Hillary can’t seem to loosen up

Hillary Clinton walks through a paneled doorway and onto the set of “The Colbert Report.” A grin splits her face.

Stephen Colbert is stunned. Shocked. Amazed.

Right.

Hillary steps up onto the low podium where Colbert is seated behind a desk. Her grin grows wider. Colbert keeps a dumbfounded look on his face. A surprise appearance on his own show!

The audience is daffy with delight.

This ought to be good. In September 2007, Hillary’s presidential campaign aides were arranging for her to appear on the season opener of “Saturday Night Live.” She refused.

One said: “We told her doing ‘SNL’ would be a way of showing she was being a good sport and letting her hair down. But she didn’t want to do that.”

She did not want to risk looking foolish. Her husband never had such qualms. He had once gone on “The Arsenio Hall Show” and played the saxophone.

But Hillary is not Bill.

She does fine. Perhaps a little too stagy at times, but she is, after all, a professional politician, not a professional actor. And there’s a difference, right?

Colbert: “I will have you know, madam, I once did an entire show with President Bill Clinton.”

Clinton: “Oh, I hate to break this to you, Stephen, but I’ve met him, too.”

Colbert: “Gosh, you know everyone! What kind of loser do you have to be to not be included in your book?”

Clinton: “Well, you’re not in it, Stephen.”

The audience practically laughs up a lung.

When Al Gore ran for president in 2000, he was battered continually by the media for “not being comfortable in his own skin.”

But is Hillary any more comfortable in hers? Will she not do an appearance that might make her look candid, warm and appealing because she is not candid, warm or appealing?

We do not know. But give her this: She did stay for the entire five minutes, 14 seconds of her bit. Which is more than can be said for one of the possible Republican nominees in 2016, Rand Paul. He can’t just bolt from the room every time he comes upon a voter who might ask him a tough question.

CONTINUE READING AT SUNTIMES.COM