Although “What Happened,” the title of Hillary Clinton’s book that chronicles her 2016 run for president and her shocking loss to Donald Trump, is not in question form, George Clooney answered it as if it was.
“I never saw her elevate her game. I never saw it,” Clooney told The Daily Beast, referring to, yes, “what happened” to Clinton’s candidacy from his perspective.
The “Suburbicon” director was one of the many politically outspoken Hollywood Democrats who were avid Clinton supporters and major donors during her campaign. In retrospect, he says that being “incredibly qualified” for the job wasn’t enough.
“Being qualified for the job does not necessarily mean you’re the right person to be president. Here’s what I mean,” he said, going on to explain. “She was more qualified than even her husband was when he was elected president, but she’s not as good at communicating things. That’s simply true. When she got up and gave a speech, it didn’t soar.”
Through the primary and general election, he supported her and believed she was the right person to side with in the election. But, he said, frustration sat in because, as he put it, he “never saw her elevate her game.”
“It was frustrating because I never saw her elevate her game. I never saw it,” he said. “And I had a lot of liberal friends who were like, ‘She’s not good at this.’ And I see that, and I understand it.”
But Clooney said he also thinks that if she were a man, the race wouldn’t have been so polarizing. “I think the fact that she’s a woman made it a much harder uphill battle,” he concluded. “I think that she wasn’t particularly good at articulating the things that she wanted to do, and unfortunately we live at a time right now where articulating what you want to do is more potent in the electorate than the other way around.”