Hillary Abuses the Press, and Gets Good Press... Following the Bush Example?

Hillary Rodham Butterfield
The New Republic's Michael Crowley reports on Hillary Clinton's media strategy. It would be an understatement to call it heavy-handed; is there such a word as "obese-handed"?

Reporters who have covered the hyper-vigilant campaign say that no detail or editorial spin is too minor to draw a rebuke. Even seasoned political journalists describe reporting on Hillary as a torturous experience. Though few dare offer specifics for the record--"They're too smart," one furtively confides. "They'll figure out who I am"--privately, they recount excruciating battles to secure basic facts. Innocent queries are met with deep suspicion. Only surgically precise questioning yields relevant answers.

Hillary's aides don't hesitate to use access as a blunt instrument, as when they killed off a negative GQ story on the campaign by threatening to stop cooperating with a separate Bill Clinton story the magazine had in the works. Reporters' jabs and errors are long remembered, and no hour is too odd for an angry phone call. Clinton aides are especially swift to bypass reporters and complain to top editors. "They're frightening!" says one reporter who has covered Clinton. "They don't see [reporting] as a healthy part of the process. They view this as a ruthless kill-or-be-killed game."

Despite all the grumbling, however, the press has showered Hillary with strikingly positive coverage.

Wow, a paradox! Seems like just the other day we were reading that more people are in prison, despite the declining crime rate!

Don't worry, though, it turns out that the Clintons' thuggishness is all President Bush's fault: "The Clinton machine, say reporters and pro-Hillary Democrats, is emulating nothing less than the model of the Bush White House, which has treated the press with thinly veiled contempt and minimal cooperation."

Yeah, right. Mrs. Clinton must've emulated the Bush approach because it has been so successful in spurring positive coverage.