Hillary rope-a-dopes press, but who's the dope?

Hang ’em high, Hillary. Hang those pesky reporters who fly around the country to cover your every event in order to quote what you say and what people say to you.

Hogtie them! String them up. Or, at the very least, rope-a-dope them.


Last weekend, the Clinton campaign decided to celebrate the magnificent freedoms promised in our Declaration of Independence by bringing out an actual rope and penning up reporters during a Fourth of July parade.

While parading in Gorham, New Hampshire, Hillary’s aides stretched a rope across a street in order to “physically block journalists from getting too close to the candidate,” according to The Washington Post.

The journalists were kept “mostly out of earshot of Clinton’s interactions in this rural, working-class community.”

I find this odd.

First, a candidate’s public interactions with voters goes by a simple name: It is called “campaigning.”

It is what candidates do to get nominated and elected. It is part of something called “democracy” and is often honored on the Fourth of July.

But Hillary appears to take no pleasure in campaigning and apparently wishes to de-emphasize it as much as possible.

I also wonder why such caution should be necessary for a parade in a “working-class” community. Most Democratic candidates are well-received in working-class communities.

After all, Hillary says she emerged from eight years in the White House “dead broke.” So she ought to be able to bond with the working class.

Her attempt to corral the press corps and keep it at bay was not entirely successful. Philip Rucker and Ed O’Keefe of the Post were able to hear some crowd reaction to Hillary.

It was not entirely positive. “It feels like a coronation, doesn’t it?” one man shouted at her. “God bless the queen!”

Can Hillary really blame the guy? In New Hampshire, voters grow up seeing presidential candidates mob their streets every four years. But most have never seen a presidential candidate with a team of rope-bearers.

Which brings up another problem for Hillary: Whatever her real qualities, her public image often comes across as frosty, removed, entitled, brittle and peevish.

She may be warm, friendly, open, sociable and pleasant in private, but campaigns are not conducted in private.

And her reaction to the ups and downs of campaigning today seem as tin-eared as her reactions in 2008, when she lost a presidential campaign she could have won.

Hillary lost in 2008 not only because, according to my interviews with nearly every one of her top aides, her campaign was “dysfunctional,” but also because she had a real loathing of the press.

She was not about to forget how the press treated her during the Whitewater scandal, the cattle futures affair, Travelgate, the suicide of Vince Foster, the accusations of Gennifer Flowers, and, of course, the Monica Lewinsky affair.

She blamed her treatment on a “vast right-wing conspiracy,” which did, indeed, exist, and a vicious press corps. She later found out her husband was guilty of some hanky-panky, too, but came to forgive him.

The press she has not forgiven. While wiser heads might counsel that manipulating the press is far more beneficial than stiffing or corralling the press, it is still not certain how many wise heads actually exist or are being listened to in the Clinton campaign.

How do you put the past behind you? If you are Hillary, you do not. You gather people around you who feed your ego and try to prove their loyalty by keeping the press as far away from you as possible.

Even if she believes she is a genuine martyr, however, Hillary could be a gracious one.

Joan of Arc got good press and became a saint.

And Hillary’s campaign recently announced that three months after declaring for the presidency, she will deign to give some national interviews.

Part of the difficulty in getting the Hillary people to take any campaign problems seriously is that few believe she can lose the nomination.

While Bernie Sanders, an independent and socialist senator from Vermont, is rising in the polls, it’s because Hillary has yet to give people a reason to vote for her.

She is an administrator. She believes that a president should scrutinize problems and then develop and oversee solutions. If elected, she will be President Pothole. She will fix things that need fixing.

There is nothing wrong with this. There is a lot right with this. But it is not inspirational.

I can’t imagine Hillary standing in a church and singing “Amazing Grace” in order to bring about some healing to the nation.

OK, she doesn’t have to sing. But she has to tell us why she wants to be president in a way that is not dry and empty and pallid. She needs the press to communicate it.

And she needs to start now, even if she does not have a credible opponent, because selling the nation on Hillary may be a very long process.

Roger Simon is chief political columnist for POLITICO.