“Senator Clinton, why are you so awesome?”

Posted by Blake on Nov 20, 2007 - 12:00 pm

Slate.com‘s John Dickerson has an article on the recent controversy at Iowa’s Grinnell College, where presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s staff directed students as to what questions to ask.
From the Grinnell Scarlet and Black Student Newspaper:

After her speech, Clinton accepted questions. But according to Grinnell College student Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff ’10, some of the questions from the audience were planned in advance. “They were canned,” she said. Before the event began, a Clinton staff member approached Gallo-Chasanoff to ask a specific question after Clinton’s speech. “One of the senior staffers told me what [to ask],” she said.

While this is a fairly common practice among politicians (see: President Bush), Dickerson gives a great indictment of why it’s a serious problem.

It is tempting to recline into the posture that this is a phony media-generated noncontroversy, like the questions about whether Clinton did or didn’t tip an Iowa waitress (a story we must denounce as frivolous but keep milking anyway). Except that exchanges between voters and candidates are supposed to be the antidote to the failings of the mainstream media—free of all of the gimmickry and game-playing. Q-and-As by nature aren’t as phony as the candidate plant tour or the planned stop at a roadside diner. They’re as close as we get to an honest exchange. So, politicians should pay a price when they try to game them.

As both Obama and Edwards continue to climb in the polls, this is a pretty bad time for Hillary to do anything to appear phony. As if enough people didn’t already think she was a phony.