Politics

For Hillary Clinton, It’s Been ‘Hard Choices’ and Tough Interviews This Week

Matt K. Lewis Senior Contributor
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Move over, “No Drama, Obama!” If the rollout for Hillary Clinton’s new book is any indication, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president will be fun to cover in 2016.

The gaffes commenced almost immediately, when she said that she and President Bill Clinton were “dead broke” after leaving the White House — a notion that even Rahm Emanuel thought was absurd. And the fun continued when she misidentified former President Abe Lincoln as a “senator from Illinois.”

(This is a trite observation, but I’ll say it anyway: Just imagine if Mitt Romney or Sarah Palin had made these gaffes.)

It’s unclear why someone with so much experience would make such mistakes, but while panning her book launch, journalists and Game Change co-authors John Heilemann and Mark Halperin suggested she was “rusty.”

Or maybe just caught unawares? If Clinton thought selecting female mainstream media journalists to interview her would result in soft ball questions, she had another thing coming. Rather than hitting home runs, Clinton was instead forced to fend off Diane Sawyer over Benghazi. Then, she became embroiled in a terse back-and-forth with NPR’s Terry Gross over her changing positions on gay marriage …

Having whiffed on a few pitches, it may be that Clinton is now erring on the side of caution. After a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations Thursday, she refused to engage with the press, instead telling them: “I’m not answering questions. That was the deal that I made, I’m sorry.”