Is She Too Tough? Amy Klobuchar Takes Heat

Klobuchar staffers cry Bad Boss

Presidential Democratic candidate Amy Klobuchar got sandbagged last week by Klobuchar staffers who were characterized as “terrified aides” likening her to no less a petty tyrant than Donald Trump.  Reports of her abusiveness headlined in Buzzfeed and the Huffington Post, followed up by a piece in Vanity Fair by Tina Nguyen  (February 8).  Nguyen’s coverage fortunately came around  to positive comments by Klobuchar supporters (yes, current and former aides! with skins, we are made to think, are like a rhinoceros!).

Last week, NPR’s night anchor Mary Louise Kelly was interviewing a politics specialist regarding Klobuchar, who had at the time not yet declared as a candidate for President.  The guest journalist mentioned the knock against Klobuchar’s alleged bitchiness, at which Mary Louise observed that the same kind of criticism would rarely be leveled at a male candidate for office.* The reporter (a woman whose name I don’t recall) hesitated for a moment and then said, in the tone of someone being thrown slightly off her game, something like “yeah, you  have a point.”

Mary Louise Kelly’s suggestion of a double standard being applied to Senator Klobuchar does not excuse Klobuchar’s behavior if she was/is in fact, cruelly abusive. Of course I don’t know what goes on behind closed doors, but I do know that many admired and inspiring leaders do not and have not suffered fools gladly. I also know that there are other staffers who have come to Klobuchar’s defense. I know that on the Rachel Maddow show a few days ago Klobuchar admitted to losing her temper on occasion, with her usual matter-of-fact tone, sans defensiveness. (She made a similar admission to George Stephanapoulos on live TV.)

It’s also telling that in 2018 Klobuchar won a third term in the Senate by a margin of 24 points (while winning every Congressional district in her state), similar to her previous elections, and I really can’t see Klobuchar running three such successful campaigns with a staff crippled by emotional terror.  Can you?

(Klobuchar vote percentages in Senate races: 60% in 2018, 65% in 2012, 58% in 2006—her first run.)

My hunch is that this story mushroomed because the picture of Klobuchar as a hard taskmaster is so at odds with her public persona as a “nice” person—that is, as nice as a winning politician can be, which is never that nice all the way through.

The gotcha running through this story is that Amy Klobuchar has a sinister split personality,  a gentle persuader with equals in public, a savage dictator in private toward those over whom she has power.  The perceived split makes for a good sell—such a good sell that the whole truth became a casualty of the quest for ratings. It’s an especially delicious story because, let’s face it, Amy is a woman, and women are supposed be . . . nicer.

Klobuchar’s iron hand – gloved or ungloved

I was not surprised to hear that Amy Klobuchar demands a lot from those who work for her. As she says, she has high expectations of herself, her staff, and the country.  Those who meet those expectations appear to stick with her, and probably it’s a plus that they develop thick skins along the way. In the rough-and-tumble of a presidential campaign, those who, in the words of Harry Truman, can’t stand the heat, should get out of the kitchen.

Up until last summer, I knew little of Amy Klobuchar except that she was a moderately progressive Democrat who got elected by wide margins in Minnesota, a state known for its friendliness to Democrats. I understood she was a pragmatist with a reputation for getting things done in a highly partisan environment where not much was getting  done in the Senate.

Then came the Kavanaugh hearings, and Klobuchar shone with her calm and firm demeanor. No one equaled her in making Kavanaugh squirm without giving him the opportunity, as he had with several other Democrats, to strike back with righteous indignation.  With her, he crossed the line only once, implying she might have an alcohol problem, for which he later apologized.  I don’t recall him apologizing to anyone else for his disgracefully disrespectful behavior.

My impression of her at the time was of an iron hand in a velvet glove.  To hear that the gloves come off and brass knuckles come on when she’s out of the public eye cast her in an unflattering light—unless you take into account the double-standard issue raised by Mary Louise Kelly.

You may have guessed I have a soft spot for the hard-headed Amy Klobuchar (or perhaps the warm fuzzy Amy Klobuchar), and you can expect more on her in the future in this blog, despite some policy differences. My second-in-line dark horse is South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg, the first millennial (37) and first openly gay man to run for president. He looks like someone’s adorable younger brother, but I wouldn’t be too surprised if he also turns out to be tough behind the scenes. Behind his smiling demeanor is a razor-sharp mind, and anyone with a last name like that who could grow up to become mayor of a middle-American city has got grit.

Klobuchar too tough? Listen up!

There’s a song on this theme, one of my most favorite songs from one of my most favorite bands: “She’s Too Tough” by Foreigner.  (YouTube below.)  Love the lines: “From the moment you wake up, her mind is made up,” and “I’m out on a limb, I’m a cat up a tree / But this tree’s on fire.”

While I’m plugging Foreigner, I’ll give you a link below to another of my most favorite songs with a completely different mood: “Girl on the Moon.” (Not Klobuchar at all.) Enjoy!

(For “She’s Too Tough” I recommend low volume, especially if you’re wearing headphones.)

p.s. If you think I wrote this blog just to make you play “She’s Too Tough,” you’re wrong but not completely wrong.

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 * Barack Obama’s chief of staff Rahm Emanuel was notorious for  tongue-lashing his aides, and that didn’t keep him from running for mayor of Chicago, and winning.