OPINION:
I was reading Peggy Noonan’s book about Ronald Reagan’s administration, “What I Saw at the Revolution,” when one of her passages struck me.
“All presidents are monsters,” she wrote. “We make them that way. They’re all king babies after a while — too many bells rung and answered, too many aides laughing too heartily at the mild joke. … But all this protection, all this attention, all this being served and bowed to — it would twist the healthiest nature and bring out whatever little devils lurk within.”
I immediately thought of Hillary Clinton.
Mr. Reagan only served eight years in the White House, but Mrs. Clinton has led that sort of protected and privileged life since 1992. She must be so out of touch with the lives of everyday Americans — how can she even understand? How can she even connect? How could she even know what the public needs, feels, and wants from her presidency?
We see some of this disconnectedness in several of her emails from her time as secretary of state.
She had problems with a fax machine and sending emails on her computer — so much so she may have released classified information and violated internal State Department protocol. She didn’t understand what shorthand “FUBAR” stood for and asked an aide to explain (look it up, if you don’t know).
Most everyone within her inner circle bestowed lavish praise on her, daily. She was forwarded Gallup polls ranking her as the “most admired” woman for the ninth year in a row, and was told she was the “best friend and the best person I have met in my long life,” by Washington lawyer Lanny Davis.
Advertisement guru Roy Spence concluded in one of his emails: “So I say to a beloved and dear love one-that be you-I love you. I respect you. I miss you. I cherish every moment of our remarkable journey together.”
If enough people tell you, you start believing.
Other emails depict how out of touch Mrs. Clinton was with the basics in life.
She had to ask a top aide when two television shows, “The Good Wife,” and “Parks and Recreation” aired, and if her personal chef bills her monthly for the food he buys and prepares for her (let alone knowing how much a gallon of milk cost, what the grocery bill was, or how to prepare her own meals).
On the campaign trail this year, Mrs. Clinton was confused by what it meant to “go viral” when approached by a voter.
The New York Times reported:
When a voter approached her at a polling station at Parker Varney School in Manchester, N.H., on Tuesday to ask for a picture, he explained that his friend had taken a selfie with the former first lady on Monday and he was jealous because the shot “went viral.”
“You went viral? Mrs. Clinton said to the man’s friend. ’That sounds like some kind of disease.”
Not to mention the tough time she had with a New York subway turnstile.
And in a Newsweek profile released this month of her closest aide Huma Abedin, it revealed Ms. Abedin is so devoted to her boss she almost cried when she learned Mrs. Clinton had to carry her own bag up a flight of stairs.
The source also told Newsweek Mrs. Clinton, multiple times, just snapped her fingers and said “gum,” to which Ms. Abedin quickly went to fetch some for her.
Yes, some of these examples may be petty. But in aggregate they depict a certain lifestyle that is foreign to many people — myself included. When was the last time Mrs. Clinton went to a grocery store, filled her car up with gas or balanced her own checkbook?
Mrs. Noonan noted that presidents become monsters — that there’s a slow evolution towards this behavior because of the exceptional way they are treated in the White House. Mrs. Clinton has been treated like this for more than two decades.
There will be no slow evolution for her — she’s already there. No wonder why she’s having a hard time connecting to voters. She has nothing in common with them.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.