The Trouble With Brand Hillary

During the general election between Al Gore and George W. Bush, I was a volunteer in the Speakers Bureau of the Democratic National Committee. Among other responsibilities, I appeared regularly on talk radio and occasionally on TV to promote the Gore/Lieberman ticket. I also was called upon to defend President Clinton, as I had done on TV for the previous year, whenever his name was invoked in an attempt to tarnish Vice President Gore.

At the outset of the campaign, the media discussion shows in which I participated principally centered on matters of policy. Global warming, gay marriage, handgun controls, Arctic oil drilling, social security lock boxes, etc. Back and forth the debate went and the polls remained close. That is, until the presidential debates.

AP

Hillary Clinton

At the debates, Mr. Gore misspoke when he said that he traveled with Mr. James Lee Witt of Federal Emergency Management Agency to visit Texas after the Parker County fires broke out. (He traveled with Mr. Witt to other disaster sites.) Mr. Gore also implied during this same time period that he helped invent the Internet. (He meant only to say that he supported funding for the research that led to its development.)

As small as these errors were, at that moment everything changed. The Bush campaign and its allies systematically started calling Mr. Gore a serial exaggerator at best and, implicitly, a fabricator at worst. The media latched onto it, the label stuck and, thereafter, every word Mr. Gore uttered was scrutinized through the lens of whether he was telling the truth or exaggerating. The cartoonists outfitted him as Pinocchio, and he never could shake the characterization.

I believe that this negative branding, more than the hanging chads, led to his defeat. Four years later, John Kerry fell into the Swift Boat trap, was painted as a liar and a flip-flopper and too lost a campaign he might otherwise have won.

Why is this relevant today? It is clear that how you are branded by your opponent, and whether the media picks up the theme, can be the key to success or failure in a presidential campaign. Frankly, overcoming negative branding may prove an insurmountable election hurdle. (Willie Horton ads and the Michael Dukakis photo in that tank are seared into the DNA of all Democrats).

Hillary Clinton has waged a campaign based, in large measure, on her national security experience. Her so-called "Day One" readiness. Indeed, she says plainly on the campaign trail that "We need a candidate that can go toe-to-toe with John McCain on national security." (Frankly, I think if Democrats join the issue in that way they are fighting on Mr. McCain's home field and going uphill, but that is a discussion for another day.)

Recently the Clinton campaign released a portion Sen. Clinton's White House daily activity logs. These logs provide the first independent means to evaluate her claim that her White House years provided her the relevant national security/commander-in-chief experience to be president.

A preliminary analysis of these logs has begun to reveal Mrs. Clinton's claims of experience to be overstated. If these logs continue to bear out that she is less experienced than she has claimed, she will, at best, be branded as an exaggerator. She then will face an onslaught that will make the Gore and Kerry attacks look like a walk in the park.

On a related point, Mrs. Clinton has been arguing to primary voters that she is more electable than Barack Obama because "she has been vetted fully so there will be no general election surprises." Well, the recently released tax returns appear to undermine this argument as well.

Specifically, these returns demonstrate the former President Clinton made tens of millions of dollars on the speaking circuit and by helping to broker business deals or make introductions around the world. This is his prerogative as a private citizen. What the returns do not tell us, however, is who paid for these speeches; who his clients were/are; whether he can unwind his business relationships (he is being sued by one of his clients for fraud in state court in California); what conflicts of interest or appearances of conflict reside in his seven-year, private-sector career. (Remember the difficulty Geraldine Ferraro's husband created for her candidacy?). A lot more openness and transparency will be required by Bill Clinton before it is known just how vulnerable Hillary Clinton is as a general election candidate.

Still, the Clinton Library has yet to provide the list of its largest donors, or explain how their donations were solicited; as well it is not yet known whether Hillary Clinton played a role in President Clinton's pardon decisions including the 11th-hour pardon of Marc Rich. The Republican National Committee and related advocacy groups will surely allege a coverup if all this is not disclosed before the general election.

Unless all this material is released and vetted fully before the primaries come to an end, Mrs. Clinton is asking Democrats to make a leap of faith that nothing will be revealed in the general election campaign that could prove fatal. From what is available presently, Mrs. Clinton may prove to be the most vulnerable Democratic candidate in the last three election cycles.

It has been said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. There are warning signs that Democrats may be walking down that same path with Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Zeldin is the former independent counsel who investigated the tampering with Bill Clinton's passport. He is a part-time volunteer for the Obama campaign in the primary cycle.

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