Mrs Clinton- A Question Please?

"What knave dares to ask me questions?"


In the past few days, it seems Mrs Clinton has been showing an aversion to taking questions from her audiences in Iowa. Maybe it has something to do with the recent exposures of planted questions from members of the audience that she could knock out of the park. Maybe she is starting to recognize that Iowa voters tend to be educated and more sophisticated than in other locales (That's what the news media has been telling me all my life, anyway.) Maybe she is getting angry at them over polls that show her losing in the state. In her appearances in the past few days, Mrs Clinton gives her spiel then walks away as her theme songs blast out any questions. In another encounter, she turned and walked away when asked about her personal reaction to Benazir Bhutto's death. Could it be that Hillary is walking in the 2004 footsteps of Howard Dean?

If you remember Dean, he was the clear frontrunner until he went to Iowa for the primary. In the time leading up to the caucus, an old videotape surfaced in which Dean complained to a Canadian forum about having to go to Iowa and have some corn farmer tell him how to run the country. Then he told an elderly Iowa gentleman to sit down and shut up when the man asked why the candidates had to be so negative toward each other. What might have worked for the obnoxious Vermont Governor in the northeast corridor did not sit well in Iowa. Dean lost Iowa, then made a fool out of himself with his famous "Scream". Before you knew it, he was national toast.

Could the same thing happen to the hip city girl in Iowa? Is she starting to alienate these salt of the earth midwesterners with her aloofness? Maybe yes, maybe no, but it seems to me that Iowans and the whole country have had 20 years to see this woman's act. They should have been fully aware long before "her highness" ever deigned to set foot in their state.

Even Chelsea Clinton got in on the act. She spurned one effort to ask her some questions with the retort that she didn't do interviews with the press. Problem is the "press interviewer" was 9 years old! Of course, when the Clintons were in the White House, Chelsea was just a child, and the news media left her alone, which was proper. However, Chelsea is now an adult and traveling the campaign trail with Hillary, so guess what? The rules have changed, Chelsea. If you want to push your Mom for President and act like an ass, you're going to be called on it-which is proper.

I can only hope that Mrs Clinton is treated with a succession of "slaps in the face" by primary voters from one state to the next. The woman is in dire need of some humility.