Back in 1996, California pollster Mervin Field told me a month before Dole’s “Where’s the outrage?” Texas meltdown that Clinton’s re-election campaign reminded him of 1972. That year, Democratic nominee George McGovern tried to invoke the dark side of Richard Nixon’s persona. “Do you really believe,” McGovern essentially asked the American people, “that Dick Nixon has the character to be president?”

This was the same approach taken by Bob Dole. In both years it proved to be the wrong question. The answer, to paraphrase the voters’ response, was: “No, probably not, but he already is president, and the question I’m addressing on Election Day is whether he’s done a good job in office—and whether his re-election will make my life better.”

Bill Clinton understood that basic dynamic, which is why he liked telling the American people—and this is a direct quote, not a paraphrase—“I’m working for you every day.” Voters knew this to be true. A decade later, as she begins her second presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton is using similar language. The problem is that many Americans now make unwelcome associations with such rhetoric when it comes from a Clinton.

For starters, it’s too similar to the words Bill used when the Monica Lewinsky scandal threatened his presidency. (“These allegations are false,” Clinton said disingenuously, “and I need to go back to work for the American people.”) The bigger issue is that it now is apparent that a couple that arrived in Washington, D.C., in 1993 not owning a house has parlayed “public service” into a personal fortune estimated as high as $200 million. It seems they are working for themselves, too.