"Hillary's characterological inhospitability to the bloggerly virtues"

"[David Perlmutter] underemphasizes the extent to which Hillary's character -- specifically her innate and exaggerated caution, calculation, and need for control -- makes her a particularly bad match for the blog age, maybe as bad a match as Nixon or LBJ were for the TV age in 1960," writes Micky Kaus at Slate [via InstaPundit], putting his finger on what the headline calls "Hillary's Secret Challenger":

Perlmutter notes that blogs and blog readers reward risk-taking passion and honesty. That he then actually mulls over the question of whether Clinton herself should blog -- treating her dilemma as the same dilemma faced by any frontrunner, as if there were any hope that her blog would ever be worthwhile -- shows that he doesn't fully appreciate Hillary's characterological inhospitability to the bloggerly virtues.

It isn't just Hillary, of course, but the Democrat party in general, as The Anchoress wrote a couple of months back:

Clearly, they [the Democrats trying to blame Bush instead of long-standing US policy to use military force against Saddam going back to Clinton and beyond] really weren’t thinking about paper trails and public records. No wonder they hate the blogs, no wonder the UN wants to regulate the blogs. No wonder Hillary is herself uncomfortable with the blogs and has said of them: “We are all going to have to rethink how we deal with this, because there are all these competing values … Without any kind of editing function or gatekeeping function, what does it mean to have the right to defend your reputation?”

That's how it is when you're --  as William Safire once famously called Hillary -- a "congenital liar" (or, as he later humorously put it when he came face to face with the old gal as a fellow panelist, a "congenial lawyer").

Fun addendum:  In googling Safire's "congenital liar" quotation, we stumbled upon latter-day misandrist Maureen Dowd's clear-eyed contemporary assessment of the former FIrst Lady, vintage January 1996:

Another New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, wrote a piece published Sunday harshly criticizing Mrs. Clinton for her "secrecy and righteousness."

"Saint Hillary" -- Michael Kelly's 1994 NYT Mag cover story dubbed by Peggy Noonan "the first and still definitive Hillary Clinton take-down" -- blogged here -- comes to mind. As Glenn Reynolds wrote in a spot-on Guardian article way back in October of 2004:

Not all leftwingers in the US are as frankly religious as Hillary Clinton, and many don't even realise that the ideas that they champion have deep religious roots. But even for these people, being leftwing has itself become a sort of religion, with those who disagree viewed as sinister, almost demonic forces, rather than simply as individuals holding different views.

Blogo dilenda est!

Comments

[Teresa]

As far as blogging goes... I don't think there's a single Senator in office who would be able to blog. The thing about the Senate and the reason why they make such abysmal Presidential candidates, is that they are always compromising, always doing a deal... the "Party" of the Senator doesn't even matter. It's like this blob of dough - you poke it and your finger just goes in and in and in, never really getting anywhere in particular. When is the last time you heard a straight answer from any Senator?

Hillary Clinton puts other Senators like Kennedy and Durbin to shame in her ability to manipulate words. But the manipulation is in the illogical persuations she uses. That's much easier to get away with when speaking rather than writing. Bloggers would tear her to shreds in an instant.

I think there are some House of Representative people who could blog and do a good job of it... as long as they aren't "poll" oriented. But being a politician is generally not a blogger friendly occupation - blogging means putting yourself on the line with what you believe... this leads to making certain sets of people angry, something few politicians want to do on a regular basis.

[goomp]

You it right about politics and blogging and Teresa has it right about blogging and politicians.