Hillary Clinton spent much of her first week on the campaign trail trying to prove that, despite all her years as a Washington insider, she is still just folks.
Instead of kicking off her second run for the presidency with a splashy campaign rally or an airport-hopping dash around the country, she climbed into a big, black GMC van and, tweeting "Road trip!," headed out from her home in Chappaqua, N.Y., to the heartland state of Iowa. Along the way she stopped to have her picture taken with an everyday family at a gas station and grab a chicken burrito bowl at a fast-food restaurant.
As she travelled, allies lined up to inform Americans what a lovely person she is. Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe told CNN that his friend is simply "a load of fun to be with." If the two are on vacation, talking policy, she might even have a cocktail or two. "She's got a great belly laugh."
Why it should matter that Ms. Clinton is a load of fun is a bit of a mystery. She is an accomplished politician who has served her country as a powerful U.S. senator and represented it abroad as secretary of state. Shouldn't it be her character and her ideas, not whether she is likable or not, that matter?
History is full of successful leaders who were never just folks. Try to imagine Pierre Trudeau travelling in a van called Scooby or getting chummy with voters in a gas station parking lot. But modern U.S. politics put a premium on demonstrating qualities such as openness, authenticity and genuineness, a phenomenon that would have bewildered past presidents such as that sphinx Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who kept himself to himself.
In the United States more than in most countries, the public expects politicians to reveal themselves as people. That is especially true in Iowa, the state that often makes or breaks presidential candidates in the party nomination season and that prizes direct contact with voters. Here, candidates for the highest office in the land are expected to be not just presidential but personable. The more recent buzzword is relatable: someone voters can relate to.
"We like to see the candidates up front so we can take the measure of them person to person," said Des Moines pollster Ann Selzer. "If you aren't genuine, that's not going to work here."
That helps explain why Clinton backers have been trying so hard to introduce voters to what they say is the "real Hillary" – not the celebrity political star who hobnobs with the rich and famous, but the delighted new grandmother with the great belly laugh. Her first couple of days in the state featured small, low-key, get-to-know-you meetings with voters.
As the overwhelming favourite to win the Democratic Party nomination, she is being extra careful not to appear too sure of herself. Democrats might start looking around for alternatives if she acted as if she had the nomination in the bag. "It doesn't look like a coronation if you don't act like a queen," Ms. Selzer said.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, one of several Republican hopefuls who have been crisscrossing Iowa to test the presidential waters, told NBC that Ms. Clinton can't assume winning is a foregone conclusion. "You have got to earn it."
David Axelrod, a former campaign adviser to President Barack Obama, told The Des Moines Register that Ms. Clinton's greatest challenge is to prove that she is genuine and understands the concerns of the average American. "Humility is the order of the day," he said.
Ms. Clinton is hardly the first presidential hopeful to try to present a more human face to the public. John Kerry and Michael Dukakis for the Democrats, Bob Dole and Mitt Romney for the Republicans – all these candidates struggled to show they were not as wooden or remote or simply dull as they sometimes seemed.
But for Ms. Clinton, it is especially important to prove she can connect. Throughout her quarter-century in the public eye, she has had to battle the perception that she is stiff or conniving or aloof. In her failed 2008 bid for the nomination, critics said that she simply failed to click with voters, who didn't understand who she was or why she wanted the job.
The risk in introducing the new, relatable Ms. Clinton is that voters may see it as nothing more than a ploy – a calculated attempt to appear spontaneous, a phony attempt to be authentic. Republicans are already calling it precisely that. "She says she is just like everyone else, but then she is off on her jets and that is not how most of us in Iowa live," said Jennifer Smith, chairwoman of Iowa's Dubuque County Republicans. She was waiting outside Ms. Clinton's first campaign stop to have her say.
Right-wing radio and TV commentators were quick to skewer Ms. Clinton over the road trip. This was the same Ms. Clinton, they noted, who admitted last year that the last time she drove a car herself was in 1996. They even gave her grief about the burrito stop, saying she went into the restaurant in dark glasses and didn't talk to anyone – hardly an example of the common touch. On the Fox News First website, Chris Stirewalt called Ms. Clinton's motorized caravan the "sisterhood of the travelling pantsuit."
Naturally, her supporters see her in a different light. Waiting in a lawn chair to wave at Ms. Clinton as she arrived for an event in the Des Moines suburb of Norwalk on Wednesday, retired union official Jamie Lekers, 57, said: "I've never found her cold and calculating. I found her warm and charming and I appreciated every Hillary hug she gave me."
Ms. Clinton has a fine line to walk. She has to show empathy for voters without appearing to pander. She has to show she understands ordinary people without pretending that she is one.
In Iowa, "we don't expect a former secretary of state, senator and first lady to be necessarily as down to earth as we are," Jennifer Glover Konfrst, an assistant professor of public relations at Drake University in Des Moines, says. Instead, if Ms. Clinton came to this farm state dressed in overalls, she adds, "we might be like, 'Yeah, you don't get it.' We want to see her being who she really is – not putting on airs, not thinking she's too fancy but not pretending to be less than she is either."
This, Prof. Konfrst concedes, "is a hard thing."
However Ms. Clinton plays it, she is bound to be mocked. The wealthy Mr. Romney got constant ribbing for his awkward attempts to prove he was a regular guy. He may never live down telling the story about tying his dog to the car roof in a pet carrier when the family went on vacation.
An online spoof had him saying to voters: "I know it's hard to manage your finances. I can't keep track of all my money either."
Now it is Ms. Clinton's turn. A sketch on Saturday Night Live made fun of her attempts to loosen up. An aide suggests she make a video of herself with her phone to show on social media. To be more "personal and intimate," the SNL Hillary takes off her blue suit jacket, only to reveal an identical blue suit jacket underneath.
Marcus Gee