AP: Hostage Sitiuation Gives Hillary Presidential Cred…
What? I, like Ed Morrissey, am a little stunned at how the actions of Clinton are being portrayed by Politico and the AP:
Politico:
In her New Hampshire press conference, she stood before a column of police in green and tan uniforms. She talked of meeting with hostages. She mentioned that she spoke to the state’s governor about eight minutes after the incident began.
The scene was one of a woman in charge.
“It looked and sounded presidential,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “This was an instance of the White House experience of this campaign. They knew how to handle this.”
That the crisis was outside Clinton’s control gave it a rare quality in this era of hyper-controlled politicking, Sabato added.
Yes, the crisis was out of her control. Let’s all remember one very important fact: Hillary Clinton is married to a former President. That is key, first and foremost. Thankfully, she, nor anyone else was hurt and the incident was diffused, but she wasn’t at the building, nor was she to be anywhere near it. She was to give a speech, in Virginia, that was canceled, and you can bet your life, the Secret Service detail that she receives, because of Bill Clinton, called that one.
I agree with Ed:
Hillary certainly didn’t do anything wrong, but she didn’t “take charge” as the AP implies, or look presidential, as Sabato declares. She certainly looks considerably less presidential today in trying to take credit for the professional work done by the Rochester PD yesterday. That looks a lot more like a politician than a President, and we already know her credentials for the former. This incident doesn’t provide Hillary any credentials for the latter.
Jim asks: “Is the AP going to be charged with an in-kind contribution to the Clinton Campaign?”
Rick has a must read, but here is a snippet:
Holy Mother of God! My pet cat Aramas felt “grave concern” when he heard the news. I would suspect that half the people on the planet – Democrats and Republicans – felt “grave concern” when first hearing of the plight of her volunteers. If Johnson thinks 15 years of aloofness, cold-eyed calculation, and insensitivity can be washed away just because she felt “grave concern” for her volunteers, he obviously has more confidence in his skills as a huckstering Hillary sycophant than is warranted.
And would someone please tell me how it is possible for someone to know the “traditional lines of command and control in a crisis” while at exactly the same time ” taking charge” of the situation? Johnson was so eager to put the candidate at the center of the action (taking charge) he temporarily forgot that a paragraph earlier he had her deferring to “traditional lines of authority.”
Oh well. No hack is perfect.
BFV asks another great question: “Err.., Glenn Johnson: Just wondering: did you smoke a cigarette after composing that piece?”
December 1, 2007 - 10:04 AM on December 1st, 2007
DID HILL SET THAT UP?
December 1, 2007 - 12:19 PM on December 1st, 2007
That’s what I was thinking, Fred. It is well within the bounds of probability the Klinton political machine set this all up.