From the mouth of the enemy (AP);
Analysis: Clinton calm in hostage crisis
When the hostages had been released and their alleged captor arrested, a regal-looking Hillary Rodham Clinton strolled out of her Washington home, the picture of calm in the face of crisis.
Easy to be poised and calm, when you were hundreds of miles away from the incident. I mean, c’mon, it’s not like she was office where it nutbar was threatening the lives of people Hillary has probably only met in pasing, if at all.
The image, broadcast just as the network news began, conveyed the message a thousand town hall meetings and campaign commercials strive for — namely, that the Democratic presidential contender can face disorder in a most orderly manner.
“I am very grateful that this difficult day has ended so well,” she declared as she stood alone at the microphone….
It was a vintage example of a candidate taking a negative and turning it into a positive. And coming just six weeks before the presidential voting begins, the timing could hardly have been more beneficial to someone hoping to stave off a loss in the Iowa caucuses and secure a win in the New Hampshire primary.
Okay, that last line is about the only thing is this whole puff piece that could even remotely be considered “objective”…
Aides said Clinton was home Friday afternoon, getting ready to deliver a partisan speech in Virginia to the Democratic National Committee, when she was told three workers in her Rochester, N.H., headquarters had been taken hostage by a man claiming to have a bomb….
The aides said Clinton immediately canceled her trip and began working the phones. She later told reporters she had New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch, a fellow Democrat, on the phone in eight minutes.
Over the ensuing five hours, as a state trooper negotiated with the suspect and hostages were released one-by-one, Clinton continued to call up and down the law enforcement food chain, from local to county to state to federal officials.
“I knew I was bugging a lot of these people, it felt like on a minute-by-minute basis, trying to make sure that I knew everything that was going on so I was in a position to tell the families, to tell my campaign and to be available to do anything that they asked of me,” the New York senator said.
THAT is how she is “Calm in the face of a crisis”? By pertering the first responders, who were just a tad busy trying to save lives? But then she quickly recovers:
“They were the professionals, they were in charge of this situation, whatever they asked me or my campaign to do is what we would do,” Clinton said.
But the reporter still has to give the impression that Hillary was in control:
Along with taking charge while giving the professionals free rein, Clinton offered up a third dimension to her crisis character: humanity. She said she felt “grave concern” when she first heard the news of the hostage-taking.
“It affected me not only because they were my staff members and volunteers, but as a mother, it was just a horrible sense of bewilderment, confusion, outrage, frustration, anger, everything at the same time,” Clinton said.
Ah yes, play the mommy card.
It was a thawing moment for a stoic figure who once snapped that she opted for professional life instead of staying home to bake cookies…
You can just imagine the reporter casting a longing gaze at a freeze frame of Hillary from the news conference as he writes the piece.
And them he implies that Hillary has “schooled” us:
Class dismissed.
It’s too bad that the “class” wasn’t on journalistic ethics and objectivity.
A quick search of “Glen Johnson AP” beings up a number of his pieces for that news service. From a glance at the first page of results, I see a number of negative pieces on Mitt Romney, and one positive on Rep. Barney Frank (D- GLBT).