It’s only been three days since Hillary Clinton announced her official campaign to seek the Democratic presidential nomination, and reaction from national news columnists on the right and left has been a collective eye roll.
Clinton’s announcement came Sunday in the form of a two-minute video that showed her and some seemingly everyday Americans embarking on a new phase of their lives. For Clinton, the new phase was one she already went through seven years ago: a campaign for president.
The video was entirely devoid of policy specifics and explicit positions Clinton holds. And she didn’t give a speech laying out her vision for the country, as Republican Sens. Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio have done in their respective presidential campaign announcements over the last month.
For opinion leaders in the news media, the early days of the Clinton campaign are so far flat.
“Clinton’s campaign launch video has variously been described as ‘slick,’ ‘gauzy,’ ‘icky’ and ‘vapid,'” wrote Washington Post columnist David Ignatius on Tuesday. “I’d just call it empty — but in a way that invites the political definition to come: What does Clinton stand for? How does she plan to change an America in which, as she says in the ad, ‘the deck is still stacked in favor of those at the top’?
A story in the New York Times called Clinton “a celebrity candidate who desperately wants to present an everywoman’s approachability.”
Richard Cohen, a liberal columnist for the Washington Post, said Clinton currently “lacks theme.”
Voices on the right were less forgiving.
The Wall Street Journal’s premier conservative writer Peggy Noonan called Clinton’s launch “the most inept, phony, shallow, slickily-slick and meaningless launch of a presidential candidacy I have ever seen.”
“At the end of her video, Clinton says she’s touring the country ‘because it’s your time,'” wrote Kathleen Parker of the Washington Post. “What she really means, you can safely reckon, is that it’s her time.”
Longtime Clinton antagonist Maureen Dowd accused Clinton of assuming a fake personality for the campaign. “As the old maxim goes, if you can fake humility, you’ve got it made,” she wrote at the New York Times the day that Clinton launched her campaign.
Despite the criticism piled on Clinton as her campaign begins moving, most prominent columnists were resigned to the fact that she’ll likely lock up the Democratic nomination.
“Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley isn’t going to beat her,” wrote Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post. “Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) isn’t going to run. Former senator Jim Webb? Please.”
After calling her announcement video “empty,” Ignatius at the Post said it only “invites the political definition to come: What does Clinton stand for?”
Peggy Noonan, having called Clinton’s launch “meaningless,” nonetheless said the former secretary of state is “gliding” toward the nomination.
