Paul Fanlund: The ‘detestation’ of Hillary Clinton
PAUL FANLUND | The Capital Times | pfanlund@madison.com
Jill Lepore, a history professor at Harvard, paused in search of words strong enough to convey the contempt for Hillary Clinton she heard around the recent Republican National Convention. A “deep, physical detestation” was what she settled on, and noted that these Republicans winced and shuddered at Clinton’s very mention. (Lepore covered the convention for The New Yorker and commented in a podcast.) Now, if you’re like me, you are already weary of the refrain that Clinton and Donald Trump are the least-liked presidential candidates in the history of polling.
Day after day, the pundits frame the narrative as a negative equivalency, debating whether either candidate can alter their miserable images. And commentators continue to do this even as the campaigns move in opposite directions. Clearly, Trump does not plan to modulate his incendiary tone to attract more women or minorities. Instead, he is doubling down in his stumbling, pitchfork-and-torches-style exhortation aimed at aggrieved white men. As he finishes ridiculing parents of a Muslim American soldier killed in combat, he may start to run out of targets. He even has alienated many in what are typically two rock-solid GOP tribes – billionaires and military leaders.
Clinton, as evidenced by her convention, has chosen another path, emphasizing her decades of work for children and others who are vulnerable. Beyond that, she projects a persona of a serious, experienced problem-solver, someone whose dependability and stability are desperately needed in these dangerous, unpredictable times. Granted, the political terrain is looking better for Clinton, certainly better than a month ago. She has gained momentum and significant polling separation from Trump. But I continue to ponder something that has made me scratch my head for a year or more — why is this accomplished and more-or-less traditional candidate so disliked by so many?
Consider the Wisconsin terrain as a microcosm. Charles Franklin, who oversees the Marquette University Law School Poll, combined results from his June and July polls for me to increase the sample size. An astounding 97 percent of Republicans said they had an unfavorable view of Clinton, as did 65 percent of independents, significantly worse than the 84-percent and 43-percent results for President Obama. Trump’s unfavorable result among Democrats in the state was 93 percent and 65 percent among independents, but then, Trump seems to covet the wrath of his opponents. I’d submit that House Speaker Paul Ryan provides a better apples-to-apples comparison to Clinton as a traditional mainstream politician. In the same Marquette polls, only about 58 percent of Democrats said they had an unfavorable view of the Janesville Republican, while 30 percent of independents did.
If you want to argue that Ryan is legitimately more trustworthy than Clinton, Paul Krugman, the New York Times columnist, offers this: Ryan “has a reputation as a policy wonk that is utterly incomprehensible if you look at the slapdash, dishonest policy documents he actually puts out. But the cult of balance requires that someone on the Republican side be portrayed as a serious, honest fiscal expert, so Ryan gets slotted into that role no matter how much a con man he may be in reality.”
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