Hillary Clinton is uniquely qualified to be president, she’s not much like President Obama, and she most certainly didn’t do anything illegal or improper when she served as secretary of state.
At least, that’s what her many surrogates in media are telling reporters.
Clinton herself hasn’t had much to say since she ended her poorly received book tour last year, relying instead on a legion of messengers to update newsrooms with her thoughts on whatever it is reporters are asking about at the moment, while she herself actively avoids tough questions.
When questions started to pile up regarding Clinton’s use of an unauthorized email server and nondescript private email address to conduct official business when she worked at the State Department, it was up to longtime surrogates, including James Carville and Lanny Davis, to go out and field uncomfortable questions from media.
Clinton later held a press conference to address the scandal, but only after it became clear that her messengers couldn’t stamp out the story. Her presser, which was carefully choreographed and featured pre-approved questions from reporters hand-picked by her team, was widely panned by a media unsatisfied with her answers.
When conservative author Peter Schweizer suggested this week that the Clinton-run State Department may have run a scheme whereby foreign countries would receive preferential treatment from the federal government in return for making sizable donations to the Clinton Foundation, her campaign manager John Podesta and Media Matters founder David Brock were dispatched immediately to characterize the allegations as “conspiracy theories.”
Neither Brock nor Podesta has seen or read Schweizer’s full research on the Clinton-era State Department because the details are contained in the conservative author’s book, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, which is set to be released on May 5.
Clinton, for her part, would only say of the allegations that Republicans seem obsessed with her.
“[I’ll be] subjected to all kinds of distractions and attacks, and I’m ready for that. I know that that comes, unfortunately, with the territory. It is I think worth noting that Republicans seem to be talking only about me,” she said during her listening tour in New Hampshire. “I don’t know what they’d talk about if I weren’t in the race.”
Everywhere else, she has ignored reporters who have tried in vain this week her to get her to respond to the allegations, opting instead to let her surrogates do the talking.
Even the former first lady’s announcement this month that that she would run for president in 2016 came not from the candidate, but from John Podesta.
“I wanted to make sure you heard it first from me — it’s official: Hillary’s running for president,” he said in a private email to donors, which was later leaked to the press.
Washington reporters, many of whom spent the majority of the first beautiful day of spring inside waiting for Clinton to announce her candidacy, mostly declared her campaign launch a complete dud.
Since Clinton did announce her candidacy, her surrogates have been left to explain the differences between the former first lady and Obama, while top donors say they are unsure where she stands on the pending nuclear deal between the United States and Iran.
What Clinton will say in front of audiences is mostly a rehashing of talking points that she has used since she first ran for public office in 2000. Clinton’s on-record comments since announcing her candidacy have been mostly to tell handpicked groups of supporters that she’s running for president because she cares about women and children.
The most substantive remarks she made this week were in New Hampshire when she said she has qualms about the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, but that she’s not outright against it.
“We need to build things, too,” she said.
