A recent Quinnipiac poll showed 54 percent of registered voters believing that former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is not honest or trustworthy. Despite Clinton beating the entire Republican field, pundits have pounced on the data as a harbinger of doom for the nascent Clinton campaign.
Conservative columnists and panelists argue that this has always been Clinton’s fatal flaw. They are wrong. Former President Bill Clinton proved you can win an election without people trusting you, as he did in 1996 when CNN polling showed him underwater on a similar “honest and trustworthy” question.
Democratic pundits believe Bill Clinton won despite those numbers because he crushed his opponents, Sen. Bob Dole and H. Ross Perot, on the question of “Cares about the needs of people like you.” That may be true, but it would be dangerous to pin Hillary Clinton’s hopes to that plan, as she has never matched her husband on empathy and connecting to voters.
The model for Hillary overcoming the trustworthy question isn’t Bill. It’s Tom. Tom Brady.
An NFL investigation found it “more probable than not” that Brady was somehow involved in deflating footballs prior to the 2015 AFC Championship game. He has been suspended for four games, with appeals pending.
Despite the accusations of lying, cheating and withholding evidence, Brady remains wildly popular in the New England fan base. Hillary Clinton is already an expert at playing that card. Who can forget the “vast right wing conspiracies” that made her fans all the more vocal in her defense?
More importantly, Brady’s talents remain sought after, despite the questions of honesty. In the words of The Daily Show host Jon Stewart, “If you think for a second I wouldn’t have chastised you if you had committed these acts while in my team’s uniform, you would be right.” If the Patriots cut Brady tomorrow, teams would line up to hire him despite the suspension and the conduct. The few columnists and fans who bemoaned the loss of their team’s morality would come around as long Brady was winning.
In sports or politics, Americans tend to care more about winning than honesty and trustworthiness. The same poll that said Bill Clinton failed on those criteria showed that a majority found him “honest and trustworthy enough to be president.” Americans may even prefer quarterbacks, and presidents, who will break the rules; but the victory must be clear, there are limits on which rules may be broken, and both may be judged in retrospect. Americans don’t question a military action on Pakistani soil that succeeded in getting Osama Bin Laden, but wouldn’t tolerate another atrocity like Abu Ghraib that lessened America in the eyes of the world.
Deleted emails and “Clinton Cash” won’t be the last attacks on Hillary Clinton’s honesty. Her path to victory isn’t convincing voters that no rules were broken. Instead, she should convince them she will bend and break rules aggressively, but not recklessly, in the interests of the American people. Like her husband and Tom Brady, she doesn’t need to be a saint – just the kind of sinner who leads our team to victory.
