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I know that it's popular to consider Hillary Clinton the victim of the right-wing smear machine, and that explains her high disapproval ratings. Anyone who goes through that smear machine will have high disapproval ratings, or so goes the theory. In at least three polls, that theory just does not check out.
According to USA Today/Gallup polling data, her approval disapproval in late 2000 was 56-39. In 2/2007, it was 58-40. Today it is 47-50. Clinton is less popular today than she was throughout the 1990s, and much more hated today than she was as First Lady. In CBS Polling data, Clinton had a positive rating throughout 1999, throughout 2007 she has an average net negative rating. Pew and NBC are closer, but they also show that she either the same or slightly less popular today than she was from 1998-2000 than she is today.
There are two possible explanations for this. One, the right-wing smear machine is more effective today than it ever was, or two, Clinton has created more problems for herself than she had in the 1990s. I suspect that both explanations are true, but it really doesn't matter when thinking about who is a good candidate. A chunk of voters who liked her have decided they don't like her as she is running for President. While Edwards and Obama have seen their disapprovals rise, neither has had their favorabilities drop. Basically Republicans are getting to know them, and as they do they decide they disapprove of them. This is natural; Republican voters disapprove of Democrats. It is different with Clinton; she is turning off voters who previously liked her in the late 1990s and even earlier this year.
Why? I don't know, and I don't have the data to do anything more than speculate. But I will make a few observations about why I find her quite problematic.
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| One, she is just like Bush on foreign policy.
"She is probably more assertive and willing to use force than her husband," says Richard Holbrooke, the former envoy for Bill Clinton. "Hillary Clinton is a classic national-security Democrat. She is better at framing national-security issues for the current era than her husband was at a common point in his career."
People hate this war. Removing all or some troops gets in the high sixties, and adopting a hawkish posture could be turning off voters.
Two, Clinton tends to surround herself with lobbyists and wealthy special interests. I have noted this in the telecom realm, and I think it could bite her, but it's true in all areas of policy. She has been outspoken about how lobbyists are people too, and this is not an appealing message.
Three, the Clinton's have, how to put it, real character issues. I haven't written this before, because I don't believe in going after family members unless they make themselves an issue, but Chelsea Clinton, despite the opportunity to do anything she wants, chose to be a hedge fund manager. What does that say about the Clinton family commitment to public service? I write this because Clinton is using her daughter in an ad that says 'My Mom taught me to stand up for myself, and to stand up for those who can't do it on their own', and then express pride at passing those values on to her daughter. What kind of value system is that? And what does it say that Clinton is bringing her daughter into the contest bragging about her daughter's greed? This is one small example (Mark Penn is another), but it's pretty clear that the Clinton's have become in some ways Bourbon-esque aristocrats.
Four, there's crap like this, from Bill Clinton, that is intended as an elitist smear against fellow Democrats.
Later he said that his friends in the Republican party had indicated that they felt his wife would be the strongest candidate, partly because she had already been "vetted" -- another subtle slap at Obama.
Also: He said the most important thing to judge was who would be "the best agent for change" not merely a "symbol for change....symbol is not as important as substance."
He also hit back at the charge that experienced politicians had helped get us into the Iraq war, saying that this was "like saying that because 100 percent of the malpractice cases are committed by doctors, the next time I need surgery I'll get a chef or a plumber to do it."
One more dig at Obama? He said that Edwards had first run for president after just a few years in the Senate, but then completed his term and went out and conducted a serious study of poverty.
"I guess I'm old fashioned," he said, in wanting a president who had actually done things for people. He said some people could "risk" taking someone who had served just a year in the Senate if they chose.
When Rose said that all this seemed to add up to Clinton hinting that people would be "rolling the dice" if they picked Obama, the former president replied: "It's less predictable, isn't it?"
There's so much wrong with this it's hard to know where to start. The notion that his Republican friends, who are of course political elites, should matter, and that he has Republican elite friends from whom he accepts electoral advice, is weird. And the idea that voting for the war is some mark of expertise is just horrible.
More to the point, Bill Clinton lied to all of us, and he will do it again. In 2006, he promised to endorse Ned Lamont, and then on Larry King he said that it didn't matter if Lieberman or Lamont won since the Democrats would control the Senate either way. It does matter, as we're seeing today, doesn't it?
This contempt for good decision-making around the issue of war and peace, her problematic personal value system, and this elitist attitude are all part of a toxic stew. It's impossible to know what is driving up Clinton's negatives; maybe it's just the bad press, or maybe she has few external validators, few people willing to speak up for her who are not paid by the Clinton machine. And it's possible that establishment voters, those who still constitute a strong plurality or even majority of Democratic voters, will drag her across the finish line. I actually still think she's got the edge in the primary, though my prediction-meter is not great these days.
The real problem, though, is that Hillary Clinton is a more hated figure today than she was in the 1990s. While I used to think she hated the right as much as I do, I think I was probably wrong about that. I got a direct mail piece from her discussing the need to make decisions based on 'evidence and facts, not politics and ideology'. I don't know how long it is going to take the Democratic elites to realize that politics and ideology are necessary to both win and govern, but Clinton just doesn't agree. They are children of the antipartisan new Left. In many ways, they are like the exiled Bourbons, about whom it is said they have "forgotten nothing and learned nothing". |
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