Still Not Ready for Her Closeup

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Hillary Clinton as Norma Desmond in 2008, portrayed by actress Lisa Donovan (aka Lisa Nova) as part of the left’s goal, as Keith Olberman suggested back in May of that year on MSNBC, to find “Somebody who can take her into a room and only he comes out.” That was a project in which the left invested a considerable amount of effort in both a coordinated and freelanced fashion right from the very beginning of the 2008 presidential cycle, and which is proving remarkably useful yet again.

As we saw earlier this week, Hillary’s still not ready for close-up, despite having six years to analyze what went wrong. But then, sometimes there’s no amount of self-improvement that can fix a badly flawed retail politician, no matter how badly she wants the job. The Sunset Boulevard analogy works here as well; had Hillary thought out her performance on Wednesday more carefully — and adopted the cornpone “awe shucks, y’all, whoops!” style that her husband so often employed in the 1990s, she might have either gotten away with it, or at least bought herself some time with a media that’s just dying to cut her some slack. Instead, as Ed Morrissey wrote today at Hot Air, “Gallup data shows Hillary favorability [ratings] plummeting”:

Clinton could have defused the issue, or at least mitigated it somewhat, by offering a self-deprecating apology for having imposed standards on others that she didn’t follow for herself, and a pledge to allow an independent authority to vet her e-mail system. Instead, Clinton offered a haughty and imperious sneer to legitimate questions about her actions as a public figure, along with a message that might be most politely translated as pound sand.

At least for the moment, though, the Clinton playbook from the 1990s isn’t working. Her performance in the presser has been widely panned in the media, even with the attack dogs baying.  The New York Daily News headline read “YOU’VE GOT FAIL,” while The New York Post’s read “DELETER OF THE FREE WORLD.” USA Today declared itself “troubled” over Clinton’s “penchant for secrecy.” The Washington Post quipped, “The circus is back in town.”

It’s not the circus. It’s a pretender to American royalty, demanding her coronation, and this is exactly what we can expect if Democrats are foolish enough to nominate her in 2016.

Norma Desmond meets Richard Nixon in a Mao-inspired pantsuit.

(By the way, I would suggest those on the right start archiving this stuff ASAP via Download Helper and similar applets, so that the left’s memory hole isn’t permanent. QED.)

Update: Perhaps Hillary’s pondering the fiery ending to Kiss Me Deadly right now:

<ding dong> “Hello?” “Hi Reverend Sharpton, it’s me Hillary.” “What’s up?” “Can I borrow a cup of arson? I need to get rid of some stuff.”

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahNRO) March 13, 2015

More: Glenn Hillary is “badass” Thrush swings into action to defend Norma:

This headline… RT @politico: Clinton’s email flap reinforced all that she dislikes about running for president: http://t.co/6g8tjyzwC0

— Logan Act Scholar (@JohnEkdahl) March 14, 2015