Lazio's media victory

This is, of course, a general problem with expertise. You can't fully experience any new performance of "Macbeth," or "La Traviata," because you're conditioned by the expectations created by so many prior peformances. You hear what you already "know." In this case, Noonan "knew" that Clinton was robotic -- and of course wanted her to be robotic -- while the communications mavens impaneled by the Daily News, who may have had no preference of their own, "knew" that Lazio's likeability was bulletproof, and so must have come across as "feisty" rather than nasty. In contrast, the undecided voters, who were hoping to make a decision based on what they saw, had good reason to clear their minds of predisposition. They actually experienced the performance before them. (I, of course, may have been influenced by my dim view of Lazio, which I have expressed in print; but I don't hold Clinton in terribly high regard either.)

But there is something Clinton-specific at work here. The great media blunder of the last few years was the widespread projection onto public opinion of the media's own scorn for President Clinton. The media thought that it was anticipating public opinion, but in fact the public resisted the media's own view.

Something similar may be at work with Hillary Clinton. I can't count the number of times that I have been confidently told over the past year and a half that Clinton was not only going to lose the Senate race, but that she was going to get shellacked.

Until very recently, Clinton has been widely seen as a loser -- a personal view which, as with the president, took the form of a prediction about public opinion. And scorn for Hillary, a whole subject in itself, runs even deeper than scorn for her husband, since she's charmless, bland and self-righteous -- and sometimes mechanical -- while he's a seducer and a rogue. Indeed, a shrink recently explained to me her theory that people hate Hillary as compensation for their inability to hate Bill, much though they feel he deserves their contempt.

Scorn keeps you from seeing straight -- or hearing accurately. Clinton is never going to be popular, but she has always had a better shot at winning the race than she has been credited with. She is, after all, a pro, which is more or less what she demonstrated the other night. It's fairly clear that the debate will come to be seen, in retrospect, as a modest step forward for Clinton, and a serious step backwards for Lazio. The Times poll found that her favorability ratings had grown slightly since June, while his unfavorables had soared. It may be cosmically unfair that the Clintons just keep on winning, but the truth is that they're better than the competition.

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