By Tim Baldwin
Political scandals are perhaps common, but the Clintons seems to have a knack for them. Hillary’s latest scandal may cost her the Democratic presidential nomination, or will it? Some theorize that this may help Hillary if she runs for President.
That Hillary would care little about the email scandal is not shocking since most politicians at Hillary’s level mostly feel little repercussion for abusing power. This reality is perhaps one of America’s biggest merits and demerits at the same time. In other words, the USA is so big and powerful that we are relatively isolated and safe from the threats of foreign nations (that is a positive); but those politicians who control this powerful nation are themselves isolated from political scandals. They may move on, but the interests that drove their agenda live on.
Americans want to believe their politicians are honest, but at the end of the day, what power do people have with politicians at Hillary’s level? The answer is debatable. Add to that, if Hillary runs, she will get most Democrat votes, just as a Republican would get loyal-Republican votes, even if he or she is accused of a scandal. Too, plausible deniability is a powerful way of turning the scandal into a positive publicity.
Politics is tricky business.
By Joe Carbonari
Clinton Mail will live on. It’s a classic. If you’d like a little privacy you try to beat the recording system by running on your own. Colin Powell did it before her. It’s great if you can pull it off. You get to clean and polish for history. This gives you greater freedom of action. Total transparency inhibits.
A bit of see-all, tell-all with Hillary Clinton’s past would be entertaining, but we must not. For a diplomat to be effective there must be a bit of theater. The subtleties of human interaction involve much that paper records fail to show. They can be easily misconstrued, or tell a story that needs a lot more context to be told in full. So I understand why they did it and that they may slide by legally.
In the future I would expect the Clintons would use the official system. One would hope that it would provide the best cyber security available. If not, perhaps we ought to set up a system that is “secure” … and maybe we have.
As Saturday Night Live had it, those emails ought to be “clean as a whistle.” If Bill and Hillary are still checking the records, they’d better hurry up. Speculation builds. Rumors spread. Hillary has to take control of the story, but Bill is a better storyteller. It will be interesting to watch.