What “Plant-Gate” Really Means

A lot of folks seem to think this story is the worst thing Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign could have ever done. Others think it’s no big deal at all. Here’s how I see it:

First, I am not surprised by it in the least. The Clinton campaign is scripted, from beginning to end, and it has phenomenal message discipline. Throughout the summer, national press were complementing it for these reasons. The first time Clinton ever got a somewhat uncomfortable question in Iowa was the famous Iran question in early October. As soon as it happened, the national media exploded with stories about it for a week. I had personally witnessed other candidates — including Sen. Barack Obama and former Sen. John Edwards — answer much more uncomfortable questions as early as May, and none of the press at those events even took notice of them, because they weren’t out of the ordinary at those candidates’ events.

Had Clinton taken as many off-message questions as her opponents, she would not have had the kind of message control she exhibited. And Iowans are notorious for asking off-message questions, so either Clinton had incredible luck or she had a little help. Let’s stop pretending like we didn’t at least have the thought in the back of our minds that planting questions might have been one cog in the Clinton campaign’s well-oiled machine. There are plenty of political operatives (including some whom I respect) who really don’t think it is always an immoral tactic, because to a certain extent everything a campaign does is contrived.

That said, the story is damning to the Clinton campaign for two reasons:

1. The Clinton campaign lied about it. Spokesperson Mo Elithee told Fox News, “This is not standard policy and will not be repeated again.” And yet the questioner-in-question, Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, said that the staffer she talked to had a campaign-printed list of questions to plant in a CNN interview last night. If the events that occurred are not “standard policy,” why print out worksheet to assist staffers in doing it? In addition, why did Clinton say in her answer that she receives the question from young people a lot in Iowa if this was the only instance where her campaign sought out a young person to ask it?
2. The story plays into the general uneasiness Iowans feel about her campaign’s hesitancy to ask questions. Contrary to Marc Ambinder’s assumption, Clinton had not “been asked (more than) a 1,000 questions by different Democratic voters,” unless she was spending hours answering questions on the stump in New Hampshire. As of mid October, Clinton had not taken questions more than about a dozen times in Iowa (she seemed to prefer shaking hands and talking to voters privately on rope lines for a few minutes after her speeches). Assuming there were six questions per event where questions were permitted, that’s a total of about 72 questions taken publicly in Iowa (not counting debates and forums, which are scripted by other people). If she’s only going to take 72 questions (compared to closer to 1,000 for each of the other candidates), Iowans feel strongly that they better be good, and this story proves that at least some of them weren’t.

The practice of planting questions, which is itself a fairly benign practice, is not the only thing at issue here. In reality, it was only the beginning, and it only mattered at all because of the context.