Hillary's 2016 Campaign - Silence Is Golden

For decades, Hillary Clinton has had her entire life scripted. She has existed in a world insulated by handlers and managers and “her people,” all of whom are employed for the overarching purpose of mediating her engagement with the calamitous world “out there.” Yet every time the bubble is pricked, and we no longer have to see Hillary Clinton through limousine glass darkly, we rediscover her vices — her obsessive secretiveness, her arrogance, her shrewish treatment even of those closest to her — and the unmistakable fact that she is simply not equipped to deal with the world unmediated.

Hillary Clinton wants to run a Truman Show campaign. But what the last six years have made incontrovertibly clear is that you can’t run a Truman Show presidency.

Ian Tuttle, National Review, 10 April 2015

The Hillary 2016 campaign will begin tomorrow, not with a grand celebration, a speech and a press briefing, but a tweet, a Facebook posting, and a video. Not invited will be the press. This woman is treating the press like pure kryptonite at the moment, and if early indications are accurate, she will be doing that throughout the campaign. This from Hot Air, quoting the NYDN:

But Hillary Rodham Clinton is going small — real small. When the presumed Democratic front-runner announces her 2016 bid in the coming days, expect a Facebook post, a video, maybe some tweets. Then it’s off on the trail to meet one-on-one and in small groups with voters in the early states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.

The approach — described by Democratic strategists and advisers familiar with her plans — is intended to address some of the key shortcomings of Clinton’s 2008 run for the White House, when she often came off as flat and overly scripted before large crowds. The go-slow, go-small strategy, these advisers say, plays to her strengths, allowing her to meet voters in intimate settings where her humor, humility and policy expertise can show through.

What her message to those voters will be is an open question. Many supporters agree she needs a ready answer for why she wants to be president, other than that she thinks she would be good at it.

A Facebook post, a video, and maybe a few tweets? That’s certainly a social-media strategy for a campaign, but not a campaign as a whole. Even the plans for the actual campaigning look excessively modest for a modern presidential campaign — a few one-on-ones, a few small groups. The woman who made a fortune off of giving big speeches at $300,000 a pop suddenly wants the smallest venues possible.

Why? It’s not so much that Hillary comes off “flat and overly scripted before large crowds.” She’s made millions speaking before large crowds. It’s that she can’t keep the press out of large crowds once she starts making those kinds of appearances as a candidate. Her speaking tours forbid press coverage and any videotaping; even the transcripts have to be given to her at the end of the speech. Team Hillary is so afraid of media questioning that they’re scaling down the announcement to duck it.

I can well imagine Hillary, whose e-mail scandal is potentially criminal and far far from over, will attempt to control the press to a degree far beyond which even Obama managed in 2007 -- and, that said, to Obama's credit, he did take a few tough interviews during that time. Even her UN presser on the e-mail scandal was as tightly controlled as could be managed -- a foreign press corps with at least one seemingly planted question. She is going to try and coast through the primaries while keeping any unfriendly press excluded.

Will it work? Given that the Democrats seem to have no other options, probably. One thing is for sure. The MSM will not be giving her the Rand Paul treatment. Indeed, I expect that the MSM will treat Hillary as they treat Obama today, with their anger fully muted by shared goals and deference.

Ann Althouse wonders if this is not a return to the 2007 "Let's start a conversation with America" campaign. And as she notes, rather tongue in cheek, "We've been talking with Hillary now for such a long, long time...." Well, expect the "talking with Hillary" to be all one way for the foreseeable

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