As Hillary Clinton enters the fifth phase of her political personality, The Washington Post’s reference to “Hillary 5.0” generated quite a few chuckles in the press corps this past week.The former first lady may not face a presidential primary challenge from Sen. Elizabeth Warren, but it’s likely she will veer a bit left to quiet her liberal critics. She may face a challenge or a pseudo-candidacy in the 2016 Democratic primaries from Sen. Bernie Sanders, the voice of the Occupy Movement. But I suspect Clinton is counting on Sanders’ criticisms to make her look acceptable to mainstream voters.What Clinton lacks, what she has always lacked, as evidenced by her fairly disastrous book tour of 2013-14, is authenticity.
Kathleen
Schafer, a leadership expert from the Los Angeles area, wrote a provocative piece on LinkedIn this week that begins by recounting the nauseous exasperation
she felt while reading the Post piece, “The making of Hillary 5.0: Marketing wizards help
re-imagine Clinton brand.”Schafer,
founder of Leadership Connection and a sometime political consultant,
recounted that she advised the 2008 Clinton campaign briefly and was quickly
brushed aside. That’s not particularly surprising given the blunt message
Schafer had for an overly confident campaign team: “… (It) wasn’t that she was
unqualified, unliked or unknown (or that her “H” wasn’t in the correct font or
that her pant suits weren’t quite the right color) -- it was that she wasn’t
real.”A former
professor at George Washington University, Schafer also offered some
unsolicited advice to the Mitt Romney campaign in the spring of 2012 when he
was well on his way to the Republican nomination:
“In April of
2012, while Governor Romney was enjoying his Super Tuesday victories and
President Obama was in a slump, I predicted Romney would lose (in the fall
election) because of his inauthenticity.
I share these examples not to highlight my prognostication skills, rather to
illustrate a simple fact: leaders are those who are authentic and real and who
are comfortable being themselves – and, partisans’ preferences aside, Americans
elect authentic leaders (or the most authentic of the two candidates) as
president.”
 |
| Schafer |
Schafer, who
worked at Lansing-based Public Sector Consultants in the 1990s, now specializes
in leadership training and coaching in the private sector. Her advice to
someone seeking the highest post in government is to engage in substance, not synthetic
solipsism.Here’s a
portion of what she wrote about Clinton:
“…Fast
forward eight years and she is back at the same place, turning to high-paid
advisors to tell her who she should be, rather than having the courage and
strength to know herself and confidently communicate it to others. Being
oneself, knowing the contribution one wishes to make in the world and aligning
oneself with the core principles of one's being are the fundamentals of
leadership -- without it, one is destined to a life of missed opportunities to
be at one’s best and it is certainly not a way to win the presidency of the
United States.
“If Hillary
Clinton truly wants to change the outcome of her next presidential campaign,
then she needs to run differently. This does not mean using a few fancy
advisors whose resume consists of selling Coca-Cola and Wal-Mart (the fact that
their claim to fame is selling products with unaligned social consciousness
also speaks volumes). Being authentic means taking a different path, one that
puts our politics and political leaders on an atypical trajectory—one where who
you are and what you say and do are clear, open and honest.
“If Hillary is
unwilling to change how she runs, she won’t change how she leads. American has
made it clear that it doesn’t want traditional partisan politics … although it
is the way Washington loves to do business. Hillary’s only chance at victory is
to be herself, to be the woman she sometimes discusses, the one she shares with
a few intimates and the woman she actually enjoys when she allows herself to do
so.”
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