With crowds of supporters waiting for her, Secretary Hillary Clinton stopped at a coffee house in Mount Vernon, Iowa on Tuesday, April 14, 2015. (Photo by Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
APRIL 17, 2015
The first people Hillary Clinton ran into on her much-discussed road trip to Iowa weren't expecting to see her. It was a family at a refueling stop somewhere in Pennsylvania. The campaign's Twitter account tweeted a picture of the group in front of a blank wall -- the first regular voters Clinton met on the campaign trail.
Clinton's Twitter accountshows a slew of pictures of people in Iowa, waiting by the road or participating in discussions or taking her order. But as Politico notedearlier this week, Clinton didn't meet as many people during her time in the state as you might have assumed. The photo at the top of this article was as Clinton emerged from a meeting in Mount Vernon, Iowa. "Clinton moved swiftly through the crowd," Politico's Annie Karni wrote, "she posed quickly for one selfie, barely slowing her gait and reached out to coo over one baby before the van’s double doors slammed behind her." The meeting itself, like others, was with hand-picked participants.
There's a big difference between happening upon a candidate at a shopping center and planning to sit down with her and ask her questions. That Clinton has largely avoided the press during this first week of her campaign is generally understood, leaving reporters to scramble to try and talk to her. But that she's not engaging with many prepared, thoughtful voters -- or many voters at all, for that matter -- is another thing entirely.
During the run-up to her inevitable campaign, we looked at her play-it-safe strategy: Speeches before some groups, vetted Q-and-As with others. When Clinton sat down with the press, she often made news inadvertently, like the "dead broke" comments from last summer. Even her book tour offered a list of guidelines for those seeking signatures.
The campaign was supposed to be different. Or, at least, it seemed as though it was supposed to be different. "There was more of an illusion of give-and-take than the real thing," reported the Los Angeles Times' Seema Mehta. "Clinton had implied a more freewheeling approach, and the question that lingered after she left was whether her carefully choreographed visit had improved views of her."
Update: Business Insider reports that even for a small gathering of a few local leaders, "[t]here were warnings about leaks, drives to undisclosed locations, and a campaign staffer who confiscated the guests' cellphones ahead of the sitdown." (Emphasis added.)
Former Maryland governor Martin O'Malley, who has flirted with the idea of running against Clinton for the Democratic nomination, took a fairly weak swipe at this side of Clinton in an interview Thursday. "I believe that we are best as a party," he said, "when we lead with our principles and not according to the polls." There is absolutely no question that Clinton's roll-out was tested and thought-through beforehand, despite the nonchalance with which it was introduced. (Even if the infamous Chipotle stop was spontaneous.)
But why? Barring something catastrophic, up-to-and-including the appearance of Mothra, Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic Party's nominee for the presidency. There's no Barack Obama with his big smile standing just over her shoulder. Clinton can weather all sorts of critiques and missteps over the next 12 months and still have that be the case. But during week one of her campaign for the presidency, she's been Indiana Jones approaching the golden idol rather than Indy escaping the boulder: Stepping very carefully and only in designated places.
This thing will not be won or lost between now and December. This is the time when Clinton can most afford to be free-wheeling, is most able to play it by ear. So far, no dice.
If reporters are in search of those elusive moments of spontaneity, they might be better off staking out random rest stops than appearing at the locations on Clinton's official schedule.
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