( CNN ) It is not hard to imagine the conversations inside the Hillary Clinton camp prelaunch : How do we take the best known woman in the world and make her seem like less of a big shot ? How can the people in Iowa and New Hampshire get to know the `` real Hillary , '' the Midwestern Methodist ? ( As a friend told me , she 's someone who `` likes to sing 'God Bless America ' on New Year 's Eve . '' ) And how to open the minds of people about someone everyone already has an opinion about ? Same questions , no doubt , that the staff asked in 2008 when she ran against the newbie Barack Obama , and same questions they asked when , as first lady , she ran for the Senate in New York . In that race , she ended up spending a lot of all-ears quality time in upstate New York . In this race , she could be spending a lot of all-you-can-eat time at Diners , Drive-ins and Dives — just like the TV show . ( Except Guy Fieri would probably have been recognized by the crowd at Chipotle . Just sayin . ' ) Dining aside , it 's hard -- almost impossible -- to soft-launch a campaign with a superstar politician . All the gauzy ads and the small classrooms and the coffee shops ca n't mask the Houdini-like effort Hillary Clinton is making to escape the inescapable reality -- that even her `` Scooby-Doo '' van is followed by throngs of press . ( I half imagined an O.J . moment with a helicopter hovering as she made her way down I-80 . ) Try as she might to launch with a humble start — not entitled to anything — she still is who she is . Virtually unchallenged . Not to mention famous , accomplished and controversial . In watching it all unfold , it 's hard to underestimate the task at hand . It 's also hard to figure out whether it 's actually going to work . Hillary Clinton — and her experienced campaign team — are disciplined and relentlessly on message . That 's usually a good thing when you 're running a presidential campaign . But when you 're sitting at a community college in Iowa and you tick off your rationale for running and your resume — unprompted — it seems less effective and more oddly incongruent . ( Especially when the former secretary of state described her tenure in five words — as `` standing up for our country . '' Short shrift , it seems to me . ) Maybe it 's that the old lessons of message discipline do n't work in the informal environment the campaign is trying to create — at least not with this candidate . The hardest combination in politics is that just-right mixture of spontaneity and discipline . The ability to understand exactly what you have to say ( over and over ) and then say it as if you have never said it before . And look like you 're having a great time doing it . We like to call it authenticity , but it 's probably not . It 's a honed skill that combines connection and gravitas , both of which the voters demand in a president . ( A majority of voters -- 53 % -- say they want to vote for someone who has been financially successful , as opposed to someone who has not . ) So there 's this balance : If you 're too much like them , you 're nothing special to vote for . But if you 're too different , you 're not relatable . It 's a balance that does n't come easily to Hillary Clinton . But she 's not alone . When President George H.W . Bush was running for re-election in 1992 , he was facing his own image issues . His populist challengers were calling him insensitive to middle class woes in the struggling state of New Hampshire . Bush tried mightily to drop the presidential persona , did some town halls , and famously declared : `` Message : I care . '' Some said he actually read it from a cue card , but he also said this : `` I do n't know what I have to do to convince people here that I really care about this ( the economy ) . I do . '' He lost . To an empathetic I-feel-your-pain Bill Clinton . And the rest , as they say , is history . Or , in Hillary 's case , at least trying to make history .
Hillary Clinton 's : Gloria Borger team is doing all it can to make her appear relatable to ordinary people . She asks if the most famous woman in the world can really connect with ordinary voters ?