Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign took a beating from some pundits this week for telling the truth: She’s going to employ a strategy focused on a narrow set of the most competitive states.

In other words, she’s running as a modern presidential candidate.

Mrs. Clinton’s statement is what’s called a Kinsley gaffe — taking its name from Michael Kinsley, a journalist who said a gaffe is something true that a politician isn’t supposed to say. By conceding the obvious, she revealed the disjunction between the politics we say we want and the kind we actually have.

In reality, her approach is far less different from those of recent candidates than it might appear. No presidential candidate — including Mrs. Clinton’s husband, whose strategy was compared to hers — competes in every state. The reason is the Electoral College, a winner-take-all system that rewards candidates who focus almost exclusively on closely contested states.