The recent issue of the New York Magazine has a great article, which we featured on the site yesterday, about Hillary Clinton's inner circle - what has come over the years to be known as "Hillaryland." The thrust of the piece is that Clinton's closest advisers have created a highly efficient campaign operation that is ultimately based upon loyalty. Michelle Cottle writes:

In the era of the YouTube election, in which every campaign stumble has the potential to become a "macaca moment," the pressure on candidates to keep an iron grip on their image is extreme. Quirky, let-it-all-hang-out romps like John McCain's straight-talking quest for the Republican nomination in 2000 may be charming, but tight-lipped, brutally disciplined efforts like George W. Bush's 2000 and 2004 runs are the stuff of which legends--and presidents--are made.

Among the 2008 field, no one recognizes this reality more than Hillary Clinton, whose every word, deed, and hairdo of the past fifteen years has sparked bitter national debate. Not coincidentally, she has spent this time assembling a network of advisers who share her views on loyalty and discretion. "Hillaryland," as the members of this mostly female clique call themselves, is less a campaign entity than an extended sisterhood defined by its devotion to its namesake. Even so, the group's protective ethos dominates her presidential campaign, where loyalty is demanded, self-promotion frowned upon, and talking out of school, especially to the press, punishable by death. (Just kidding--though staffers point out that the campaign's Arlington, Virginia, headquarters is in a former INS detention facility that still has cells in the basement.) If any campaign has a shot at Total Message Control in '08, it is Team Hillary.

Organizational excellence is probably not a necessary condition for a winning presidential campaign. I can imagine some circumstances in which a poorly organized candidate still wins the presidency. Nevertheless, it is pretty darned close. And there is no doubt that Clinton's organization is excellent. Cottle raises comparisons to Bush-Cheney '00 and '04. I think these are apt. They are also not coincidental. Strong presidential organizations seem to me to be highly correlated to the personal discipline of the candidate himself (or herself). Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush are two of the most disciplined campaigners ever.

This article comes as no surprise to me. Probably not to you, either. Generally speaking, the press is much more inclined to analyze Clinton from a tactical point of view. Now, of course, they do this for every candidate. Many decisions that each candidate makes are viewed through the framework of electoral maneuvering. "Why did he say this?" asks the moderator. "Because it will help him with this constituency," answers the panelist.

However, I have had a very strong impression over the years that - even though this happens for all candidates - there is an emphasis on the tactical when it comes to analyzing Hillary Clinton. There are, undoubtedly, a lot of reasons that explain this. I think that some of it is explained by the fact that she does not convey a naturalness on the stump, and that this heightens pundits' awareness of the artifice of the campaign.

But most of it I think is due to the fact that we all know Hillary Clinton pretty well. The right has villainized her over the years - but the fact of the matter is that she's really no different than any politician. She's no more cloying, no more crafty, no more tactical (though she may be better at tactics than other pols). She's a left-leaning politician. No more, no less. The real difference is that we know her so well that - unlike most other politicians - we see her as a politician. It's been 15 years since that famous 60 Minutes interview. That's a long relationship. When you've been with somebody for 15 years, it becomes really hard to be surprised. You know all the tricks and all the secrets. Any politician who has been widely known for 15 years is one that the public has probably developed a good read on.

The Clinton candidacy approaches, I think, the center of a very complex and centuries-long relationship that the American public has had with its politicians. The public is generally skeptical of politicians. They see them as crafty, cloying, doing whatever it takes to win, and so on. This is a necessary consequence of representative democracy - which has to find a way to overcome what rational choice theorists call the principal-agent problem. How does a principal, in this case the electorate, get the agent, in this case the elected official, to do what the principal wishes? Well, psychologically speaking, the principal has to be suspicious of the agent. And, over the years, the American public has generally come to understand that, at least at the margins and sometimes altogether, their elected agents don't do the business of the principal, but rather their own business. That's not to say that all politicians are crooks - but it is to say that it is inevitable that politicians inject, in some way, private concerns into a public office. It does not have to be something evil like "pay to play" - it could be something as simple and common as pandering for votes. Even the act of concern for your own reelection is a private concern that non-politicians can easily find alienating. So, Americans are rightly skeptical of all politicians. They have a good read on them as a type of person.

But, it is not always the case that individual politicians are identified in this light - even though they could be. For instance, the right and left lionize their own sets of politicians in ways that obscure the fact that they were politicians who did what all politicians do (and what we non-politicians do not like). That is a sign that there can be a disconnection between our abstract knowledge of politicians as a class and some of the individuals within that class.

This matters a great deal in a presidential election. I think most voters know that any presidential candidate is a politician. In other words, we can connect the dots and logically deduce via an Aristotelian syllogism that any presidential candidate is crafty, etc. "All politicians are looking out for themselves / John Smith is a politician / Therefore, John Smith is looking out for himself." However, just because we can know that the candidate is a politician does not mean that we know the candidate as a politician. There is a difference - one that the ever-burgeoning labor pool of professional campaign advisers is there to exploit.

How else is it that every member of Congress runs against every other member of Congress? "They're all bums...but me!" That line works very well. Why? It is not for logical reasons. Aristotle's methodology is sound. It is for psychological reasons - that is, the syllogism does not always impress itself onto our psyches. That is the only way we can carve out ad hoc exceptions to what we know is a general rule about politicians. It is not logic that induces us to see a particular politician as something other than a politician; it is emotion.

And, because the force of this ad hoc exception is emotion, not logic - it can dissipate. Usually, all it takes is time. Sooner or later, the public will catch on just how "political" the politician is. And so, the longer a politician is in the public eye, the more difficult is it for he or she to sustain the exception. In other words, he stops being seen as "our great leader who is looking out for us," and instead becomes, "just another pol." This is one reason why I think presidents have such trouble in their second terms. We're all on to their shticks by year six or seven. We've known them long enough that we see them as they are.

This is a potential weakness for Hillary Clinton. We have known her for so long that we now know her as a politician. There is no candidate in the race who has been under the kind of public scrutiny that Hillary Clinton has been under. In point of fact, only Richard Nixon, Franklin Roosevelt, and Teddy Roosevelt have received such sustained and intense national attention in the last 100 years. The public knows all about Mrs. Clinton - and we know her to be a politician. There is no emotionally based illusion with her - as there is for most victorious presidential candidates.

So, knowing this, can we still vote for her?

I don't know.

On the one hand, I could see the answer being no. We know that both Clinton and her opponent are politicians. But we know only Clinton as a politician. The other candidate manages to create the impression that he is the hope of the next generation and so on. And so, there is an illogical, psychological pull toward her opponent.

On the other hand, I could see the answer being yes. We know that Clinton and her opponent are both politicians. And, while we know only Clinton as a politician, we come to appreciate her honesty. At least Clinton is clear about being a politician, we think. With Clinton, we know exactly what we shall get. There are no surprises. Ironically enough, she's the honest one.

I do not know how to arbitrate between these scenarios. I do know that anybody who gives you an answer to that question is selling you a cat in a sack. Knowledge only comes from one source - trial and error. And the fact of the matter is that, on a question like this, there has never been a trial. We have never had a candidate like Hillary Clinton run for the presidency - not in the media age in which the public is placed in intimate contact with politicians and can come to learn all kinds of messy details about them.

So, we'll just have to wait and see.