In the late 1980s, the Bears (a briefly great band, not the football team) pointed out, “This world hangs by a slender thread/Trust.” Daily Beast columnist and MSNBC pundit Jonathan Alter argued Monday that Hillary Clinton’s current political malaise is rooted in her failure to trust the American people rather than in any real wrongdoing on her part.
“Hillary’s problem is not the emails story itself, but her response to it, which has been halting and defensive,” declared Alter. “The reason so many voters don’t trust Hillary is she doesn’t trust them. Trust is reciprocal. If she trusted the public more, she would be mixing it up in the media more, like [Donald] Trump, and betting that the public will eventually sort out the truth.”
Alter, who asserted that “Trump is far sleazier than Hillary,” allowed that “Hillary will never stop calculating. It’s not in her nature. But moving even a little in Trump’s spontaneous, risk-taking direction would help.”
From Alter’s piece (bolding added):
If Donald Trump were Hillary Clinton:
“Believe me, Congressman Trey Gowdy is a loser. This guy runs the committee that’s demanding all of my emails from when I was secretary of state and he won’t release any of his own emails from Congress. Why? He’s afraid they’ll show the whole thing is a huge political deal—a set up. Which it is. Disgusting.
Look, this is the same old double standard from when Bill and I were huge in the ’90s. Colin Powell is a nice guy…But [he] had a private email account the whole time he was secretary of state, and if you think nothing classified ever got there accidentally, I got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell ya…"
Trump disgusts me and I’m sure he disgusts Clinton…But Hillary has a lot to learn from The Donald about how to handle herself in the circus that has become our politics…
New polls show that large and growing numbers of voters don’t trust Clinton. For people like me who covered Bill Clinton in the 1990s, that seems like no big deal right now...
But Hillary is not a lovable rogue like her husband. She is cleaner than Bill but wears less Teflon. The pattern with her going back to her days as first lady is a cover-up—or at least suspicious damage control—without a crime…
…Those low trust numbers could lead to a few primary and caucus losses…Even if Hillary wins the nomination—still likely—low trust ratings would weaken her against a Republican…
Hillary’s problem is not the emails story itself, but her response to it, which has been halting and defensive. The reason so many voters don’t trust Hillary is she doesn’t trust them. Trust is reciprocal. If she trusted the public more, she would be mixing it up in the media more, like Trump, and betting that the public will eventually sort out the truth…
…Trump is far sleazier than Hillary, as the documentary Trump: What’s the Deal? explains in detail. But even with all his lying, he seems open.
She’s cover-up with no crime; he’s crime (or at least reports of employing undocumented immigrants for building demolition and dealing with mobbed-up unions) with no cover-up…
…Hillary will never stop calculating. It’s not in her nature. But moving even a little in Trump’s spontaneous, risk-taking direction would help.
The same goes for emulating Trump the counter-puncher. When asked about his penchant for personal attacks, Trump says he’s just punching back. And it’s true: Almost everyone he calls a loser has insulted him first.
Hillary seems to be learning this lesson. At a banquet last Friday in Iowa, she told a cheering crowd, “It’s not about emails or servers. It’s about politics,” before adding a reference to SnapChat: “I love it. Those messages disappear all by themselves.”
Spoken like The Donald.
