Supporters describe Clinton's softer side: Web video part of effort to lower unfavorable ratings

[DeepModem Mom]

LAT: Supporters describe Clinton's softer side
A Web video, 'The Hillary I Know,' is part of a larger effort to lower the Democratic presidential candidate's unfavorable ratings.
By Peter Nicholas, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
December 18, 2007

JOHNSTON, IOWA -- Eager to present a more likable public face, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is giving herself a multimedia makeover.

The Democratic presidential candidate is hoping to counter impressions that she is a guarded, intimidating figure who cares more for policy analysis than for people. So a number of her friends, constituents and former aides are offering testimonials this week, hoping to humanize a candidate who has been dogged by high unfavorable ratings.

On Monday, the campaign released a Web video titled "The Hillary I Know," part of the full-scale effort to paint Clinton in a more sympathetic hue. Says one man on the video, She's got "this motherly . . . thing going on."

At a campaign stop in a wooden barn here, surrogates for the campaign sought to vouch for Clinton as a person, working in the phrase "the Hillary I know" wherever possible. After they spoke, the New York senator took the stage. "Here in Iowa, I want you to have some flavor of who I am outside the television cameras -- when all the cameras and the lights disappear, what I do when nobody is listening and taking notes and recording it," she said. "Because it's hard, when you're in public life, to have that kind of sharing experience with thousands and millions of people."

Clinton is known to be a private person uncomfortable with the confessional, self-revelatory style of modern campaigning perfected by her husband, who even disclosed his underwear preference (briefs over boxers) during a 1994 forum on MTV. She is trying to loosen up out of necessity: She rates high among the candidates when it comes to experience, but trails her chief rival for the nomination, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, when the measure is likability....

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-clinton18dec18,1,6656238.story?coll=la-headlines-nation&ctrack=1&cset=true