Opinion: Clinton suddenly loves the press
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CORALVILLE, Iowa -- Who says newspapers are dead?
Hillary Clinton can’t stop talking about her endorsement Sunday by the Des Moines Register.
Crisscrossing Iowa in a five-day helicopter tour (‘Hill-a-Copter,’’ as the campaign calls it) she is repeatedly reminding folks that Iowa’s largest paper named her as its choice in the Democratic presidential race (on the Republican side, they picked John McCain).
Monday night, as Clinton wrapped up hours of campaigning with a rally in Coralville (a burg near Iowa City, home of the University of Iowa), she said of the hoops the Register’s editors had her jump through as they mulled the endorsement: ‘I have never been through a process more grueling.’
This from a person who testified before Ken Starr’s grand jury!
Clinton aides privately concede the endorsement was a welcome bit of good news ...
after weeks of the other kind (a flap over planted questions, husbands and campaign officials who veer off message, declining poll numbers, etc). No one seemed happier than the candidate herself, who quickly worked references to the endorsement into her stump speech.
‘They really put us through our paces,’’ she said at a livestock auction house in Dunlap on Sunday. ‘I think I was interviewed maybe four times. They asked really hard questions. Every time I left I said, ‘I’m sure not going to get that.’ ‘’
But she did. And the Clinton campaign wasted no time advertising it.
On Monday, the campaign released a 30-second ad touting the paper’s decision and quoting directly from it: ‘Her readiness to lead sets her apart.’’
The access the Register’s editors got to Clinton set them apart. During most of her almost year-long campaign, face time with Clinton for reporters has been at a premium, as the Washington Post’s Howard Kurtz recently delineated.
Just how important was the newspaper nod to the Clinton campaign?
On Monday, as she visited her campaign headquarters in Des Moines to thank staff members for their efforts, there was tacked to a wall a sign that read: ‘Action Items.’’ The top one read: ‘Winning the Des Moines Register Endorsement.’’
Next to it was a box. It was checked.
-- Peter Nicholas