Hillary Clinton delivers a PR lesson

Hillary Clinton responded to a question during a town meeting in Iowa over the weekend that garnered some attention.

QUESTION: A guy in the crowd asked Hillary if her track record of dealing with “bad places” around the world like “Iran” and “North Korea.” First Hillary stalled a bit by repeating the question. That’s where she took a wrong turn, restating the question in her own words.

“Question was: What in my background equips me to deal with evil and bad men?” Clinton said. Shen then paused and shrugged, which garnered some laughter. See where she went wrong? He referred to bad places. She restated it as “bad men.” The press had a heyday with it. Let the guy restate his own question or say it exactly as he did.

Read how differently the headlines turned out.
- Bad men? Who would that be, Hillary? (ABC)

- Clinton’s ‘evil, bad men’ quip gets Iowa laughs (CNN)

- Clinton ‘Evil Men’ joke raises eyebrows. (MSNBC)

- Clinton gets mixed reviews in Iowa (MSNBC)

- Clinton, the comedian, knows from “evil and bad men.” (Chicago Sun Times)

In all fairness, it sounds like she was joking around. The media just wanted to know who these “evil and bad men” were. Her husband? George Bush? Who did she mean . . . she’ll never tell.