2008 Polls National Iowa New Hampshire General Election GOP | Dem GOP | Dem GOP | Dem Head-to-Head

---

January 22, 2007

Will Hillary Overcome the Obstacles?

FOX News Special Report With Brit Hume

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN HILLARY CLINTON (D), NEW YORK: Looking forward to it. It'll be a great contest with a lot of talented people. And I'm very confident I'm in, I'm in to win, and that's what I intend to do.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HUME: Well, there she was in all her glory, over the weekend, saying that and also saying in a video, widely distributed on the Internet, that she was a candidate. She looked very comfortable and calm and pleasant and even like a hostess in the video.

Some thoughts on this candidacy of Hillary Clinton for president from Bill Sammon, senior White House correspondent of the Washington Examiner; Mort Kondracke, executive editor of Roll Call; and Mara Liasson, national political correspondent of National Public Radio -- all are FOX NEWS contributors.

So, Bill, what do you think about this campaign? I noticed Bill Richardson, when he that when he jumped in today, he did a video. Barack Obama did a video. Is that now the new -- I mean, is this the way we're all going to go now? Start with a video and then you get hit from that and that then gets distributed and everybody can look at it and then you make an announcement later?

BILL SAMMON, WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Nobody can ask questions when you released a canned video, so there's that advantage. It's starting to look a little unoriginal, thought, because Barack Obama got a big splash out of it. Hillary clearly recorded hers in reaction to his.

HUME: Do you think?

SAMMON: Well, they said that she recorded at the next day. And clearly he was dominating the news cycle and she choked off the oxygen to him by jumping into the race. We'd still be talking about Obama if she hadn't done this a couple of days after he did.

I think the video looked a little bit -- I mean, she looked fine, but it was a touch of -- it looked a little contrived that she was trying to be more conversational, "let's chat," and I'm not sure she did anything to erase the baggage that is still there for not just Republicans but Democrats, as well.

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: Oh, I thought it was very affective. Now, she's had plenty of baggage, I agree. She's -- you know, a lot of people who say they won't vote for her under any circumstances, but that video showed what you can do with a web announcement. Barack Obama had a perfectly effective one, but it was in a dark -- it looked like the dark corner of his office.

HUME: Yeah, it certainly looked dark on TV...

LIASSON: Yeah, but the point is that Hillary Clinton had a lot of production values and she communicated a warm and engaging persona which is not the image of a lot of the public have of her. So, in that sense, it was a chance for her to show herself in a different light, very relaxed, very womanly, less...

HUME: And Mort, very accessible.

MORT KONDRACKE, ROLL CALL: Yes...

LIASSON: And very accessible, and she's having a live video Web chat, of sorts, tonight -- for three nights, tonight, tomorrow and the next night. And she's going to...

KONDRACKE: (INAUDIBLE)

LIASSON: Of course. Of course. But, she's also going to Ohio on the weekend -- Iowa on the weekend and she'll shake hands and she's doing the same thing in New Hampshire, so she'll be doing some (INAUDIBLE), too.

KONDRACKE: Look, she's got to juggle likability, strength, electability, and ideology in this contest. Now, I thought that this video was an attempt to raise her likability quotient, about which there's been some question. I mean, she's going to start a conversation with "you" and all other Americans about things and that means that she cares what you think and she wants to, you know, develop a dialogue and so on.

So, the problem is to win at general election she's got to convey strength. In this world in which we live, the chances are that unless something miraculous happens, that George Bush is going to leave us with a world in which everything's a mess and we've got to restore our likability in the world without losing our leadership capacity and I want to hear from her and all the other candidates how she proposes to do that...

HUME: OK, well, we hear all that, before we get to the general election, Mort, let's see if we can make some judgments about the primaries. She has clearly, for all the baggage, she clearly had an enormous advantage, $14 million in the bank, everybody in America knows who she is, she's overwhelmingly favored, although not universally, but overwhelmingly favored in the Democratic Party. Can anybody, that you can see out there, stop her?

KONDRACKE: Sure.

HUME: Who?

KONDRACKE: Well...

HUME: Who now looks like -- is Barack Obama really on the way to doing it, in your judgment?

KONDRACKE: Well look, he's going to get, as Fred, I think, said the other day, you know, once you get beyond Iowa and New Hampshire, you have a lot of primaries in which a majority of the Democratic vote may be African- American. Now, he's going get a lot of that vote. And Bill Clinton was going to help her get that vote, but now it's going to be challenged. I mean, on the other hand, she's a big base of women...

SAMMON: I think both Barack and John Edwards are credible threats to Hillary Rodham Clinton, at this stage of the game. She's still the front- runner, but you know, I do not know anybody who hates Barack Obama. I don't know anybody...

(CROSSTALK)

HUME: He is enormously popular. I mean, as a personality, he is certainly enormously appealing.

SAMMON: But, I mean, my point is, that I don't know anybody who hates, you know, Barack or John Edwards or Bill Richardson, but there are people in America who, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say, either hate or, you know -- or strongly disliked Hillary Clinton.

HUME: You know, that's a good question. We talk -- this has been talked about before. Some people associate her baggage with her husband. Did does she have more than he had and is it different?

LIASSON: Well, it's different, of course and some of it's his, but most of it's her very own. And look, in the Democratic primary, I don't think that there are a tremendous number of Hilary haters. What there are, are people who worry about the Hillary haters and if there are too many of them to stop her from winning the White House, then that's going to be something she's going to have to overcome. I think what she's going to try to prove is she is tough and strong, she's withstood all these Republican attacks, therefore, she can withstand them again and beat back all the doubters.

---

Sponsored Links

About Us | Contact | Advertise | Privacy Policy         © RealClearPolitics 2006