Hillary Clinton's Planted Audience

The revelation that Hillary Clinton's team has planted friendly, helpful questions from the public during her presidential nomination campaign won't shock many of our readers. Over the years, especially the Blair years, we became inured to the callous mendacity, the casual deviousness of our own politicians; but we have regarded the United States as the home of low political skullduggery ever since Watergate.
That a candidate might organise a couple of full tosses for herself when engaging with the voters, with press present, seems to us an obvious device, and trifling compared with the rigging of a competition on children's television. Indeed, planting questions - whether on the stump or in parliament - is standard practice in just about every polity where the appearance of democracy still matters. But there are two reasons why this admission damages Senator Clinton. One is that, while the rest of the world regarded Richard Nixon's disgrace as an irrevocable degradation of politics that set a new and lower standard for all to follow, only without getting found out, Americans, led by Gerald Ford, kidded themselves that the damage could be undone. They desperately wanted to believe again that their heroes were all they cracked themselves up to be, and so even the claque in the crowd, a trick that wouldn't fool a children's tea-party in Europe, is scandalous if exposed.More particular to the senator, though, is that such micromanagement, whether ethical or not, enhances her reputation as someone who needs to control every situation, and, despite her undoubted intellect, lacks the confidence to deal with the unrehearsed. Again, this is something the British are now used to, but it is already playing badly for Mrs Clinton with American voters, who retain a robust dislike for being patronised and duped. They are not jaded as we are, and still hope for honesty in their leaders. Good luck to them.