile - poor, working class and middle class; white and black and brown.
It's a gamble. It would make big business and Wall Street nervous, while ignoring Republican-leaning suburbs and upper-middle-class professionals. The GOP would move in to fill the void.
But as the middle class shrinks and distrust of the establishment grows, a new Democratic strategy for the downwardly mobile may be both necessary and inevitable. If she runs, Hillary may have to take the gamble.
And if America is to have half a chance of saving the middle class and preserving equal opportunity, it's a gamble worth taking."
http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/reich/article/Hillary-Clinton-faces-tough-road-on-rising-5599204.php
"What's the reason for the tempest in the teapot of Hillary and Bill Clinton's personal finances?
It can't be about how much money they have. Wealth has never disqualified someone from high office. Several of the nation's greatest presidents, who came to office with vast fortunes - John F. Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and his fifth cousin, Teddy - notably improved the lives of ordinary Americans.
The tempest can't be about Hillary Rodham Clinton's veracity. It may have been a stretch for her to say she and her husband were "dead broke" when they left the White House, as she told ABC's Diane Sawyer. But they did have large legal bills to pay off.
And it's probably true that, unlike many of the "truly well off," as she termed them in an interview with the Guardian, the Clintons pay their full income taxes and work hard.
Nor can the tempest be about how they earned their money. Most has come from public speaking and book royalties, the same sources as for most ex-presidents and former first ladies.
Then what's it about?
The story behind the story is that America is in an era of sharply rising inequality, with a few at the top doing fabulously well but most Americans on a downward economic escalator.
That's why Sawyer asked Hillary about the huge speaking fees, and why the Guardian asked whether she could be credible on the issue of inequality.
And it's why Hillary's answers - that the couple needed money when they left the White House, and have paid their taxes and worked hard for it - seemed oddly beside the point.
The questions had nothing to do with whether the former first couple deserved the money. They were really about whether all that income from big corporations and Wall Street put them on the side of the privileged and powerful, rather than on the side of ordinary Americans.
These days, voters want to know which side candidates are on because they believe the game is rigged against them.
According to a new Pew survey, 62 percent of Americans now think the economic system unfairly favors the powerful, and 78 percent think too much power is concentrated in too few companies. Even 69 percent of young conservative-leaning voters agree the system favors the powerful.
Other potential presidential candidates are using every opportunity to tell voters they're on their side. Speaking at last month's White House summit on financial hardships facing working families, Vice President Joe Biden revealed he has "no savings account" and doesn't "own a single stock or bond."
The same concern haunts the Republican Party and is fueling the Tea Party rebellion. In his stunning Virginia congressional primary upset, David Brat charged that Eric Cantor "does not represent the citizens of the 7th district, but rather large corporations seeking insider deals, crony bailouts and a constant supply of low-wage workers."
But the Republican establishment doesn't think it has to choose sides. It assumes it can continue to represent the interests of big business and Wall Street, yet still lure much of the white working class through thinly veiled racism, anti-immigrant posturing, and steadfast opposition to abortion and gay marriage.
The Democratic Party, including Hillary Clinton, doesn't have that option. Which means that, as the ranks of the anxious middle class grow, the winning formula used by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama may no longer be able to deliver.
That formula was not just to court minorities and women but also to appeal to upscale Republican-leaning suburbs, professionals, moderates on Wall Street and centrist business interests.
Accordingly, both Obama and Bill Clinton's economic plans called for deficit reduction as part of a "responsible" fiscal policy, trade expansion, and "investments" in infrastructure and education to promote economic growth.
But in a world of downward mobility for the majority, Democrats need to acknowledge the widening divide and propose specific ways to reverse it.
These might include, for example, raising taxes on the wealthy and closing their favorite tax loopholes in order to pay for world-class schools for everyone else; enacting a living wage and minimum guaranteed income; making it easier to unionize; and changing corporate and tax laws to limit CEO pay, and promote gain-sharing, profit-sharing and employee ownership.
In this scenario, Democrats would seek to forge a new political coalition of all the nation's downwardly mobile - poor, working class and middle class; white and black and brown.
It's a gamble. It would make big business and Wall Street nervous, while ignoring Republican-leaning suburbs and upper-middle-class professionals. The GOP would move in to fill the void.
But as the middle class shrinks and distrust of the establishment grows, a new Democratic strategy for the downwardly mobile may be both necessary and inevitable. If she runs, Hillary may have to take the gamble.
And if America is to have half a chance of saving the middle class and preserving equal opportunity, it's a gamble worth taking."
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