How Clinton Can Resurrect Her Likability [View all]

By Peter D. Hart

With the FBI investigation into her private email server concluded, it is time for the real Hillary Clinton to find her rhythm and her voice. In the history of public-opinion polling, no Democrat has entered the general presidential election with weaker scores on personal popularity, trust or likability than Mrs. Clinton. She has ended up just another policy wonk with a series of different slogans and no central message.

But there is still time for the real Hillary Clinton to emerge and become a strong, popular candidate. To do so, she must return to the basics that have marked her public life and helped her to become the first female to be nominated as the standard-bearer of a major U.S. political party.

Mrs. Clinton’s personal qualities and leadership skills are formidable, but her campaign has somehow managed to hide them... At what stage does the candidate say to her campaign: “We are doing something wrong and need to change”? In my opinion, the trust issue cannot be dealt with as a separate element, but must be part of the larger presentation of her total character.

The problem facing Mrs. Clinton is not to find a new Hillary, but to show the true Hillary. No one questions whether she is a skilled politician. What has been lost in this campaign is the approachable person. Her campaign seems to be totally tactical, reactive, and based on her opponent and the issues of the moment.

Here are three suggestions

• Reveal your compassionate side. In your campaign, you have shown mettle, but you have lost your warmth and charm. Voters want to break through and get to know you. When you meet with a small group of people and talk about their problems or hug a young girl who has been bullied, you connect more personally than any of the campaign’s four-point policy plans ever could.

• Show your leadership skills. Voters have no sense of your special leadership abilities. As secretary of state, you appealed to Americans not because of the miles you traveled, but because of the issues you fought for and the alliances you helped make. Your personal favorability score back then was 59%. The country is ready to end Washington gridlock, and you proved your ability to work across the aisle in the Senate and across the world at the State Department, with friends and foes—but nobody knows this.

• Be bolder and more focused. You began your career standing for principles and positions that weren’t popular, like health-care reform, but they were the right ones and many of them were considered controversial. Yet your presidential campaign seems too finely calibrated to your opponent or to public opinion on issues like the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade pact or the Keystone XL oil pipeline. There are too many words and too many issues, and in the end there is no message. “Hillary for America” and “stronger together” are themes that say nothing.

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http://www.wsj.com/articles/how-clinton-can-resurrect-her-likability-1468278498

Mr. Hart is the founder of Hart Research and part of the polling team for The Wall Street Journal/NBC surveys.