WARNING: This is inside baseball/horseracey.
I think the planted questions story may be an example of the fragility of Clinton’s “aggressive” media strategy. While I — and maybe Iowans — do care about planted questions, the practice of suggesting a question or two is not necessarily a crime. If Clinton does sink to Bush-style “screening,” that’s one thing, but these particular instances — while testament to the degree to which the campaign prepares and wants control over events — aren’t a big deal. But the Clinton campaign made them into one.
Compare their defensiveness on this issue — essentially: “You’re right we did, but it’s unacceptable, we’ll never do it again” — to how they handled another story about their manipulation of the media environment, when they had a negative story about the campaign killed. They choose not to comment at all on the record, but on background, staffers confirmed that the story was true, making the essential message: “You’re right, we did it, what’s your problem?”
And the story went away.
There are some key differences, of course. Pushing around the press is not necessarily something Iowans would react negatively to, whereas interfering with Iowans’ beloved vetting process is a more sensitive issue. But imagine if Team Hillary had taken a similar approach to the “planted question” scandal as to the GQ incident, albeit with a softer touch (these are voters, who they care about, not the press, who they don’t). Something like:
“You’re right, a staffer did talk to a student before the event. We often encourage people to ask questions, especially first-time voters or people who have specific concerns. We may even discuss the content of the question if the voter wants to. We trust our staff not to dictate the content of those questions.”
(I would guess this answer is actually even close to the truth of what happened and probably happens all the time. Campaign veterans have assured me that “cultivating” a question or two before a town hall is standard, though not universal, practice.)
If they had taken the less defensive approach, the emergence of a second “plant” — which is actually a less cut-and-dried episode — would not nearly have been so damning, or such news.
As it is, not only have they set the media on a lead-deadening scavenger hunt, but they’ve set themselves up for prosecution the next time a voter can make even a vague case that a staffer said something leading to him before an event. Then again, she’s now also given the media an excuse to put Obama and Edwards under the same scrutiny, so maybe her campaign handled this perfectly.
Moving forward, it will be interesting to see if they continue to overreact, and thus create an overreaction in the press. If the team profiled in Crowley’s story has a weakness, it’s in its lack of a sense of proportion.