Clinton Files: Advisers Pushed to ‘Humanize’ Hillary, Soften ‘Stern’ Image
Photo Credit: APEven in the early days of the Clinton White House, consultants and political advisers were scrambling to soften Hillary Clinton’s hard-edged image, looking for ways to “humanize her” for the press and public.
In the latter years, as the media turned, the advice was far more blunt. “Be real,” media consultant Mandy Grunwald told her in a 1999 memo. Grunwald told the first lady the public tends to see her only in “very stern situations,” and warned her not to let the press see her “uncomfortable or testy.”
The advice was contained in roughly 4,000 pages of previously confidential documents from the Clinton administration years, released Friday by the National Archives. The document dump is just the first batch of Clinton papers that will trickle into the public domain in the coming weeks.
The materials will be closely combed by political operatives on both sides of the aisle, as Hillary Clinton weighs a presidential bid in 2016. What the documents reveal about former President Bill Clinton may be less important, politically, than what they reveal about his wife.
The 1999 memo was a particularly frank example of advisers looking to style Clinton for the public. At the time, Grunwald was with the Grunwald Communications firm she founded and was trying to smooth relations between retiring New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Clinton — who would later win Moynihan’s seat. The memo referred to an upcoming “Moynihan event.” Grunwald urged Clinton to stay “conversational” and not raise her voice.
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