Can Hillary Clinton Get Along With the Press?

Last week, I was speaking with a veteran Republican strategist for a likely presidential candidate about what factors would shape the 2016 race that weren’t already being obsessed over by the press. He replied, with grim satisfaction, that Hillary Clinton would have to endure more hostile press coverage than Barack Obama did and that this would redound to the GOP’s benefit. For this strategist, as for many Republicans, it has long been an article of deep, almost cult-like faith that Obama’s electoral success owed in no small part to the media’s fawning coverage of his campaigns—and that this supposed bias will not be extended to Clinton.

Evidently, Clinton agrees. In a blockbuster piece in Monday’s Politico, Mike Allen reports that a major component of Clinton’s soon-to-emerge presidential campaign is a new approach to dealing with the press, which “Hillaryland,” radiating the conviction of its principal, has generally abhorred and treated with hostile disdain. It seems those feelings haven’t changed. “Advisers know that Clinton doesn’t like or trust the press,” Allen reports. But he quotes one of them conceding that open hostility toward the press hasn’t been a successful strategy and that Clinton is ready to try something different. “You do see what works, and address what works the next time around,” the adviser tells Allen. “The default isn’t toward the pit-bull mentality.” The campaign is apparently even searching for someone who could play the role of “good cop.”