Did you watch Baba Wawa’s interview of the Senator/Former First Lady? What did you think? To make is easy and less likely to result in a pointless debate, I will try to provide a set of options, but feel free to add comments as appropriate.
I am a fan of hers and what she had to say reinforced that.
I am not necessarily a fan of hers, but found her to come across as someone trying to tell the truth and reasonable.
I am neither fan nor foe, but think she is nuts for saying with Bill.
I am neither fan nor foe, but find the whole “sharing of personal issues” thing smacks of publicity.
I consider myself against the Clintons, but found what she had to say as reasonable.
I don’t like Hillary and this confirmed why.
I found myself somewhere with 2 and 4 - not necessarily a fan, and wary of the publicity/media machine aspect of all this, but thought she came across as reasonable and forthright when she did answer questions.
Didn’t get the chance to watch, but if it’s not a hijack, I’ll say this: of course #4 is true. That’s why people agree to do these interviews in the first place.
And I wish people would stop saying #3. Talk about gossip. Kinda hard to criticize people for talking about their personal lives while being more interested in her husband’s affair than her accomplishments (or lack thereof) as a Senator.
I only saw the last half, and thought she did rather well. It was refreshing to see a politician able to speak intelligently and extemporaneously, and to actually answer the questions put to her. How rehearsed it was and how truthful her answers were are another matter . . . But I would trust her in the White House as much as anyone who will be running next time around.
She’s always a class act. And not a person who can be flustered or trapped or made to blurt anything she’ll regret. A handy skill most of Washinton would give a lung for.
I like and respect the woman, but the parts of the interview I saw (from around 0:15 to 0:35) seemed largely like canned, PR-approved fluff stuff. Very “safe,” if you catch my drift.
I wanted to see Babs ask Hillary about the “vast right-wing conspiracy” and for Hillary to name names, just to see her tear them a new one on national TV, but alas, that was not to be.
I only saw bits and pieces of the interview, snippets re-broadcast on other shows.
My sense is, the people who worship her will love these interviews, and the people who loathe her will find fresh ammunition for loathing her. But neither group is the target audience for interviews like this.
Who IS the target audience? Crucial swing voters: suburban white females, especially homemakers. THEY’RE the kind of people who watch Barbara Walters and Katie Couric’s religiously. And THEY"RE the ones who
Are liable to buy a weepy, confessional book
Will have the most to say about who gets elected President in 2008.
Haven’t quite decided how they feel about Hillary.
Those women generally didn’t like Hillary in 1988 (she made catty jokes about baking cookies, she came across as icy and cerebral). But later, after news of Bill’s affair with Monica Lewinsky came out, they began to embrace Hillary, because a poor, little, ill-treated wifey tugged at their heartstrings.
So, it doesn’t matter at all whether Hillary haters hated her performance, and it doesn’t really matter what Hillary fans thought. What matters is, what did suburban Moms think of the performance? THAT’S going to determine whether she sells a lot of books, and whether she wins the Democratic nomination in 2008.
And by THAT measure… I’d say she did very well indeed. She didn’t say anything particulary memorable or intelligent, but she DID come across as sympathetic, and THAT’S what she really needed to do.