What she can do is explain that the decisions a president makes are hard and complex, but she has the smarts and toughness to make them really well. That’s what she did in her answer Friday. She insisted that even before Snowden’s revelations, top Obama officials were already trying to safeguard Americans’ privacy: “The president actually had given a speech and many of us were beginning the process of trying to figure out, more than 10 years after 9/11, what we needed to do to make sure we got our liberty-security balance right.”

But she implied that Snowden and his supporters don’t understand that balance because they don’t understand the threats America faces. She didn’t just say the world is dangerous, she deployed the kind of detail that someone like Warren and Paul could not. “When I would go to China or I would go to Russia," she explained, “we would leave all my electronic equipment on the plane with the batteries out, because this is a new frontier and they’re trying to find out not just about what we do in our government, they’re trying to find out about what a lot of companies do and they were going after the personal emails of people who worked in the State Department. It’s not like the only government in the world that is doing anything is the United States.”

It was a good example of how to turn Clinton’s Washington-insider status into a strength. Instead of simply asserting that her government experience would be an asset, she deployed the kind of example that people remember.

Because she said what she really believes, she sounded authentic not only in substance, but in style. Clinton’s not a great inspirational speaker. When she lapses into ostensibly uplifting generalities, she often sounds canned. In her Snowden answer, by contrast, she displayed her natural voice: wonky and blunt. Like her husband, and more than Obama, she thrives when talking about the details of policy. And when she gives direct, unhedged answers like she did on Friday, she comes across as tough without having to say she is. She was even funny, mocking the fact that Snowden called “into a Putin talk show and says, ‘President Putin, do you spy on people?’ And President Putin says, ‘Well, from one intelligence professional to another, of course not.’ ‘Oh, thank you so much!’ I mean really.” Presidential candidates don’t often risk sarcasm, but it worked in this case because it sounded like the real Hillary.

In his 2012 book Twilight of the Elites, Chris Hayes usefully divides American politics between “institutionalists” who think Americans should trust government more and “insurrectionists” who think they should trust it less. Hillary’s clearly the former. In 2008, however, she couldn’t run effectively as one because after eight years of George W. Bush, Democratic rage at Washington was sky-high. In 2016, given the grouchy public mood, running as an “institutionalist” still won’t be easy. But in her Snowden answer, Clinton showed how to do so in a way that makes her look capable and sincere and her insurrectionist opponents look irresponsible and dangerous. Given that she’s more likely to face an insurrectionist like Rand Paul in 2016 than an institutionalist like Jeb Bush, that may prove a very useful skill indeed.

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