Matthew Continetti had yet to reach high school the first time Hillary Rodham Clinton tried to rebrand her political image. But now Continetti, editor in chief of the Washington Free Beacon, devotes a Commentary magazine column to Clinton’s latest efforts to boost her public image.
… [T]he “new focus” the Clinton campaign announced with such publicity is just the latest in a decades-long series of renovations, reboots, restarts, shifts of emphasis, changes in strategy, corrections in course. Hillary Clinton has been on the national scene ever since her husband was elected governor of Arkansas in 1978. She has been one of the most famous women in the world since 1992. She already can be counted among the most well-recognized and polarizing figures in American history. For her to suggest that only now, in the midst of her second campaign for the White House, will she reveal her “humor” and “heart” is worse than absurd. It’s offensive.
All these years, and Hillary has been keeping her sense of humor and compassion from us? What else is she hiding? Feelings of modesty? An unpublished novel? A proficiency with the bassoon? Perhaps we should ask Bryan Pagliano, the aide who set up the private email server—oh right, we can’t, because he’s pleading the Fifth Amendment.
“If we want everything to stay the same, everything must change,” wrote Giuseppe di Lampedusa, in a sentence that is quite apposite to the life of Hillary Clinton and her course alterations. It all started with her name. “Mrs. Clinton had originally kept the name Hillary Rodham when she married,” wrote Robert Pear back in 1993, “then took the name Hillary Clinton while [Bill] was governor of Arkansas, in one of many image adjustments that have accompanied their joint political journey.” When her husband put her in charge of drawing up education standards for Arkansas, Clinton reinserted her maiden name and became “Hillary Rodham Clinton.” Now, like Beyoncé and Madonna and Oprah, she has no need of surnames at all. She is simply Hillary.
And yet the entity known as “Hillary” seems always to be in flux. …
… The reboots never stop—indeed, the 2016 campaign is itself a reboot of 2008. “The whole style of her campaign is different than last time around,” Bloomberg BusinessWeek wrote in April. When Clinton ordered a burrito bowl at a Chipotle in Ohio, Patrick Healy of the New York Times quipped, “After 25 years in the public eye, Mrs. Clinton has suddenly developed the capacity to surprise.” Count yourself lucky: The American electorate is being treated, reported Michael Kruse, to “the latest effort to ‘reintroduce’ her.”
The best sign that the April reintroductions were also a flop arrived in June. After spending months saying Clinton would campaign quietly and discreetly, her team organized a huge rally on Roosevelt Island in New York City for the “official” launch of her campaign. “For a campaign criticized for lacking passion,” reported the Times, “the event gave Mrs. Clinton the ability to create a camera-ready tableau of excitement.”