The announcement from Hillary Clinton’s team that their candidate would try to be more spontaneous and authentic has prompted a less-than-kind response from the press — some said it’s the “stupidest” thing her campaign has done yet.
Clinton’s aides “want to show her humor,” and they “want to show her heart,” the New York Times reported Monday, suggesting that the move comes at time when the Democratic presidential primary has become slightly more competitive. The so-called “reset” also comes as the scandal surrounding Clinton’s private State Department email server continues to dog her campaign and take its toll on her standing in the polls.
But the effort to make Clinton seem less distant and out-of-touch suggests that she is exactly both of these things, members of the press suggested this week.
“Today’s [Times] story on read more like The Onion: Her detailed plan to show more authenticity and spontaneity,” former Obama adviser and CNN contributor David Axelrod joked on social media, adding the hash tag “#Justdoit.”
ABC News political director Rick Klein added of Clinton’s so-called “reboot, “Here’s the thing about Hillary Clinton reinventions and new directions: They’ve all been tried before.”
Meanwhile, Bloomberg News’ John Heilemann and Mark Halperin couldn’t contain themselves Tuesday, and Halperin labeled the campaign’s reboot as stupid.
“It’s inexplicable … you do not tell people what your strategy is, you simply do your strategy,” Halperin said. “They’re now promising all these things about joy and spontaneity, she should just go out and be a better candidate.”
“This day will go down in history as one of the stupidest things they’ve done,” he added.
Heilemann contributed, “You are likable or you are not likable. If you announce you are trying to be likable, you come across like a phony, and that’s what she seems like to a lot of people anyway.”
He explained that by announcing that she will try to appear more approachable, Clinton furthers the narrative that she is out of touch, calculating and almost robotic in her approach to campaigning.
Things were not much better for Clinton at MSNBC, as anchors and reporters both suggested that the campaign “reboot” shows the former secretary of state may be in a bit of trouble.
“[Y]ou don’t shake up a campaign if things are going well,” MSNBC’s political reporter Alex Seitz-Wald said this week.
Network host Thomas Roberts remarked simply, “Yes, they’ve decided to plan spontaneity.”
Shortly after announcing the campaign shakeup, Clinton got teary eyed in an interview with ABC News’ David Muir, and danced later that day with Ellen DeGeneres.
MSNBC personalities were not impressed.
“We all laughed yesterday about how calculated this was,” Morning Joe host Joe Scarborough said. “You don’t expect her to be so ham-fisted that the day after your aides go to the New York Times and say, ‘We’re going to start having more fun,’ that she’s dancing that afternoon.”
MSNBC contributor Willie Geist added, “She’s talented, she’s smart, she’s impressive, she’s all of those things. But when you announce it first in such explicit terms, then deliver on it the same day, it just all looks too much like stagecraft.”
This isn’t the first time that the former secretary of state has set out to rebrand her public image. In 2008, when she competed and lost to then-Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., Clinton’s campaign tried at one point to refashion her as full of heart and humor.
These previous attempts “backfired amid criticism that the efforts seemed overly poll tested,” the Times notes.
