Mixed Messages on the Campaign Trail
Jan. 29, 2007 — -- Just as the turning of the leaves marks the start of the fall season, the beginning of the presidential primary season can be marked by the turning of the politicians.
Presidential candidates who have tried to appear centrist suddenly run to the right, or to the left, to win their party's nomination. And as they do they risk being perceived as less than sincere, less than authentic.
To conquer Iowa's anti-war Democrats, Sen. Hillary Clinton arrived in the Midwest Friday armed with escalating criticism of the president and the war.
"This was his decision to go to war, he went with an ill-conceived plan and an incompetently executed strategy, and we should expect him to extricate our country from this before he leaves office," she told a packed audience in Iowa.
The White House today implied Clinton was merely posturing to win her party's nomination, with spokesman Tony Snow saying, "[you can] expect a lot of 'can you top this' rhetoric early on, on the campaign trail."
"Senator Clinton voted to authorize action in Iraq. And Senator Clinton, in many cases, has stood with the president," Snow added.
Definition of 'Authentic'
As Clinton battles Sen. Barack Obama, who opposed the war back in 2002, she needs to appear to anti-war skeptics as authentically outraged and not as the calculating caricature from "Saturday Night Live" as she was recently portrayed by comedian Amy Poehler, telling an interviewer about her vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq that "knowing what we know now, that you could vote against the war and still be elected president, I never would have pretended to support it."
Observes Arthur Sanders, a political science professor at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, "We hear that she comes across as someone who is simply trying to figure out how to say the things that will get her elected, rather than someone who is telling us what she really feels."
"We have a very strange definition of authentic," says Sanders. "It may be that she is a calculating person and so in being calculating she is being authentic. But that's not going to solve her problem."
Republican presidential hopefuls are struggling with a similar issue -- Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is making peace with the conservative Christians he once decried, such as Rev. Jerry Falwell.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney recently shifted from liberal to conservative on social issues such as abortion and told "Nightline" anchor Terry Moran that he has come to his new beliefs honestly.
"There are a number of places where over time and with experience I've adjusted and learned," Romney said.
Former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani may have the exact opposite problem. He is authentically liberal on social issues, and that may hurt him with Republican primary voters.
"I have tremendous admiration for President Bush," Giuliani said. "I don't agree with him on everything. I don't agree with myself on everything."
Authenticity may not be the ultimate factor on Election Day, though.
A University of Miami study published in the Journal of Applied Social Psychology concluded that as much our society likes to think we admire authenticity and standing up for principle, what voters at the end of the day really like is when politicians say things they agree with. Using a hypothetical candidate and the issue of gun control, professors Hillary Hoffman and Charles Carver concluded that "consistency in and of itself did little to help a political candidate … Holding fast to an unpopular position … will gain a politician virtually nothing in the eyes of the public."