Hillary Rodham Clinton has had a very long and public battle with the media to protect her “public image.” In fact, she has tried to control it so much that she is often criticized for her fake personality, as evidenced by the constant comparisons of her personality to that of a robot. However, this is obviously contradictory to her wishes, as being a likable and relatable person is critical to a career politicians success. Her handling of her campaign has taken almost every wrong turn possible, and this leads me to the conclusion that public figures do have some control over how they are perceived by the public at large. Hillary was once a highly-regarded politician, but her mishandling of situation after situation has lead to a decline in overall public image.

With the upcoming presidential elections, and the current fight over who will represent the two main parties, public perception of Hillary Rodham Clinton and every other potential candidate is of utmost importance. However, partly due to her own actions and partly due to media influence, Hillary and her public image have taken a great stumble down in what was once thought to be an easy path to represent the Democrats in the general election. Her involvement in Benghazi and the email server scandal have been the main driving force behind her decline popularity, but her handling (or possibly how the media chose to display her handling) of the situations definitely made things worse. Instead of issuing a statement she was wrong and admitting that it was very, very poor judgement on her part, Hillary decided to fight back against the media. The ultimate downfall here comes from the two ways the media chose to respond to Hillary’s comments. The first plan of attack was to keep researching the scandals and making a much bigger deal out of the situations than they would have, had she chosen not to fight back. The extra research lead to some discoveries that she really did not want to become public, which are having a negative impact on how she is viewed. The other way the media is fighting back against the Hillary machine is by giving more favorable coverage of her opponent and less favorable coverage of her. Hillary has managed to make a very close race out of one that was hers to take through her interactions with the public and the media. When you think that her path to becoming president is in doubt due to a socialist who wants to give away everything for free, an idea that has never been successful in any part of the world, it is clear that her campaign’s actions up to this point have had an impact on her campaign. This impact though is very bad for her public image, and shows that public figures do have some control over their public image, and that they should think long and hard about how certain actions will be perceived. Bernie has made all the right moves (two years ago he was not very well known, whereas Hillary was a name that everyone knew and had some opinion of), Hillary had made all the wrong moves, and that is why the primaries have not been the cake walk Hillary was once thought to have.