Heady news, coming as it does on the same day that Barack Obama remoed any doubt that he is a sputtering, stammering nincompoop when he speaks without his beloved teleprompter.
Not that anyone would expect spontaneity from Hillary Clinton, who, it was revealed back in 2014, insists on controlling every detail of a speaking engagement right down to the brand of imported water available backstage for her consumption.
Now it turns out that her outrageous demands are not limited to Fortune 100 companies. The presumptive Democratic nominee expects the same attention from public schools and universities where she has agreed to speak.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
Clinton’s campaign attempts to control introductory speeches and other details, according to emails between the campaign team and public schools and colleges in South Carolina obtained by The Associated Press and published Thursday.
Unfortunately, as the candidate struggles with a hardier-than-anticipated fight from her sole Democratic challenger, [score]Bernie Sanders[/score], and continuing bad press over her private email server, the campaign is encountering resistance from even the humblest academic institutions.
The media relations director at Greenville Technical College, for example, wrote the college president that the campaign “wanted to write your introduction. I told them no.” The president at that school also refused to allow the campaign to script questions, stating that they were “bad questions,” going on to say that he would create his own questions, perhaps after hearing the speech.
In another email, Clay Middleton, the state director for the Clinton campaign, requested a list of two or three students who would speak from another college. At a high school event, the campaign wanted to see and edit an introduction speech by a student.
Other colleges were not as standoffish in their dealings with the campaign. The president of Des Moines Community College, Robert Denson, incorporated scripted talking points into his introduction. Later, he defended his actions by stating that all campaigns request control over such matters.
Team Clinton, long criticized for a wooden, scripted performance, continues to assert that it runs a non-scripted, off-the-cuff campaign. Clinton staffer Nick Merrill stated, “We take pride in Secretary Clinton’s ability to answer tough questions. We do not screen questioners at events, nor do we script interactions.”
Merrill went on to state that many of the more memorable moments of the campaign are completely unscripted, providing an anecdote of a little girl asking the candidate if she would get paid the same as a “boy president.”
This report, by Philip Stucky, was cross-posted by arrangement with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
