We all remember, far too well, the relatively irrelevant moment, the day before the New Hampshire primary, when Hillary Clinton got a little choked up on the campaign trail. For reasons that I’ve never fully understood, this sparked something of a media frenzy, and pundits credit the “emotional moment” with propelling Clinton to a surprise victory. (It seems more likely to me that the media’s reaction<\/i> to the story did more to help her campaign than the emotion itself, but that’s another story.)<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, that was nearly a month ago. Fortunately, the pundits stopped talking about it, the video of the moment was taken out of heavy rotation, and the political world moved on. Phew.<\/p>\n
Alas, the story is about to make a comeback<\/a>.<\/p>\n Sen. Hillary Clinton teared up this morning at an event at the Yale Child Study Center, where she worked while in law school in the early 1970s.<\/p>\n Penn Rhodeen, who was introducing Clinton, began to choke up, leading Clinton’s eyes to fill with tears, which she wiped out of her left eye. At the time, Rhodeen was saying how proud he was that sheepskin-coat, bell-bottom-wearing young woman he met in 1972 was now running for president.<\/p>\n “Well, I said I would not tear up; already we’re not exactly on the path,” Clinton said with emotion after the introduction.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The papers are picking up on this<\/a>; I’ve heard that it’s on CNN; and apparently Drudge is already all over the story<\/a>.<\/p>\n This is not at all an encouraging development.
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\nNow, I know what the cynics are going to say. Clinton teared-up the day before the New Hampshire primary, and now she’s teared-up the day before Super Tuesday. Clinton’s critics will surely argue that this shows signs of a pattern — using emotion as some kind of calculated political tool.<\/p>\n