Hillary's problem of "insularity and... arrogance" — "there was no one around her who was willing to tell her that she was wrong."

The quotes are from Ron Brownstein of "The Atlantic" in a panel discussion on today's "Face the Nation" about the inspector general's report on Hillary's email. The moderator, John Dickerson, had pointed to the finding that "When her staffers were asked about her private server system, they were told, do not ask about it again." Brownstein said:

BROWNSTEIN: That's what's the most troubling, I thought, in this report. I mean kind of the insularity and the arrogance. Not so much the specifics of the e-mails, but about the kind of leadership style and what it says about how you might be as president. I did a panel a couple of years ago when Jim Baker and George Mitchell were winning the Lifetime achievement Award from the National Academy of Public Administration, and they each said the same thing, the toughest thing was to find someone who could tell a president they were wrong. And what was -- what was -- what was, I thought, most apparent in this report was that there was no one around her who was willing to tell her that she was wrong. And when people tried to raise questions, they were told to be quiet. That is a -- that was ominous traits for a president.

But what about Trump? Are people around him able to tell him he's wrong? Peggy Noonan brought that up:

NOONAN: We talked about people around Hillary can't tell -- tell her the truth.... Who around Donald Trump says to him, boss, stop this, don't do that anymore, it's not nice?

Speaking of Noonan, she also said this:

NOONAN: When you look at the tape of Mrs. Clinton saying things about the e-mails that have been shown to not of them true in the IG thing, she has been -- I hate to say lied, but she has lied coolly and -- in a creamy, practiced way. It doesn't look good.

Creamy... I wrote that word down to search for in the transcript. Hillary lied in a coolly... creamy, practiced way.

ADDED: On the ABC show "This Week," Dianne Feinstein, the Hillary Clinton proxy, was confronted by Jonathan Karl:

Running for First Lady.

Tim Russert ended yesterday's "Meet the Press" with a discussion of the race for First Lady. This is a significant subject, like it or not, that I brought up in two posts yesterday--here and here. Here's the MTP dialogue:

MR. RUSSERT: Teresa Heinz Kerry made a very open appeal for support for women voters at the convention. Let's watch. ... Did it work?

MS. IFILL: You know, it's interesting. That's a perfect Rorschach. I was in the hall that night, and the response seemed muted. There were a lot of empty seats. You could kind of only hear her, because she speaks so softly. And I thought, jeez, that wasn't much of a speech. I called my friends at home who watched it on television, and they were blown away.

MR. RUSSERT: Ron Brownstein, let me bring you in here. The Newsweek poll has Kerry-Edwards up amongst women by 16 points, 53-37. ... And Bush ahead amongst men by 5 points. Big gender gap.

MR. BROWNSTEIN: ... Most of the women who would respond to [Heinz Kerry's speech] ... are already in the Democratic camp. Her job was more to do what the daughters did on Thursday night, I think, to humanize John Kerry and to show the side of him that you don't see when the spotlights are on. She did almost none of that. And I think for that reason, the speech was a wasted opportunity....

MR. RUSSERT: All right, Harwood, break the tie.

MR. HARWOOD: Tim, Laura Bush is a spectacularly good red-state spouse. She's smart. But she's also a bit subdued and supportive of her husband. Teresa Heinz is a very good blue-state spouse. She speaks not only to women but also to that larger immigrant story. There's a lot of immigrant voters in this race. She's urbane, she's sophisticated, she's strong. She's going to be an asset for him.

Here's what I think.

Laura Bush is the First Lady from central casting. She perfectly plays the role of an idealized First Lady (not the feisty, outspoken variety of First Lady but the Pat Nixon/Jackie Kennedy type). I assume she is a smart and good person who is not interested in projecting her personality into the public sphere and has chosen to walk carefully through the various scripted performances required of her.

Teresa Heinz Kerry is going to be a problem---not because she's "opinionated," the characteristic she pointedly defended in her convention speech, and not merely because she is interested in being the feisty, outspoken kind of First Lady, projecting her personality into the public sphere. She is going to be a problem because of that personality-projecting combined with a lack of real interest in helping her husband. I have no way to know what she really thinks of him, but time and again, I get the impression that she can barely tolerate him and doesn't even particularly care about supporting him. She too is walking through her public appearances, but she's not willing to play the First Lady role. She surely has a right to express herself, and she used her speech to inform us of this fact, though we all know it. But her honest self-expression seems unlikely to help her husband. This is not because we want to squelch female expression and demand a demure First Lady. It is because her honest expressions do not inspire support for the candidate.

Compare Heinz Kerry to other recent feisty First Ladies: Hillary Clinton and Nancy Reagan. These women had strong personalities (in fact they seemed far more energetic and political than Heinz Kerry), but they also obviously adored their husbands and staunchly agreed with their politics. We could see their love and it rubbed off on us--or at least it rubbed off on those not so opposed to the man as to be immune to such influence. Heinz Kerry shows none of this adoration. In fact, she seems to show a lack of interest in him. Maybe she doesn't even support his politics. (She is the widow of a Republican Senator.) She has an air of world-weariness (perhaps even mourning for the dead Republican). Here is her current husband, a dour-faced man with a droning voice, who is trying his damnedest to look like an optimist, and his own wife will not deign to gaze at him and smile. I'm all for female independence and expression, but why doesn't she want to help him?

UPDATE: Kate O'Beirne, the Washington Editor of the National Review, adds to my speculation that Heinz Kerry does not agree with her husband's politics:

At a Washington party in 2001, Teresa Heinz (then) greeted me enthusiastically with the charming pronouncement, "I agree with everything you say on TV. I'm a Republican and you're my favorite." Her husband, John Kerry, stood uncomfortably at her side, which he was no doubt used to doing by then.

"Clause" not "laws." Transcripts of Thursday's debate get a word wrong in a key spot that seems to be making some people think John Kerry flip-flopped in his opinion about whether the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional. Zachary Roth at CJR Campaign Desk calls attention to the place in the debate where Ron Brownstein of the LA Times questioned Kerry:

Brownstein, asked: "... if the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional, isn't President Bush right, that the only way to guarantee that no state has to recognize a gay marriage performed in any other state is a federal constitutional amendment?"

Kerry answered, "... I think, under the full faith and credit laws, that I was incorrect in that statement. I think, in fact, that no state has to recognize something that is against their public policy."

Roth accuses AP writer Nedra Pickler of misunderstanding Kerry. Pickler wrote:

[Rothstein] asked the senator why he had opposed legislation in 1996 that would have allowed states to deny such recognition.

Directly contradicting a claim made by Bush, Kerry and Edwards both said the Constitution does not require states to recognize gay marriage licenses granted elsewhere in the country.

Roth's criticism goes like this:

Kerry did say that, but not in response to a question about his 1996 vote on DOMA. In fact, that answer came in response to Brownstein's subsequent question, which was: "If the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional, isn't President Bush right, that the only way to guarantee that no state has to recognize a gay marriage performed in any other state is a federal constitutional amendment?"

A reader of Pickler's piece would come away with the impression that Kerry answered Brownstein with a complete non sequitur. In fact, Kerry's responses were confusing, but did ultimately make logical sense, if you accept his admission that he now considers DOMA constitutional.

Really, I think that Roth is the one who's confused here, though it's completely understandable, because Kerry was being murkily concise, there was no decent follow-up question, there's a perplexing reference to an "incorrect ... statement," and the printed transcripts contain a mistake. Let me explain.

First, Kerry did not say "I think, under the full faith and credit laws, that I was incorrect in that statement." He said "I think, under the Full Faith and Credit Clause, that I was incorrect in that statement." I can verify that with utter certainty, thanks to TiVo.

The Full Faith and Credit Clause is part of the Constitution, the part that would be used to argue that the state was obligated to recognize marriages of other states. If, as many people believe, the Full Faith and Credit Clause in fact allows states to disregard marriages that offend their public policy, then the states already have the power that the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment purports to give them. DOMA is then superfluous, and so is the proposed amendment.

This means that Kerry could still have the position that DOMA is unconstitutional, and could coherently (though too briefly) be answering Rothstein's question about why the proposed amendment isn't needed. In this interpretation, Kerry's answer was responsive, and he hasn't flip-flopped, but he was not given the time to explain what he was talking about. And the incorrect transcript sure doesn't help!

In any case, the issue is far too complex to explain in a debate setting. (I once based a Constitutional Law exam on it.) If Kerry had actually tried to explain the law here, everyone would have complained that he was insufferably pedantic.