Okay, I said I’d give
that wise Iowa waitress
the last word on the Hillary diner tip affair, but before the week’s over let
me add two meta-thoughts about the episode.
The first is what it showed about the rapid-response machine. Hillary’s aides moved at lightning speed to correct the story, contacting a slew of news outlets and bloggers within a couple of hours to set the record straight. The Clintonites were clearly proud of their efforts, and cite their proficiency at this sort of thing as another reason why they’re likely to run the best general election campaign. Referring to the Swift Boating of John Kerry in 2004, one operative
close to Hillary’s campaign says (as quoted in my piece on the Clinton campaign and the media out next week), “We’ll be damned if we’re going to let that happen again."
Here’s the possible downside: Hillary rivals like Obama or Edwards can cite this as an example of the unique level of Freak Show attention (to borrow the phrase coined by Mark
Halperin and John Harris in their book, The Way to Win) Hillary attracts. She is a powerful magnet for scurrilous myths--ones that fit into well-established media narratives that lead to just-add-water headlines. (Note how, even after the Hillary campaign corrected the initial NPR story, Drudge had posted a link to a similar episode from 2000. The message was, "Okay, maybe
this story isn’t right. But we all know it’s the kind of thing she does.") To be sure, Obama and Edwards take plenty of Freak Show flak themselves (Obama’s “madrassa,” Edwards’s haircut). But Hillary is in a league of her own—which goes back to the question of electability. I suppose Democratic voters will have to decide whether they think the Clinton team's experience in dealing with the Freak Show outweighs Hillary's vulnerability to it.
And meanwhile, somewhere in the heart of Iowa,
lies a Maid-Rite that's had media wrecking ball swing right through it. Kind of sad.
Update: Yglesias thinks along similar lines and concludes the electabilty answer is "unknowable."
--Michael Crowley