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Last time (has springtime really come and gone since then?) we talked about the corrosive effects of media cynicism. This time, let me tell you about how a face to face conversation can actually make you question some of your own cynicism and change your opinion about someone. At the end of March you may have read my comment that "the most corrosive effect of our own cynicism in the media, is that we're probably influencing the birth of a nation of cynics---of people who are prepared to believe the worst of everyone who enters public life, questioning their motives, honesty and veracity to a degree we don't ever question our friends or ourselves." Maybe it didn't come to me at the time, but I could have been talking about myself even as I was questioning the cynicism I see around me. It's a fight sometimes to keep from thinking the worst of anyone who seeks power. And truth to tell, even as I had come to question at least some of the rancor directed at people like Hillary Clinton (thanks to a chat with Gali Sheehy, who knew her well) I still wondered about her, had a mental image of her as a very brittle, cool political operative with little human warmth or empathy. Then she came to town, and specifically to our studio. We met before the broadcast...and the Hillary you think you know through network TV and cable, is not the person you meet and talk with face to face. The real Hillary Clinton, first of all, has a warm, relaxed manner about her. She makes even small talk with an ease that you don't learn from practice, that has to come to you naturally. (After you've seen people try to fake it and force it often enough, it's not hard to tell the difference between the phony and the real.) The brittleness and the coldness her critics proclaim her to have? You begin to wonder if they've ever met the woman. One thing she does have, is a policy wonk's encyclopedic mind. I don't think there's a single question that you could ask her, for which she couldn't immediately summon up an informed and detailed answer. You might disagree with her solutions to the world's, the country's or the state's problems (even I don't agree with her on things like the death penalty---she supports it, I don't). But you can't fault her for lack of preparation and research. Nor can you deny she has a genuine ambition to make things happen, to make some history. Nor can you deny she has tremendous cool under fire. We all know about the time Buffalo radio host Tom Bauerle asked her if she'd ever cheated on Bill...and how she didn't blow her cool then. (Bauerle didn't fare so well...the station he worked for changed format to sports talk and demoted him to second banana on a morning sports talk show. It could have been worse...Jack Germond of CNN predicted he'd wind up doing overnights in Erie, PA.) But she got an even stranger question from an audience member in Rochester. A man identifying himself as an evangelical preacher asked her if she expected to go to heaven or hell. I don't think she paused more than a beat or two, before saying, “I can only say I will do my best, live my life with integrity and hope and pray God will find me worthy." Guess that's all any of us can do... There is one thing I DON'T think she wants. And that's to become President. Two reasons for that come to mind. One, of course, is that the experience of being in the White House during her husband's presidency has been a bitter time for her and for the whole family. You can see it in her eyes whenever she talks about the last seven years...I think I'm pretty good at reading the feelings behind people's expressions, and when she talks about these years what I see is pain. She's lived her life planning for public involvement at the highest level but the White House isn't home for her, and I suspect, never will be. But like any lawyer, she's an advocate, someone who takes a position and fights for it...and that's basically what a legislator does. I suspect she sees the Senate as a natural fit, an extension of what she's been doing all her life---and something she might want to do the rest of her working life. Will she get that chance? It's too close to call right now, the polls give her only the slightest edge and whether that edge holds depends on how many of us New Yorkers turn out to vote this November 7. But my sense of Hillary Clinton after spending an hour listening to her up close and personal, is that if she doesn't get it, it won't be for lack of hard work and effort. 'Til next time... Bob |
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