If you want to know what it looks like when a strong contender for president makes himself too readily available to reporters, just examine a picture of Jeb Bush.
He appears to have been hit by something large.
The undeclared Republican favorite--until the other day, anyway--took a television interviewer's question on what he would have done about the Iraq War in 2003. He replied that, like Hillary Clinton, he would have supported it.
She did support it, you know.
The next day Bush said he had misunderstood the question. He explained that he had answered in the context of what we knew at the time, not what we know now.
The next day Jeb said he was loath to criticize a war because those who fought in it deserve better than that.
And on the fourth day he said that--knowing what we now know, which is that the supposed point of his brother's war was based on failed intelligence--he would not have supported the Iraq War.
Jeb might as well have said at that point, "Okay. All right. Y'all have got me all gummed up here, which is what y'all do for a living and what I ought to have had sense enough to avoid. I was trying to defend my brother. I love my brother. Don't y'all love your brothers?"
Or Jeb could have said in the first place: "So you want me to judge a 2003 action by a 2015 context. That's stupid. What president gets to go a dozen years into the future to decide anything? Y'all need to ask better questions. This is going to be a long campaign."
When a serious, likely-to-win presidential candidate--or any serious, likely-to-win candidate for high office--submits to reporter questioning, the candidate surrenders his control of the agenda and his message.
He--or she, especially she, in the current context--squanders all that money that has been raised to deliver the message.
In interviews, it is reporters who decide and define the agenda items.
They tell the story. They set the rules.
Take Bill Clinton as an example, though he is not actually himself running. He let himself get interviewed the other day about the raging Republican criticism of his foundation and his speaking fees--all of it seeking to discredit his wife, Hillary, the likely next president, unless she starts giving interviews.
Clinton handled himself with aplomb in defending the foundation. But then, as the interview ended, he was asked if he intended to keep making speeches for money while Hillary seeks the presidency. He said that he fully intended to do so because he has to pay the bills.
Oh, dear. One question too many. One answer irretrievable.
A man getting a half-million dollars for a speech should never, ever avail himself of the weary and real working-class lament about having to work to pay bills.
There are good and smart reasons Hillary has answered fewer than two dozen press questions since declaring her presidential candidacy.
It's that she has her own message. It's that she has money to spread that message. It's that she has no serious opponent at present.
It's that she's confident she could avoid Bill's kind of blunder--a kind she always berated him for committing--but that you never can be sure what you're going to be asked, or how it's going to rub you, or how the guy who asks it is going to write the story, or what the headline is going to say and what page it's going to be on.
So the other day Mike Huckabee joked to an Iowa audience that he went to his hotel room to find Hillary under the covers in his bed.
Hiding from reporters, you see. Not ... well, something else.
Then Our Boy Mike did a little riff about how it's unfathomable that someone could think they could run for president and hide from reporters.
It's altogether fathomable. It's advised.
Hillary won't talk to reporters very much at all right now because everything--the presidency, that is--is hers to lose.
About the only way for her to lose it this early is to wander into a gaggle of reporters and cameras and microphones.
She can't hide forever, and shouldn't. She'll do her debates. She'll stand for grilling. She'll say something stupid along the way. But there's no hurry.
Huckabee will talk to reporters today or any day--if any care to speak with him. Because he's not going to be president, he has nothing to lose.
But he has everything to gain by a higher profile for his branding and marketing.
The general rule of thumb is that front-runners avoid cameras and microphones while longshots chase them.
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John Brummett's column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 05/21/2015