This is part of a series of posts on Election 2016.
To be honest, I’ve stopped listening to most of the scandals
about Hillary. That’s not because I think she is perfect or would never do
something scandalous, but because the noise of obvious crap, generated over 3
decades, has made me jaded about spending any time investigating stories by
people who think Killary is a fascist Communist.
To be clear, I think she is an imperfect human. We don’t
subject most politicians to the kind of scrutiny that Hillary has faced – how
much do we know about George and Laura’s relationship, or his struggles with
addiction, for instance? But she isn’t
perfect. I think she is a bit paranoid
and has a tendency to “circle the wagons” at the slightest sign of problems,
and I think she is a fierce competitor that swings first and asks questions
later. Like all successful politicians, she is willing to spin the truth to
meet her needs, and she comes across, in crowd settings, as a bit fake. Unlike her husband, she doesn’t seem born to
politics. And I think these tendencies have been, at times, her Achilles
heel. So, she’s not perfect, and she has
some flaws. But they don’t bother me
much, as I think they are generally lesser than the flaws of other politicians …
so let’s get into the scandals.
First, I want to address the most
common thing thrown Hillary’s way: She’s a liar. Actually, it started with, “She’s a congenital liar.” That came from a debunked article that still
gets traction today. But the thing is,
she is constantly fact checked and found to be among the most honest of politicians. People that know her think she is honest, and
that generally includes Republicans. It is just constantly repeated that she
lies, but when you ask someone to point to something, there is a vague nod to
the emails and ….
Another global reason that I’m unconvinced about scandals is
that Hillary Clinton has been investigated more than virtually anyone, ever,
with millions upon millions spent to try to find that she and her husband did
the wrong stuff. In 1998, Ken Starr
released a report that delved deep into the Clinton’s lives. He found some affairs by Bill, but no
evidence implicating the Clintons for anything.
Anything. They investigated
Whitewater and Vince Foster, many actual and alleged extra-marital affairs or
other sexual indiscretions, and basically anything else ever said. It found nothing.
And there really have been very concerted efforts to
discredit the Clintons. See, for
example, the millions put into the Arkansas Project, or the fact that multiple Republicans admitted that the Benghazi Committee was a partisan hunt.
The FBI review of the emails showed that a few classified
emails that were not supposed to be sent to the server were there. They were
not correctly marked, and there is no suggestion that they actually were seen
by anyone without appropriate clearance, but they were on an unsecured server.
The private server did not follow the policy of the State Department, and eventhough the State Department was actually insecure and had stuff stolen from it,
Hillary has agreed this was wrong for her to do and apologized. Of course, Colin Powell suggested she do so,
and he is voting for her, as are the Bushes, so others that know about the situation don’t think it was that bad.
As for the allegations about Hillary’s treatment of the
women that had affairs with Bill … this wasn’t ever an issue before. Nobody thought it odd for a possibly
cuckolded wife to call the woman making the accusation a bimbo (which is
relatively innocuous). And, truthfully, I don’t think most people would today,
if they really thought about it.
The recent scandal that keeps giving is about some seemingly
unsolicited emails her campaign received from the DNC (Brazile) about some of
the Democratic debate questions. The general response to such a scandal (and it
was a scandal) is to fire the person who did it, and Brazile was fired. This is
the same approach that Senator Sanders took when his staffer improperly breached Clinton campaign files. There is no indication that anything sent to Hillary’s campaign (NOT to
Hillary) had any impact whatsoever, and the person responsible is out, yet
people keep calling for blood. The same happened when there were issues with
the DNC – find the issue, fire the person doing it. That’s the normal approach,
but for some reason people won’t accept that in this election.
Almost everything else has been so thoroughly investigated,
by lots of people that would love nothing more than to bring down the Clintons,
and they keep coming up with nothing besides evasions about private matters.
People act like the Clintons control the media, but the scandals make it
to the public somehow. They act like they control the FBI,
but they keep getting investigated, and having negative communications about
them leaked to the press (which covers it and yet lives). Indeed, the FBI has taken extraordinary
measures to communicate about NOT recommending charges and emailing Congress
about looking at potential new information – both of those were odd and by no
means required by law or precedent. People keep saying that they kill those
that disagree with them, yet millions do so all the time.
At this point, the scandals seem to me to actually be very
impressive, or at least their frequency and their abject failures at
discovering anything bad. Millions of
dollars have been spent to discredit a woman and her family, and yet she keeps
going to work each day, helping September 11th first responders or
AIDS victims or children needing health insurance. They show she is more careful in her delivery
in public than in private, that she is ambitious and very willing to go after
those that are her political opponents, that she is a hard worker and relentless
in moving forward … and they never show she did what she is accused of, or even
the things that her private emails kinda sorta coulda implied she did, if read
with a belief she must be doing something wrong.
Show me some facts, by some reputable sources, and I’m
willing to look more. But I don’t think
there is anything to be found, and I don’t think there ever will be.
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