Don’t forget “non-threatening” - her TV persona is calculated to be the exact opposite of someone like Megyn Kelly, who is bold, confident, and commanding in the way that male news anchors are. Conway is always coyly assertive, playfully sarcastic, or pout-y when disagreeing.
That isn’t what she does either. She distracts, attacks, and denies. She doesn’t rephrase Trump, she just says “I think he’s already addressed that” or “I don’t know what he thinks, we haven’t discussed it” and then undermines the critic instead of dealing with the critique. She does all this blatantly to the extent that everyone watching and the person she is talking to all go, “Hey look, you’re changing the subject again” to which she simply responds, “No, but I’m just trying to say…” and then puffs up some accomplishment. No one leaves that discussion saying, “Oh hey, now I understand what Trump was really doing and I agree with it.” They leave, at best, more confused than before, but mostly they just leave with the sense that Trump’s campaign doesn’t want to talk about the issue. So the question is, what’s the point of her appearance? Is the point simply that the networks feel they must have someone come on to defend Trump, and she lets them say they did that? Is the point that the networks think they can create controversy by asking questions of a surrogate? If it’s the latter, then I agree that she’s good at not creating controversy, but she’s not better than spokespeople for campaigns are supposed to be, she’s only better than Omarosa and talking heads like Giuliani.
True magic doesn’t feel like a trick. Every single Conway interview feels like she is doing some sort of judo to try to get out of saying anything useful. That’s why I don’t think she’s good at that job (though she’s clearly good at running an actual campaign, which is her real job). She might as well just say, “Well, I’m going to pivot away from that because I don’t think anyone gives a shit if I answer you” or just “Well we all know that what you said is true, but Trump gonna Trump, amirite people?” If the campaign spokesperson seems to contort every statement, blatantly lie, and abruptly change the subject all the time, then it leaves the impression that the campaign itself is a pile of lies and distractions hammered together by tortured logic. That may be what Trump’s campaign, transition, and soon his Presidency are, but the job of the TV surrogates isn’t to “survive” their interviews, it’s to actually convince people and make a sensible argument to get things done.
I will say this: her style perfectly fits Trump, and the alpha misogyny and DOS lies that are his way of life.
