What Hillary Clinton’s campaign has been accused of doing this last week at a forum in Newton, Iowa might not come as a shock to most people, even though it seems like a big issue. Clinton, who was speaking at the forum, accepted questions after her speech. But Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff , a student at Grinnell College, accused her campaign of “planting” questions, in the audience, in advance. “They were canned,” she said. In an interview with CNN, Gallo-Chasanoff revealed that when she asked the senior Clinton campaign staffer how it would work, she was told “Raise your hand and she’ll (Hillary) call on you.” Gallo-Chasanoff bluntly stated that she felt the entire questioning process had been stage managed, “There were 200 people there raising their hand to ask questions and I was one out of 4. Doesn’t seem random, exactly.”
First reported in Grinnell College’s “Scarlet and Black” by reporter Patrick Caldwell, the issue has now taken on national significance. It is not that people believed these things never happened, but in Iowa, where people believe in the workings of a democracy, where candidates are regularly asked spontaneous and at times provocative questions, this “staging” of questions comes as a bolt from the blue.
The whole point to having a “forum” is for audience members, who believe it is their birth right, living in a democracy, to ask questions of their political representatives. Once you take that away from them, they stop believing in the process. How many times in a lifetime does a college student from Iowa believe he or she will get a chance to ask a Presidential candidate a question? And when that one chance comes, if you do not let that student ask the question he or she wants to, and instead stage it by supplying your own questions, it is like unashamedly disillusioning your voters as to what a democracy is. If your voter base stops believing in the process, you’re fighting an uphill battle. This is exactly what Hillary Clinton’s campaign has managed to do.
Clinton’s campaign also gave her rival candidates ready fodder. As John Edwards told reporters in Des Moines, “People expect you to stand in front of them and answer their hard questions - and they expect it to be an honest process. What George Bush does is plant questions and exclude people from events, and I don't think that's what Democrats want to see in Iowa."
A Clinton spokesperson has said that "this (the planting of questions in the audience) is not standard policy and will not be repeated again." Why then was it used in this instance, particularly in Iowa, an extremely important state in the primaries and with a deep tradition of democracy, town hall meets and caucuses? It is like committing hara-kiri, in a state quite vital to each candidate’s interests. Clinton aides have acknowledged planting the question, but at the same time have denied Clinton knew about it. Does that make a difference? Whether or not Clinton knew about a question hardly matters because it is patently obvious that her staffers would make sure a “planted” question would pertain to issues she was comfortable with. Clinton was obviously comfortable with the climate change issue and that is what she got asked a question about.
Clinton can do herself a favor by refraining from resorting to such tactics, especially in states like Iowa. The national primary race might not necessarily be affected by a one-off Clinton campaign faux-pas, but in Iowa this could mean the difference between winning and losing. A recent poll shows that in the Democratic race in Iowa, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards were in a near tie — with 22 and 23 percent respectively — and catching up to Hillary Clinton, who polled at 25 percent.
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