{"id":14967,"date":"2008-03-21T12:40:16","date_gmt":"2008-03-21T16:40:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/14967.html"},"modified":"2008-03-21T12:40:16","modified_gmt":"2008-03-21T16:40:16","slug":"the-perceptions-that-feed-an-honesty-gap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/the-perceptions-that-feed-an-honesty-gap\/","title":{"rendered":"The perceptions that feed an ‘honesty gap’"},"content":{"rendered":"

According to the latest Gallup poll<\/a>, Hillary Clinton has a veracity problem.<\/p>\n

Hillary Clinton is rated as “honest and trustworthy” by 44% of Americans, far fewer than say this about John McCain (67%) and Barack Obama (63%).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

More specifically, when respondents were asked about the candidates’ honesty and trustworthiness, McCain did very well (67%-27% in his favor), Obama did nearly as well (63%-29% in his favor), while Clinton fared poorly (44%-53% against her).<\/p>\n

Worse, Gallup offers some sense of trend-lines, which show the numbers going in the wrong direction<\/a>. Way back in 1994, the then-First Lady was perceived as generally honest and trustworthy (56%-36% in her favor). In 2005, then-Sen. Clinton fared about as well (53%-43% in her favor). Now, a majority side against her on the issue, leading Gallup to point to a so-called “honesty gap.”<\/p>\n

To be sure, all the usual caveats apply (it’s only one poll, the election is still far off, etc.), but I can’t quite figure out why Clinton fares so poorly on this question. I know all the textbook attacks on Hillary’s personal qualities and character traits, but since when do people consider her dishonest? What has she lied about?<\/p>\n

Indeed, very little of the campaign thus far has focused on Clinton’s sincerity (or the perception of the lack thereof). Off the top of my head, the usual, conventional knocks on her are that she’ll “do anything to win,” her foreign policy vision is too far to the right, she’s an “agent of the status quo,” she’s “divisive,” and after two terms of a Clinton presidency, Hillary is “part of the past.” They’ve practically become cliches.<\/p>\n

But does anyone go around questioning Hillary Clinton’s veracity?
\n
\nI really can’t think of any obvious whoppers that have captured any attention at all lately. She appears to have exaggerated her foreign policy background a bit, but not that<\/i> much. So what’s up with these numbers?<\/p>\n

It’s probably a stretch, but the only thing I can think of is that the Clinton campaign’s aggressive criticisms of Obama, some of which have been a little sketchy, have driven up her negatives among some Dems, bringing her overall “honest and trustworthy” numbers down.
\nThe latest CBS News poll<\/a> (pdf), for example, asked about whether the Democratic candidates had attacked each other unfairly. The results showed that 23% of Dems nationally felt Clinton had attacked Obama unfairly, while only 1% of Dems said Obama had attacked Clinton unfairly.<\/p>\n

Maybe that’s contributing to the impression, maybe not. All I know is that Clinton has been far<\/i> more honest and trustworthy than McCain’s been in this campaign, and yet, she’s trailing him on this issue by a whopping 23 points.<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, the Obama campaign’s David Plouffe welcomed the numbers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“It will be next to impossible to win a general election if more than half of the people think that you are not trustworthy,” he said, after citing Clinton’s poor, sub-50-percent Gallup rating on honesty and trustworthiness.<\/p>\n

Plouffe cited “a real character gap” and “real issues if she’s going to be our nominee.”<\/p>\n

“Sen. Clinton will have a narrow playing field, in terms of the states she can put in play, and she does have this issue around trustworthiness that will give her no margin for error,” he said. “It’s hard to alleviate that if you continually engage in this misleading of voters.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That, of course, is about what we’d expect Obama’s campaign manager to say, but the point is nevertheless important. Clinton should probably do more to bring up these numbers — though I haven’t the foggiest idea how — if for no other reason because superdelegates may pause before backing a candidate that most Americans don’t trust.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

According to the latest Gallup poll, Hillary Clinton has a veracity problem. Hillary Clinton is rated as “honest and trustworthy” by 44% of Americans, far fewer than say this about John McCain (67%) and Barack Obama (63%). More specifically, when respondents were asked about the candidates’ honesty and trustworthiness, McCain did very well (67%-27% in […]<\/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-14967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14967","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=14967"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14967\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}