{"id":13776,"date":"2007-12-01T11:25:12","date_gmt":"2007-12-01T16:25:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/13776.html"},"modified":"2007-12-01T11:25:12","modified_gmt":"2007-12-01T16:25:12","slug":"the-winners-and-losers-of-a-hostage-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-winners-and-losers-of-a-hostage-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"The ‘winners and losers’ of a hostage crisis?"},"content":{"rendered":"

With the presidential campaign in full swing, we’re in a heightened political environment. Everything is perceived as having political implications. Political observers are viewing every event through political lenses. I get that.<\/p>\n

But it’s hopefully not unreasonable to wonder if there are still any limits. At 6:38pm eastern, just minutes after Leeland “Lee” Eisenberg was taken into custody after holding hostages at a Clinton campaign office in New Hampshire, Slate published what it described as “the postgame analysis of who wins and who loses<\/a>” as a result of the stand-off.<\/p>\n

Slate declared Hillary Clinton, New Hampshire, Rudy Giuliani, and Bill Richardson the “winners” of yesterday’s hostage story (Richardson because he was the first to issue a public statement of support for Clinton, making him, as Slate put it, “a VP lock.”) Second Amendment advocates, the Secret Service, and Mike Huckabee were deemed the “losers” (Huckabee was apparently campaigning in New Hampshire, but reporters were too busy with a hostage crisis to care).<\/p>\n

At the risk of sounding like a prude, a hostage situation is not like a debate or routine campaign event. A mentally disturbed man claimed to have a bomb and took hostages. Almost immediately after he surrendered, the human<\/i> reaction is to be thankful that no one was hurt — not to publish “the postgame analysis of who wins and who loses.”<\/p>\n

TNR’s Michael Crowley waited a full half-hour before publishing his own political assessment<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This was a big bummer for the Hillary campaign. Her planned message of the day–that Obama’s new health care ad is dishonest–was crushed. She had to cancel her speech to the DNC, where at least one rival shone. And she closed all of her Iowa campaign offices, which is a pretty painful move so close to caucus day.<\/p>\n

Stretching the analysis a bit here (hey, it’s a Friday evening), I wonder if it also subtly reinforces the sense that Hillary somehow provokes crazy, extreme reactions among people in a way the likes of Obama and Edwards do not — which goes to the larger questions of electability and governing ability.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Seriously?
\n
\nA disturbed man holds an office hostage with a fake bomb and this speaks to Hillary Clinton’s polarizing reputation? That’s not particularly persuasive — crazy people do crazy things for crazy reasons.<\/p>\n

The AP, meanwhile, ran a very odd analysis piece<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When the hostages had been released and their alleged captor arrested, a regal-looking Hillary Rodham Clinton strolled out of her Washington home, the picture of calm in the face of crisis.<\/p>\n

The image, broadcast just as the network news began, conveyed the message a thousand town hall meetings and campaign commercials strive for — namely, that the Democratic presidential contender can face disorder in a most orderly manner.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Look, thankfully, Clinton wasn’t actually in any danger yesterday, and she did all the right things by canceling events and traveling to New Hampshire to visit with staffers and their families.<\/p>\n

But “the picture of calm in the face of crisis”? Isn’t this overdoing it a bit?<\/p>\n

“It affected me not only because they were my staff members and volunteers, but as a mother, it was just a horrible sense of bewilderment, confusion, outrage, frustration, anger, everything at the same time,” Clinton said.<\/p>\n

It was a thawing moment for a stoic figure who once snapped that she opted for professional life instead of staying home to bake cookies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m at a loss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With the presidential campaign in full swing, we’re in a heightened political environment. Everything is perceived as having political implications. Political observers are viewing every event through political lenses. I get that. But it’s hopefully not unreasonable to wonder if there are still any limits. At 6:38pm eastern, just minutes after Leeland “Lee” Eisenberg was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}