THE NOTE: A Kinder, Gentler Hillary
Tongue-Tied: On a day filled with gaffes and flubs, a remade Hillary Clinton continues to emerge
By RICK KLEIN with NANCY FLORES
October 24, 2007 —
Sometimes politicians say things that sound like gaffes and are. (Ask Mitt Romney.)
Sometimes they say things that sound like gaffes but aren't. (Right, John McCain?)
Sometimes they send things out with typos that are hyped into being gaffes. (Was Barack Obama's mailing was a rush rush job job?)
Sometimes candidates shamelessly pander and hope that Yankee fans chalk it up to a gaffe. (Now you're an American League fan? Seriously, Rudy, how could you?)
And sometimes their spouses do the talking for them -- and there may or may not be gaffes involved when you get them going. (Let's let Elizabeth Edwards speak) for the entire political class: "If it ended up on the front page of Drudge, I didn't say it right."
But when you get a candidate talking about his or her spouse, some things that sound like possible gaffes aren't. In the case of the scripted candidacy of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., where little is left for chance, the actual gaffes are few and far between. So when Clinton told Essence magazine that her husband is "so romantic" -- "He's always bringing me back things from his trips" -- it's a good bet that a larger strategy was at work.
Bill Clinton bought her a Chanel watch because the white cubes reminded him of her teeth? That's just weird enough to actually happen in a real-life marriage. And this is Clinton as we've rarely seen her before: "I never doubted that it was a marriage worth investing in even in the midst of those challenges and I'm really happy that I made that decision. Again, not a decision for everybody. And I think it's so important for women to stand up for the right of women to make a decision that is best for them."
It's another step in the great softening of Hillary Clinton. She has never been the touch-feely emotional type, and she isn't now, either. But she's reaching out to female voters, and marveling at how much attention a 60-year-old woman (OK, 50-something for two more days) is getting from all these men. Her pollster is predicting a seismic shift in voting patterns if a woman is nominated. She talked recently about her struggles as a young working mother, as she learned to master the basics of parenting while pursuing her legal career.
Clinton has her gaffes, too. As ABC's Jake Tapper asks, did she really intend to dis Mississippi? (Some in Mississippi think so.)
But this kinder, gentler Clinton on the trail appears to be having an impact on perceptions many thought were too baked in by 15 years of the public spotlight to melt during a campaign. "Clinton has neutralized the political fallout from some of the most difficult moments of her eight years as first lady, with Democratic voters looking favorably on her failed effort to revamp healthcare and either supporting or having no opinion of her decision to remain loyal to an unfaithful husband," Peter Wallsten and Janet Hook write in the Los Angeles Times.
She's up 15 points since June in the Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll, while Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has dropped 5. That's another 30-point advantage in a national poll for Clinton, who is running up scores like the old Chicago Bulls.
"Nearly two-thirds of Democrats and nearly half of all voters say Hillary Clinton's famously unsuccessful effort in the 1990s to provide health coverage for all Americans makes her better able now to deal with healthcare as president," Wallsten and Hook write. "And 42% of Democrats agreed it was the 'right thing' for Hillary Clinton to stick with her husband after his affair with a White House intern, compared with 5% who said it was the wrong choice."
Clinton is relying on her husband's old team every step of the way. Newsweek's Howard Fineman reports that she's set to receive the endorsement of the 1.4 million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
"And so the Clinton Family Machine grinds on," Fineman writes. "Lord knows Hillary's campaign could still implode . . . but with each passing day the evidence mounts of just how methodical her campaign is, and just how much it is built on the legacy and contacts of her husband's career."
And her fund-raising advantage is in red states as well as blue -- sorry, former senator John Edwards, D-N.C. "Clinton expanded her donor pool during the summer into states that previously favored Obama -- like Iowa, Colorado and Connecticut -- to beat his third-quarter cash haul, $27.3 million to $20.6 million," Michael McAuliff writes for the New York Daily News. "Other early Obama states that flipped to Clinton in the latest quarter include Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma and South Carolina -- states many experts would consider tough for Clinton to win in a general election, but where party faithful are apparently now more willing to put their money on her."
As for Obama, he's pressuring Clinton on Iran to get at her over Iraq, and last night he celebrated an endorsement of a prominent former Clinton administration official who lives awfully close to New Hampshire.
At a massive rally last night on Boston Common, Gov. Deval Patrick, D-Mass., "offered a forceful argument for Obama, casting the presidential election as one of historic proportions in which merely a change in party would be insufficient," Scott Helman reports in The Boston Globe. Said Patrick: "You see, this election is not just about who we want. It's about who we are."
Helman writes, "Last night's event underscored the potential value of Patrick's support. Before Patrick and Obama spoke, field workers on Obama's campaign were recruiting people from the crowd to canvass in New Hampshire, even as early as this weekend. And in a measure of Obama's organizational strength, his Boston-area supporters have been receiving text messages, e-mails, and personal phone calls over the past several days urging them to come to the rally."
But it was Obama's interaction with Patrick's predecessor -- or, at least, his predecessor's tangled tongue -- that drew the biggest headlines yesterday. Former governor Mitt Romney, R-Mass., unfurled a classic clunker in South Carolina: "Just look at what Osam . . . Barack Obama said just yesterday. Barack Obama calling on, on radicals, Jihadists of all different types to come together in Iraq."
He's not the first politician to make that mistake, and he won't be the last. Obama said he didn't really care, but his campaign denounced the "fear-mongering" it claims is "at the heart" of Romney's campaign, ABC's Matt Stuart, Teddy Davis, and Sunlen Miller report. "Apparently, Mitt Romney can switch names just as casually as he switches positions, but what's wrongheaded is continuing a misguided war in Iraq that has left America less safe," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.
"Mitt Romney might have still been a bit bleary-eyed on Tuesday morning," The New York Times' Michael Luo reports. "The comment set off some confusion among reporters, with at least one going online to search frantically for comments made by Mr. Obama, another Democratic presidential contender, about Iraq."
Romney's problems may be deeper than a slip of the tongue, The Washington Post's Dan Balz writes. "He has had many messages throughout the year -- competence, freshness, conservatism, a three-legged stool. Lately, because of the jumbled nature of the Republican race, he has been focused on persuading Republicans he is the true conservative," Balz writes. "But it is difficult to sum up exactly what his candidacy is based upon and exactly who he is. . . . So the issue raised about whether Romney wears well may be the critical question for the candidate and his advisers at this stage of the race."
Another whoops in Romney land: The endorsement of pastor Don Wilton, a former president of the South Carolina Baptist Convention, was a "personal error," Wilton said yesterday, per the Baptist Press Website. "While I did give my consent to the local campaign to use my affirmation of the Governor's stance on family values in my capacity as an individual citizen, I made the mistake of not realizing the extent to which it would be used on a national basis."
Romney has a new ad up in South Carolina, this one featuring Business Man Mitt. "I come from the business world -- where turning around companies taught me how to manage budgets. That's what I did at the Olympics and as governor," Romney says in the ad. "As president, I'll audit Washington -- top to bottom -- and cut spending."
Elsewhere in the race, could former senator Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., be stirring? He's talking substance on the trail, and he rolled out a get-tough immigration plan yesterday -- a topical topic with the Senate taking up the DREAM Act today.
Thompson at least one some much-needed active verbs. "Thompson sharpened the mood of the Republican presidential debate when he unveiled his anti-immigration policy in Collier County, Fla., yesterday, flashing a rare glint of steel at his closest rivals," Nicholas Wapshott writes for the New York Sun. "The former Tennessee senator's proposed measures to curtail illegal immigration exploited a perceived weakness in his main opponents by drawing attention to their more generous approach to an issue that excites the Republican base like no other."
"The former Tennessee senator's plan is meant to appease the conservative wing of the party, which lashed out earlier this year against legislation to steer illegal immigrants toward citizenship," Beth Reinhard and Alfonso Chardy write in the Miami Herald. This is Thompson using down-home phrases to actual effect: "My opponents would like to focus in on a minnow and avoid looking at the whale, and the whale is that some of them have supported sanctuary cities, and as far as I know, still do."
Thompson appears to be deemphasizing New Hampshire, at least according to a former aide who defected to Sen. John McCain's campaign yesterday. "I didn't want to be the token chairman of a token campaign," Dan Hughes, who joined McCain's campaign yesterday as a statewide vice chair, told ABC's Bret Hovell.
McCain, R-Ariz., is gunning for Thompson (apologies for that verb). He filed for his crucial primary yesterday -- in New Hampshire -- he toured a gun factory, the Concord Monitor's Margot Sanger-Katz reports. "During a talk with more than 100 of the company's employees, the Republican presidential candidate promised to 'bring Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell and shoot him with one of your products.' The line got a big round of applause," Sanger-Katz writes. McCain added a caveat that wouldn't slip by the plugged-in ear: "But only after he receives justice," he said
It's former mayor Rudolph Giuliani, R-N.Y., in firm control of the GOP race, according to the Bloomberg/LA Times poll. He's 32-15 over Thompson, with McCain, Romney, and former governor Mike Huckabee, R-Ark., rounding out the top five. "The former New York mayor leads among his party's moderates, conservatives, most income groups and both men and women," Bloomberg's Heidi Przybyla and Ed Chen write. "Among self-described Christian conservative voters, who make up almost 30 percent of Republicans, he runs about even with Thompson and well ahead of the other contenders."
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