In final stretch, Clinton focuses on herself
WASHINGTON — All summer long, Hillary Clinton delighted in snappy attack lines about Donald Trump.
Electing the billionaire, she warned, would be a “historic mistake.” The Republican nominee perpetuates “outlandish Trumpian ideas.” Clinton reveled in imagining her rival “composing nasty tweets” as she derided him as “temperamentally unfit and totally unqualified” to be president.
But as the campaign moves into the final stretch, Clinton finds herself chasing an even more elusive target: herself.
Shows of humility
Just seven weeks before Election Day and with Clinton’s poll numbers slipping, her campaign is trying — yet again — to explain one of the world’s most famous politicians to a skeptical public.
The effort marks an unusual moment of introspection for Clinton, who has long refused to engage in the kind of public selfexamination that can help transform would-be heads of state into relatable figures.
The start of September brought a series of near-apologies from Clinton, a notable shift for a candidate who took months to express remorse for her decision to use a private email system while running the State Department.
Her vote for the Iraq war and decision to set up a private email server in her suburban New York home were both “a mistake,” she said at a national security forum hosted by NBC. A late-night comment at a fundraiser that half of Donald Trump’s supporters fit into a “basket of deplorables” prompted a quick statement of partial regret — for branding “half” of them that way.
And her campaign took “responsibility” for not being “fast enough” in disclosing she had pneumonia after a video showed Clinton staggering leaving a 9/11 ceremony.
She also lamented that some voters see her as aloof.
“I don’t view myself as cold or unemotional,” she said in her post to the popular website Humans of New York. “And neither do my friends. And neither does my family.” She went on: “But if that sometimes is the perception I create, then I can’t blame people for thinking that.”
The campaign hopes that such public shows of humility, alongside a series of speeches designed to lay out her vision for the country, will persuade voters to reconsider their feelings about Clinton.
In the campaign’s final stretch, her aides plan to show off Clinton in governing mode — meeting world leaders during the United Nations General Assembly meeting in New York City, for example. Invitations to some creative media appearances, such as a turn on the “Funny or Die” comedy site, have been accepted to play up the warm, self-effacing Clinton that friends say they see in private.
‘Offer a vision’
The strategy is designed to address Clinton’s biggest political liability: A major- ity of voters simply do not trust her.
Ratings of her honesty have remained stubbornly low in polling — even among Democrats. Just 35 percent of Americans, surveyed in an ABC News/ Washington Post poll this month, see Clinton as honest and trustworthy, down from a high of 53 percent in June 2014. Trump ranked only slightly lower at 31 percent.
Strategists worry that Clinton’s character issues have contributed to a lack of understanding about why she’s running for president, a pressing concern given that absentee ballots are now available in a few states.
“They don’t know what her vision is,” said Democratic strategist Chris Kofinis. “She has not articulated a positive vision. She has a slogan. Offer a vision.”
Still, advisers and former aides acknowledge improving Clinton’s standing with Americans, forged over nearly three tumultuous decades in public life and shaped in part by relentless criticism from her opponents, isn’t an overnight process.
Already, her efforts have been set back by her decision to keep her pneumonia diagnosis secret from all but her closest aides.
“When it comes to public service, I’m better at the ‘service’ part than the ‘public’ part,” she said at a North Carolina event marking her return to the campaign trail.