SCOOBY AND THE LYING SWINE

On her way to Iowa in a van she called "Scooby Doo," Hillary Clinton stopped for lunch at a Chipotle restaurant in Toledo.

It was "historic," said Newsweek. She carried her own tray, gushed the New York Times. "We’ve never seen her eat a burrito before!" marveled Mark Halperin of Bloomberg News.

Politico wrote a story about "the everyday people who made Hillary Clinton’s burrito." The subtext, I gather, was how thrilling that must have been for the peasants.

I hope they were thrilled, because Hillary didn’t leave a tip.

Earlier that day, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would sell anti-aircraft missiles to Iran. Had there been a real journalist in the gaggle at Chipotle, Ms. Clinton might have been asked what this portends for her much ballyhooed "reset" of relations with Russia. Russian experts Graham Allison and Dmitri Simes think Russia and America are "stumbling toward war."

To avoid such questions, Hillary announced her candidacy in a tweet, a news release, and a video rather than in the customary news conference.

"She fought children and families her whole career," the news release said. I think that’s true, but it isn’t what Team Clinton meant to say. Such glitches suggest a campaign not ready for prime time, said psephologist Sean Trende.

Hillary spoke for just 37 seconds in her 8 ½ minute video, said nothing about any issue, noted MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. The video is "relentlessly, insultingly vapid," said liberal Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus.

NBC News Political Director Chuck Todd liked the video because "it had every part of the Democratic coalition represented." But what made Hillary’s campaign rollout an "A" was the "spontaneity" of her road trip, he said.

The "listening tour" – right down to the name of her van – is a reprise of what Ms. Clinton did when she ran for the Senate in 2000.

Every event in Iowa – where Hillary met mostly with small, pre-screened groups – was staged and scripted. In the first, three "ordinary Iowans" she chatted with in a café were Democrat campaign operatives driven there by her staff.

Democrat leaders in Council Bluffs had their cell phones and cameras confiscated before their meeting with Ms. Clinton.

Many students at Kirkwood Community College were locked down in their classrooms while Hillary met with a pre-selected 6, which ensured no unvetted student would ask her an unscripted question.

"We need to fix our dysfunctional political system and get unaccountable money out of it once and for all," Ms. Clinton said.

But not until she’s raised $2.5 billion for her campaign. To get that "obscene" amount, you have to do lots of favors for crony capitalists, so some wonder if Hillary’s populist rhetoric reflects a genuine change of heart. We know she doesn’t mean it, say her friends on Wall Street.

Hillary is campaigning exactly the way an unlikeable candidate with stale, unpopular ideas, a record devoid of accomplishment, and a closet full of scandals should. Because so many in the media are shameless sycophants, she thinks she’s getting away with it.

But when a "top staffer" on Hillary’s team tells Politico the highlight of her campaign kickoff was an event that distracted attention from it, she isn’t.

Now that Ms. Clinton is a declared candidate, wherever she goes, a huge gaggle of reporters tags along. Because they had so little of substance to report, more Americans than otherwise would have learned she didn’t leave a tip at Chipotle, fibbed about her grandparents, her van parked in a handicapped spot.

That’s hurt her more than tough questions would have, said Fiscal Times columnist Liz Peek.

The spectacle of the media horde chasing madly after her van was so humiliating for journalists even Chuck Todd criticized it. Hillary "swung and missed" on her campaign launch, he says now.

Mr. Todd had been razzed mercilessly on Twitter for calling Hillary’s van trip "spontaneous." Perhaps journalists who lack the integrity to do their jobs will do them to keep from being laughed at.

But is that the way to bet?  A journalist with integrity is so rare a species today that’s it’s on the verge of extinction.  The best bet is that they’ll keep right on being the Lying Swine.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

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