@mainiac: Considering that both Hillary and Jeb have an image problem regarding "authenticity", I think it has costs.
I'm pretty sure those problems have more to do with being in the center of bitter political fights for decades then with the occasional no stakes political photo op. It's not like the Bengazi hearings were payback for Hillary asking for muffin recipes back in 93. It's not like Jeb! doesn't use the bush name out of modesty.
You know damn well what I'm talking about. The Bush family is a wealthy Northeastern elite family. GWB could actually pull off the "Texas cowboy" thing because let's face it -- he didn't have the refinement or intelligence thing going on. Jeb is too well-spoken and too...."wealthy business guy" to come off as a legit pistol-waving country boy.
Pandering is, at its heart, the act of saying "I'm one of you" to a group when everyone knows damn well you're not one of them. Every politician does it to some extent, whether it's Rudy Giuliani wearing green and marching in a St. Patrick's Day parade, or the various slate of candidates doing "Iowa stuff" when they campaign in Iowa, or posing with various guns when courting the NRA.
Rubio is far too metrosexual to be convincing. He's not even sighting the barrel, he's just "ok, I point it up and squint, right? I'm doing it!"
Palin, on the other hand, is totes believable as a hunter.
"I'm Barack Obama, and I approved this torta."
Really? "your inner Latino"?
(And you'll notice I abstained from posting any Hillary images...not trying to start shit, I'm just sayin.)
It's a problem that Sanders has dealt with in a largely honest way, by basically saying "Look...I'm not black. I'm not Latino. And I'm not trying to be. But we have common ground and common issues."
The problem is that most people LIKE to be pandered to, just not when it's ham-fisted. (Unless you're campaigning in Smithfield, Virginia -- "Ham Capital of the World" -- in which case wielding a ham in each fist is probably a good way to pander.)
Bill Clinton was a master panderer. Dude could schmooze like nobody's business, and still come off as likeable. Joe Biden is damn good at this too.
Hillary....not so much.
Trump is good at it in a flashy, WWE sort of way, but I doubt many people really think he gives two shits about the podunk towns he visits on the campaign trail.
EDIT: Saying "barbecue some hot dogs" is (to my ear) like saying "whiskey some beer". You can
grill a hot dog or a hamburger. You can even "barbecue" it (in the vulgar sense) by slathering barbecue sauce on it, but that does not make it barbecue. I weep for the rest of the country.