Could focus on health deepen voters’ transparency concerns?
Could the recent focus on candidates’ health records deepen voters’ existing concerns about transparency?
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both released more medical information this week - Clinton after a bout of illness on Sunday prompted her to announce she’d been diagnosed with Pneumonia, and Trump after he taped an episode of Dr. Oz to discuss his own health and fitness.
“Face the Nation” moderator and CBS News Political Director John Dickerson joined CBS This Morning on Thursday to discuss both candidates’ sudden release of medical records.
“I think the big question, obviously - are they fit and healthy for office. But then, more broadly, every time there are one of these transparency questions about what the candidates are releasing and what their instincts are - Should they release a lot? Are they giving the public everything the public needs? - We are getting some sense of their patterns of openness,” Dickerson explained. “That matters because they will take those patterns into the office themselves, and whether they are going to be transparent on the campaign will tell us whether they will be transparent in office. And that matters not just in terms of what they will disclose, but how sensitive they will be when no one is looking to...following the rules and doing things by the book.”
During a campaign stop this week, former President Bill Clinton asked why so much fuss was being generated over Clinton’s episode on Sunday. “We are having a fuss because she collapsed there on video,” Dickerson suggested. “He knows the power of images and knows she has a health history. She has blood clots. There are these issues...so it’s not just...some passing thing.”
“The way campaign handled it - admittedly, they say, not very well in terms of letting the reporters know what was going on - exacerbates her sort of signature problem, which is this sense of trust worthiness, and so goes to something the campaign should would want to fix because it’s one of her liabilities,” Dickerson added.
Dickerson also broke down the numbers from a new CBS News/New York Times poll and discussed how voters’ enthusiasm for the two candidates may play a big factor in the race.
Clinton holds onto a slim, two-point lead among likely voters nationwide in this latest poll (41 to 39 percent), but 45 percent of Trump voters saying they are enthusiastic about their candidate, while only 36 percent of Clinton backers say the same.
Dickerson noted that the campaigns still have time to drum up voter enthusiasm.
“In some states, the voting period is a month,” he said. “You can work your voters in a way that you can improve those enthusiasm numbers, so it’s really important to see where people lack enthusiasm and what states and what the turnout operation is in those states.”