Hillary the Inauthentic

In 2008 Barack Obama said that Hillary Clinton was “likable enough.” Apparently, yet again, Obama was wrong. It seems that Hillary is not even close to being likable enough.

It’s beginning to disturb the liberal media, people who would be expected to support her candidacy. They seem to think that she is looking more and more like a loser.

Winners do not sit down to do a jokey video with uber-exhibitionist Lena Dunham.

Frank Bruni reports on the cringe-inducing encounter:

She had a law career, an ambitious agenda as first lady, an industrious stint in the Senate, those years and miles as secretary of state.

And it has come to this: In a bid to seem less stuffy and turn the page on a beleaguered (yet again) presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton is chatting with Lena Dunham about the singer Lenny Kravitz’s penis.

In his opening sentence, Bruni strains to recount Hillary’s achievements. But, that is the real problem. She is really running on her husband’s name and achievements. And she is running as a feminist, despite her long history of enabling her husband to abuse women sexually. How much credibility could she to inveigh against rape culture and unwanted sexual touching.

Bruni says that the Dunham/Clinton love-in is a pajama party sans pajamas. I find the innuendo amusing, but will leave that one to your imagination:

But it’s in large part a Dunham-Clinton love-in, a pajama party minus the pajamas, ostensibly in keeping with the Clinton campaign’s recent pledge to roll out a warmer, funnier version of the candidate. I’ve lost count of which version we’re on.

In the promotional video, Clinton kids that because Dunham’s newsletter and the website associated with it are called Lenny, she half expected that the person coming to question her might be Kravitz.

Dunham then mentions some viral footage of a Kravitz wardrobe malfunction: “His stuff fell out of his pants.”

Clinton feigns fascination. “I’ll look for that,” she says.

We are happy to see Bill Clinton’s wife bond with Dunham over their interest in gazing longingly on a man’s penis. One understands that this fascination does not characterize heterosexual women.

Bruni is exasperated by the incompetence of the Clinton campaign. Keep in mind that he is likely to want to support the Democratic candidate in the pages of the New York Times:

But her campaign so far is an unimpressive dress rehearsal for the general election. It’s devoid of soul and sweep, a series of labored gestures and precisely staked positions. Constituency by constituency, leftward adjustment by leftward adjustment, she and her aides slog and muscle their way forward.

And they contradict the adage that a politician campaigns in poetry and governs in prose. Clinton campaigns in something more like a PowerPoint presentation. Prose would be an upgrade. Poetry is light years away.

Nearly everyone who has met Hillary Clinton says that she is charming and personable in private. In public, she’s a dud.

My only explanation is the easiest one: she is not running on her substantial achievements; she is not running on her policy proposals; she is not running on her accomplishments. She is running as an empty pantsuit, or, on her husband’s record.

Her supporters and advisers recommend that she become more real and more authentic, warmer and more effusive. The problem is, as a candidate she is unreal. She cannot present herself as she really is because she did not earn any of the positions she held.

Recall what Bruni lists as her achievements. A high-profile law career while her husband was governor. An ambitious agenda as first lady—that is, an incompetent effort to reform health care. Industriousness in the Senate… which suggests that she worked hard but did not accomplish much. And, a lot of frequent flier miles when secretary of state.

Like Obama, she must know in the depths of her soul that she is an impostor. Unlike Obama she cannot give a decent speech and is not a very good liar.

In many if not most ways, Hillary is an impostor. And she is not good enough to hide it.