Unlikeable by Edward Klein

Author:Edward Klein
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781621574378
Publisher: Regnery Publishing
Published: 2015-08-24T16:00:00+00:00

“To be really good at [politics] you’ve gotta like people,” Bill Clinton said. “You’ve gotta like policy. And you’ve gotta like politics. You’ve gotta have a pain threshold. You have to understand there’s a reason this is a contact sport.”

Hillary wasn’t good at politics because (1) she didn’t like people, and (2) a lot of people—nearly half the voting-age population of America—didn’t like her.

Her unlikeability manifested itself in several ways.

At the height of her book tour for Hard Choices, the editors of People put Hillary on the cover of their magazine. They expected to sell a million copies or more of the magazine; instead, the Hillary cover turned out to be People’s worst-selling issue of 2014.

Simon & Schuster paid Hillary a $14 million advance for Hard Choices. According to book industry sources, one way for the publisher to avoid taking a write-off, or “a bath,” would have been for it to sell 2,700,000 hardcover copies over two years. Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 80 percent of hardcover sales, reported that Hard Choices sold fewer than three hundred thousand copies. What’s more, her memoir was knocked off its short-lived perch atop the New York Times bestseller list by my book Blood Feud, which compounded her humiliation.

A WMUR Granite State poll from the University of New Hampshire, which was conducted a year before that state’s primary contest, showed that Hillary had started losing ground the moment she announced her candidacy; she trailed three of her potential Republican challengers—Jeb Bush, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio. Another University of New Hampshire poll revealed that just three in ten voters thought Hillary was the most likeable of the potential Democratic candidates.

She gave the other seven voters ample reason to find her unlikeable.

Her maladroit press conference at the United Nations, in which she defended her use of private e-mails, didn’t win her any converts. The consensus of opinion was that she came across as sanctimonious and hypocritical—not exactly attributes designed to win the hearts and minds of voters.

That press conference, reported New York magazine, “served to remind [people] of something many had forgotten: what an abominable candidate she can be.”

Many political consultants to whom the author spoke agreed with that judgment. They pointed out that Hillary’s two electoral victories—for a U.S. Senate seat from New York in 2000 and 2006—were earned in a solid blue state against weak and underfunded opponents, Rick Lazio and John Spencer. When she had some real competition—from Obama in 2008—she lost.

The conservative political commentator Pat Buchanan opined that, unlike John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, Hillary was not a natural “political athlete.”

“She’s like Pete Rose, who has to grind out every hit,” said Buchanan.

Hillary was prone to unforced errors, as she proved with her famous whoppers.

On Benghazi: “What difference at this point does it make?”

On her sky-high speaking fees: “We came out of the White House not only dead broke but in debt.”

On whether Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl deserted or was captured by the Taliban: “It doesn’t matter.”

On job growth: “Don’t let anybody tell you that it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.

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