The blogosphere is abuzz with talk about Hillary Clinton’s campaign planting questions in audiences. In two days, two different instances have emerged in Iowa, leading to this Chris Muir cartoon. One planted question was about global warming (leading to her response, “You know, I find as I travel around Iowa that it’s usually young people that ask me about global warming”; now we know why!); the other was about funding for the war in Iraq.
Most bloggers are treating this as a “Gotcha!” moment, and there does seem to be something unethical—and moreover, in the blogging era, downright foolish—about it. But what strikes me most strongly is the pointlessness of it. Global warming and Iraq are two topics one might expect to come up in a discussion with a group of Democrats. So, why bother to plant such questions? Hillary and her operatives must be pathologically controlling, deeply insecure about her ability to engage in spontaneous give-and-take, or both.
