Hillary Clinton is amiable on a personal level, but as a politician, she becomes "clunky and less likable," talk show host Joe Scarborough said on MSNBC.
As a newly elected Republican Florida congressman in 1995, Scarborough said when he first met Clinton when she was first lady, he was surprised that to find that he liked her.
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"I said, 'Don't tell anybody, but I really like Hillary,'" Scarborough told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Thursday.
Yet, Scarborough said, Clinton changed when she switched to campaign mode.
"Every time she puts on that politician's hat, she stops being the Hillary that we all know and like personally and she somehow seems to get clunky and less likable. Not to us personally, but to people watching on TV," he said.
Amid the rollout of her new book, "Hard Choices," Clinton tripped over questions about the wealth she has earned since her husband, former President Bill Clinton, left office.
Rather than focusing on the substance of her book, Clinton has been answering questions about whether the millions she has earned makes her out of touch with working Americans.
Joe Klein, a political columnist for Time magazine, said while Bill Clinton was the "ultimate politician," Hillary Clinton was not.
"She has a temper on her. And, as a result, she will make mistakes," Klein told "Morning Joe." "I think that if she's going to go ahead with this [presidential campaign], she's going to have to embrace her mistakes."
Scarborough said Clinton would not be "agile and as nimble as her husband or as [President] Barack Obama's team," should she run for president in 2016. He said she "hasn't figured out how to play this game, after being in it since 1978."
Klein has written that a Hillary Clinton presidency
is not an inevitability. He said Thursday the focus on Clinton's wealth rather than her book was a "disaster" for the former secretary of state.
"I think that talking about money at this point is one thing she does not want to do. When the campaign comes, she's going to have to talk about money in a domestic household sort of way," he told "Morning Joe."
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