Ken Rudich
Aug 8, 2017 · 2 min read

I saw a video during Hillary’s presidential campaign in which she got confronted by a few BLM activists. At the time, she doled out some sage advice in response to their somewhat pushy and animated presence. To wit: you have to win people’s hearts.

Hillary appeared unable to leverage her own advice during the campaign. The accumulated years of public life in the political arena became a conundrum, because it made her candidacy simultaneously vulnerable and also strong. Whether she was predominantly vulnerable or predominantly strong depended on how one dissected the public life she led; there was, in reality, ample room to move in either direction.

This is not a criticism, but a unique circumstance she faced as a presidential candidate, perhaps unwittingly in retrospect. The nature, difficulty and variety of roles she played during the whole of her public career made her, paradoxically, distinctly indistinct as a presidential candidate — almost amorphous amid the backdrop of her wide-ranging decisions and actions.

Even if each decision had been the right one at the right time (which is humanly impossible in its own right), they collectively come across as operating at cross-purposes. How does one reconcile defending Bill’s questionable behaviors (in “stand by your man” mode) with supporting woman’s rights and breaking glass ceilings as a U.S. President, for instance? And that’s only one of many, many examples.

What was intended to serve a moment at the moment became part of a growing compilation that ultimately forged her larger legacy — distinctly indistinct. She’s accomplished, but in a strangely disassembled sort of way.

The best hope for overcoming this challenge was to win hearts — only Hillary is neither nearly as demonstrative nor cordial a presence as someone in this position really needs to be. She has the air of a facts and figures person, not a people person. Her capacity to charm seems vaguely restricted

In the end, the only cause she came to represent was the cause for cognitive dissonance.

    Ken Rudich

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