It's Not Because She's a Woman

I watched most of the debate the other day between Clinton and Obama. Both of them looked thoroughly tired and worn out by the campaign. It was like watching the 15th round of an epic battle where both fighters can barely reach back and swing. I felt bad for both of them. Their faces both said the same thing: this just might not be worth it. We need to have a more sane election process.

Maybe because she was tired, maybe because she was desperate, Clinton showed her true self for most of the debate the other night. Gone was the pasted on smile. Up went the cadence of her speech patterns. She wasn't sugar coating. She wasn't trying to act dumber than she is. What the public saw was a very smart, very ambitious, steely, determined woman with a mean streak.

I'm sure the public didn't like what they saw. It was an ugly, unpleasant evening. The friction between Clinton and the media questioners was right there out in the open. The press doesn't like her. She doesn't like the press. Clinton was petulant most of the night. My barometer as to whether a candidate won a debate is to ask the question, "Would you want to go out and have a beer with this person?" After the last debate, no one was going to want to have a beer with Clinton. Absolutely no one. Except maybe me.

I like people like Clinton. Smart. Ambitious. Steely. I liked Richard Nixon too for the same reasons. Neither are "likable." I could care less. They know their facts, work hard and aren't shy about being the smartest, most prepared person in the room. And the more I watched the debate last night, the more I realized that Clinton was the closest thing to Richard Nixon we've had in politics in the last 30 years.

Like Nixon, Clinton cannot cut a break with the press. There is just something about her that brings out the worst in a journalist. And at the last debate, it was clear to me that they were just kicking her even when she was down. Tim Russert acted as if Clinton was a vampire and the only way he was finally going to be able to kill her was to drive a wooden stake through her heart. It wasn't journalism going on the other night. It was character assassination.

There has been a lot of talk that the press hates Clinton because she's a woman. But I don't think that's 80 percent of the story. The reason the press hates her is almost entirely for the same reason that they hated Nixon well before Watergate. She doesn't have the kind of personality that plays well before the media. If you're a reporter it's hard work to cover a politician like this, someone who doesn't naturally give good copy. You grow to resent the job. And you end up hating the candidate.

At the end of the debate, I was half hoping that Clinton would throw in the towel. Like Nixon, Clinton is a much maligned candidate simply because the media chemistry isn't right with her. It never will be. I flashed forward in my head to a month from now when Clinton is out of the race and an image entered my head. It was a picture of Richard Nixon walking off an airplane in about 1962 after he lost the election for California's governor. The words he said to the press then will apply to Hillary Clinton in just a short while. Come March, you won't have Hillary Clinton to kick around anymore.