Political hopefuls a different breed

By MARSHA MERCER

MEDIA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE

WASHINGTON — Presidential candidates are different from the rest of us. They live in glass houses, throw stones and always believe they will win.

When Katie Couric asked Hillary Rodham Clinton late last month how disappointed she’d be if she didn’t get the Democratic presidential nomination, the New York senator replied coolly, “Well, it will be me.”

Couric then asked if Clinton had ever even considered that she might not win. “No, I haven’t,” she said.

She’s no Bill Clinton. He came from nowhere — OK, Hope, Ark., of all places — to run for president at a time when most Democrats thought the first President Bush unbeatable. But even when Clinton was greenest, it’s hard to imagine him laying his confidence so embarrassingly bare as his wife — the political pro — did with Couric.

Bill Clinton’s gift was the ability to connect with Americans. He understood their economic insecurity. Hillary Clinton says she gets up every day and hits the campaign trail. Her husband used to say he got up every day to work for the people. He seemed to live and breathe helping the middle class. That’s why he’s still so popular, despite all that happened later.

When he promised to “focus like a laser” on the economy, people prospered. You can argue he had nothing to do with it, but people were grateful anyway. Hillary Clinton also seems focused — but, unfortunately, on politics, on her own goals and on winning.

‘White noise’

Little has changed since July, when she told the Des Moines Register editorial board that questions about whether she could be elected were just “white noise” in the campaign.

“I am winning,” she declared then, citing her “proven ability” to reach women and her “track record” for making things happen.

Hillary Clinton’s celebrated experience as a veteran of turbulent White House years and the Senate prepares her to lead, she says. She’s proud of her political scars, including her attempt to pass health care. She has tried to differentiate herself from her husband on only a few issues, such as trade agreements. Her aides say voters still don’t know her.

Bill Clinton jokes that “they” — his wife’s campaign — sends him to rural areas because he owns a pair of boots and knows one end of the horse from the other. He’s also the softer side of Hillary, the one who can say she’s the real deal and make people believe it.

The economy wasn’t especially bad when “the economy, stupid” was the mantra of Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign. But people thought it was rocky. He tapped into their discomfort.

Today, even though wages and jobs continue to grow, consumer confidence in the economy is declining, according to the Conference Board and the Reuters-University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment studies for November. The perception that the economy is getting worse is fueled by higher gas prices and winter heating costs and the spreading crisis in the financial sector.

Barack Obama already has tried to link today’s economic insecurity to Hillary Clinton. The Illinois senator asks in a TV ad, without mentioning names or specifics, “Do you really believe that if we replace a crowd of corporate Republicans with a crowd of corporate Democrats anything is going to change?” Economic issues also are important to former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina. A wealthy trial lawyer, he hasn’t forgotten his working-class roots. Fighting poverty is his cause.

New reality

Hillary Clinton led the pack when the idea was fresh that a woman could actually make history and win the White House. Today, she’s retooling her campaign in a new reality. She faces one candidate who could make history as the first biracial president and another who argues for ending economic disparities.

She has brought out her mother and daughter, a sign that she understands the need to show her human side.

Anything can happen in the Iowa caucuses Jan. 3. If she stumbles, Clinton might be able to recover more easily than an Obama or Edwards. We could even see a new Comeback Kid.

After all, Bill Clinton didn’t win the New Hampshire primary when he gave himself that title. He came in second. Presidential candidates, as I said, are different from the rest of us.

X Marsha Mercer is Washington bureau chief of Media General News Service. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.