It is my purpose of this article to “unpack”, “debunk” or “deconstruct” the constant and pervasive litany of accusations and insinuations against Hillary Clinton. It has become a well known mantra and fundamental to all the Republican attacks in this campaign that the ‘American People do not trust Hillary’.
Few attacks are made against her policy vision, almost all against what she has or has not been transparent about in the past. This distrust has lead to the fact that a candidate with as questionable qualifications as her opponent has has drawn dead even in the polls as of Labor Day. A Google search of “Hillary Clinton Lies” easily reveals multiple sites dedicated to simply listing and cataloguing the “lies” she has supposedly told the American people. The drum beat of accusation and insinuation is constant and unflagging, and is meant to establish by repetition an aura of credibility and non-deniability about these constant accusations. Individual ‘new’ revelations, for example that she may not remember a specific discussion about email confidentiality are framed within this over arching narrative of supposed Clinton dishonesty. This is meant to have the effect of giving the new “revelations” more traction that the single event itself might have, as it is framed as part of a story, a collection of instances and innuendos.
Although the constant drum beat of suggestion and innuendo has undoubtedly taken its toll, I believe that a systematic review of the accusations will show that although long and oft repeated, they really have little or no merit in assessing the overall trustworthiness, veracity, intention and capabilities of Mrs. Clinton. They are a story concocted to imply something about the candidate which, I believe, genuine and fair assessment will find vastly exaggerated if not down right untrue.
Personal disclaimer in order. I believe that given the difference in the positions, visions, the morality, the experience and capability, and, yes, the temperament of the two candidates, I personally believe that the case could be made to vote for Clinton even if she has lied or exaggerated about, say, the circumstances of her landing in Bosnia, whether one or all of her grandparents were immigrants and even exactly how consistently she characterized the motivations of the attackers of our consulate in Benghazi during the first hours and days, pr even her email server. However I understand that the implications of dishonesty and untrustworthiness have stuck, so I think it worth the time to try, through my reading of publicly available sources (the only ones I have access to), and my own reasoning to debunk or at least place into context the vast attempt which has been made to, in my judgement, recycle a collection of old accusations to try to make some case where, really, there is none.
There is no lack of availability to the collections of accusations.
1. She reported landing on the tarmac in Bosnia under sniper fire, when in fact the video proves her landing was completely peaceful.
2. She left the White House “dead broke” when in fact she and President Clinton had resources and were soon very wealthy.
3. She claimed that her grandparents were all immigrants when in fact only one was an immigrant.
4. She was named for Sir Edmund Hillary when in fact she was born before he climbed Everest.(Sounds like something her mother might have told her when she was a little girl to motivate her, but it is hard to ascertain that now)
5. She claimed she tried to join the Marines when it appears that at the most she considered joining the Army.
6. She accused Trump of making “all” his products overseas, when in fact he makes some products in the US.( Fair enough, he makes “many or most” of his products overseas.)
7. She stated that whites are three times as likely to get a mortgage as non-whites. (The truth is that African -Americans are almost three times more likely to be rejected for a mortgage, but that is mathematically not exactly the same, since whites are only about 10% ‘more likely’ to get a mortgage.)
8. She claimed that under the Affordable Care Act health care costs are lower than they have been in fifty years. (In fact, the GROWTH of health care costs is the lowest it has been in fifty years, but the increase is still there)
9. She said “Mike Pence “slashed” education funds for his state. (Fair enough, he didn’t slash them. He cut the INCREASE in education funding in half from what it’s previous ten year average had been, making Indiana the 35th state of the union in education spending. “Slash” was an exaggeration.)
10. She exaggerated her role in the Northern Ireland peace talks, saying she was instrumental when the actual negotiators described her as peripheral.
11. In the Whitewater scandal from the early 1980s, several people were indicted and served probation and time for a shady real estate deal. The Clintons lost money in that deal, but were accused by some of using their political influence to gain financial advantages for some of the players. The Clintons were never charged with a crime but the implication has many times been made they should have been.
12. Finally, the two largest accusations. Benghazi, the accusation being that Hillary was responsible for grossly negligent mismanagement of a deteriorating security situation and later lied to the families of the fallen and the American people about it. (will treat in some depth below), and
13. She maintained her private email server illegally and compromised national security by doing so.
There are few really trivial ones which can find combing the email lists, (She apparently expressed she had concerns that Chelsea had been riding her bike on September 11 when she knew she was safe at home), but the twelve accusations and innuendos above are the main stuff of attack.
Of the Baker’s dozen listed above, again, all taken from prominent sites seeking to defame Clinton, several are, in my opinion, trivial enough to dismiss. Does it really matter if she says she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary? One can easily imagine she heard that somewhere as a child, can’t one? Parents tell their children things like that to motivate them. I don’t think this makes Hillary a liar, really, do you?
Is it really a deal breaker if when she speaks of her grandparent’s immigrant experience, only one was an actual immigrant, the others being children of immigrants?
Does it really matter that she said whites were three times as likely to get a mortgage when she really meant, correctly, that blacks are three times as likely to be refused one? Other “lies” listed on these most prominent sites are, admittedly, not completely accurate, but are they really lies? Pence didn’t “slash” education, true. He cut its growth in half. Fair enough. Trump doesn’t make “all” his products abroad, perhaps just most of them. The Affordable Care Act decreased the rate of growth of health care spending more than any time in fifty years, but health care costs still grow. Do these make her the great liar she is purported to be?
I think not.
So, given that the litany of “7, 10, 12 or 20 major lies” is clearly nonsense, still there are some serious concerns with things she has said which might not bear intense scrutiny. I will focus on attempting to “Debunk, unpack or deconstruct” the four most often cited and potentially concerning accused or suggested lies. The accusations, and my response follow.
#1. The Arrival in Tuzla. In her 2008 campaign against then Senator Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton attempted to draw a distinction in her record of service by citing her experience in travel to troubled areas and said that she had “landed in Bosnia” under sniper fire. Review of the video and memories of others shows that she actually landed in peaceful situation and was greeted by a child with flowers. She later had to apologize for this miss-statement. Donald Trump has cited this episode several times as an example of her being a “world class liar”.
Let’s see if we can shed some light and perspective on this episode.
Review of the reports from the time and the statements made demonstrates the following:
Hillary Clinton made a trip to Bosnia in 1996. From the Washington Post story of the time, we see that one of the speech writers on the flight with her reported (in her words):
“I was on the plane with then First Lady Hillary Clinton for the trip from Germany into Bosnia in 1996. We were put on a C-17 — a plane capable of steep ascents and descents — precisely because we were flying into what was considered a combat zone. We were issued flak jackets for the final leg because of possible sniper fire near Tuzla. As an additional precaution, the First Lady and Chelsea were moved to the armored cockpit for the descent into Tuzla. We were told that a welcoming ceremony on the tarmac might be canceled because of sniper fire in the hills surrounding the air strip. From Tuzla, Hillary flew to two outposts in Bosnia with gunships escorting her helicopter”
Another witness, a diplomat experienced in Bosnia at the time reported a briefing that the then First Lady received as follows.
“I found myself almost rolling my eyes as the briefer went on and on about the possibility of snipers and what the plan of action would be (essentially, making a beeline to the armored vehicles parked nearby). As the briefing continued for what seemed like half an hour, one of the journalists, a little worried, asked me if it was going to be that dangerous. I explained I was not going to contradict the briefer, but, whispering, I told him I seriously doubted we would encounter any such threat. For heaven’s sake, I explained, it was a U.S. military base with thousands of troops, where there had not been a single such incident in the three months they had set up camp. He was relieved, but those more attentively listening to the briefer were not, as they contemplated that soon they could be running for their lives across an open tarmac a la “sniper alley” in Sarajevo.
Thus, we have two witnesses who reported at the time that Hillary Clinton and her party were briefed at some length regarding the possibility and presence of snipers active in the area and that they were kept in an armored cockpit and issued flak jackets. As it turned out, threats of snipers were clearly exaggerated, and the arrival was safe and welcoming.
Now, when she recalled the episode some twelve years later, in 2008, Hillary Clinton at first recalled that she had “landed under sniper fire”. Video shows she didn’t and she is thus labelled a ‘world class liar’.
Isn’t it rather possible, just possible, that she may have remembered what was by several reports a threat taken seriously enough to prompt an extended briefing about sniper fire? Isn’t it possible that this threat, probably not routine for anyone, even a First Lady, took a higher place in her memory, twelve years later, than perhaps the subsequent events might have justified? Especially given that her only child was with her? Isn’t that explanation possible?
Hillary Clinton landed in Tuzla in 1996 after being briefed extensively about the possibility of sniper fire. This is confirmed by more than one concurrent witness. She remembered, when recalling the incident twelve years later, the sniper, even though the warned of fire had never actually materialized. A memory reported with a little exaggeration of the danger, to her own advantage. Yes, perhaps. A “world class liar”? Ask yourself. Being fair.
2. The Whitewater Scandal. The accusation is that in participating in a complicated land deal, the Clintons and several co-investors were involved with some shady and mysterious transactions, and that Bill Clinton used his political clout as Governor to obtain favorable financing for some of the investors.
I am not sure it is worth the time to attempt to disentangle and go through a point by point rebuttal. Even at the time few could really figure out what the issue was. This is so long ago, so obtuse and, since there was never an indictment made despite several investigations that it really shouldn’t even count as innuendo, but for those who want the details, there is a long account available.
For the sake of the present discussion, I would just observe the following two points.
One, the Clintons themselves were never prosecuted, after three separate inquiries found insufficient evidence linking them with the criminal conduct of others related to the land deal, and,
Secondly, on April 22, 1994, Hillary Clinton gave an unusual press conference under a portrait of Abraham Lincoln in the State Dining Room of the White House, to address questions on both Whitewater and the cattle futures controversy; it was broadcast live on several networks. In it, she claimed that the Clintons had a passive role in the Whitewater venture and had committed no wrongdoing, but admitted that her explanations had been vague. She said that she no longer opposed appointing a special prosecutor to investigate the matter. Afterwards, she won media praise for the manner in which she conducted herself during the press conference. Time called her “open, candid, but above all unflappable…the real message was her attitude and her poise. The confiding tone and relaxed body language…immediately drew approving reviews”.
Considering the multiplicity of the deals, bankruptcies and suits which Mr. Trump is a part of, this issue should not be even considered in the equation. It should be noted, however, that the innuendo continues to be that the Clintons must have pulled off some nefarious criminal activity that they ‘got away with’. This implication colors all future stories. Perhaps as people who say they respect the rule of law, the fact that innocent until proven guilty should apply at least to the extent of innocent until EVEN CHARGED!
Let’s get to the ONLY two ‘real’ issues.
#3. Benghazi. The accusation is that the consulate in Benghazi was left woefully underdefended, given the deteriorating security situation in the region, that repeated calls for help were ignored and unheeded, that when the event occurred the response was incompetent and inadequate, but more to the point of Hillary’s trustworthiness, the accusation is that she attempted to cover up the true nature of the event, declined to call it terrorism, blamed it, deviously, on an an-Islamic video and “lied” to families about the true nature of the attack. She is accused of callousness and playing politics with American lives. Let us examine the event.
The circumstances surrounding these events, the placement, position, construction and defense of the Consulate in Benghazi, was well as its role and its relationship with the Embassy in Tripoli; the reasons we were in Libya in the first place, and the circumstances of Gaddafi’s fall; the intelligence assessments and responses to the now obviously fluid and deteriorating security of the Benghazi outpost, the distribution of security assets, relationships with local militias charged with defense and our contingency planning regarding possible risks are have all been investigated several times . Nine times, as a matter of fact. The connection if any between the apparently planned September 11 assault and a concurrent international furor over a video released that day, the details of what, when and by whom reports were made to the American people and what Secretary Clinton said to the families of the fallen have been investigated, debated and questioned both privately and publicly, officially and informally, now for nearly four years. They are complex and I don’t know that they can be completely disentangled in a few paragraphs here.
One point, however, deserves making. This point was made by Clinton at the beginning of her several hours of testimony, but bears, in my mind, repeating and elaborating here. The four Americans who died in the attack in Benghazi were not the first Americans to die by terrorist assault. Two hundred and forty Marines died in a truck bombing in Beirut under President Reagan ; and three thousand died in the Twin Towers under President Bush. Dozens died in the bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, nineteen in the Khobar towers , seventeen in the bombing of the Cole .
But while this was by no means the first, and certainly by no means the largest loss of life in terrorist attacks, it is to my memory the first time it has become used as a political attack. People asked whether the security of the Marine compounds appeared to be lax.Some publically wondered whether the Bush administration responded enough to the message that Al Qaeda planned an attack on US soil or that there were pilots who just wanted to learn to fly, not to land. Recommendations were later made, and put into place to address the fact that, as was said in the passive voice the “dots were not connected”. Unless I missed it, however, there were not eight investigations during which the security apparatus and intelligence community and national political leaders were publicly grilled to find and demonstrate fault. Not for 9/11, not for Beirut, not for the Embassies, the Khobar Towers, or the Cole. So, while it is certainly reasonable, and in fact necessary to dissect the event of Benghazi, to conduct the operational analyses and learn the lessons, it should be noted that the “review” of the events of Benghazi is unique both in its political targeting, and its vitriol, in any investigation in my memory. That is true, even though the casualties of this tragic event, in number, remain fewer than 1/10th of one percent of the number of casualties in other events which received non-personal and non-political scrutiny.
That being said, let us examine the record.
The most recent, most comprehensive, and, arguably, most politically motivated investigation was recently chaired by Trey Gowdy, not a noted Clinton supporter. The conclusions of this Republican, and admitted politically motivated committee regarding culpability, were summarized on page one of the 800 page report with the following key points:
1)Both the President and the Secretary of Defense ordered the deployment of military assets.
2)A White House meeting was convened but apparently split focus with the reactions to the YouTube Video. Despite there being “no mention’ and “virtually no discussion” of the video by those actually on the ground, half of the action items developed at the meeting referred to the video. This may not have seemed so out of place, of such low yield, or so politically motivated at the time as seems to be seen through the eyes of critics today. From a few sections further in this, again, Republican lead committee report,
“On September 10, 2012, the day Stevens arrived in Benghazi, American military forces were reminded to “do everything possible to protect the American people, both at home and abroad.” That day the President conducted a conference call with key national security principals to discuss the steps taken to protect U.S. persons and facilities abroad and force protection.
Leon E. Panetta, Secretary of Defense, one of the conference call participants acknowledged they were already tracking an inflammatory anti-Muslim video that was circulating on the Internet and inciting anger across the Middle East against the United States” and that they braced for demonstrations in Cairo and elsewhere across the region.” (These facts, I remind you, are from the report of Trey Gowdy’s Republican lead committee)
Due to the Arab Spring, it was a time of heightened concern for that region in general. In particular, the discussion focused on several areas including Cairo, Tripoli, Tunis, Khartoum, and Sana’a, due to intelligence indicating potential demonstrations could erupt in those areas.
Based on the September 10 conference call with national security principals and the President, the Defense Department placed its forces on“higher” alert because of the potential for what could happen.” Yet, the intelligence and the call for a “heightened alert” did not cause any actual adjustment in its posture for assets that could respond to a crisis in North Africa. Some assets were in the middle of training exercises, and others were in the middle of inspections. No fighter jets or tankers were placed on a “heightened alert” status.
SEPTEMBER 11, 2012
In the hours preceding the attacks in Benghazi , a protest of approximately 2,000 demonstrators assembled outside the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt.
Cairo is some 600 miles east of Benghazi. Plans for a demonstration in Cairo first began to ocoalesce in late August 2012 with the designated terrorist organization, Jamaa Islamiya, calling upon its supporters to protest the continued incarceration of its leader, Sheikh Omaar abdel Rahman, also known as the “Blind Sheik.”Rahman is serving a life prison sentence for his role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.Additionally, in the days preceding the September 11 demonstration in Cairo, an Arabic version of a trailer for a little known anti-Islamic film, produced in the United States , was posted on YouTube.
We can wonder now, why a clearer differentiation was not made at the time between a pre-planned attack on the Benghazi compound and the more spontaneous outbreaks of region wide protest over the film, however it is not inconceivable that the conflation of the two was not political but really had to do with the so called Fog of War.
In any event, the committee’s report goes on to analyze the White House meeting.
3)Troop deployment was made contingent upon Libyan state agreement and direction to either Tripoli or Benghazi.
4) Further, despite the early recommendation to be at highest alert, the entire security apparatus was not present at the meeting due to the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff being at a diplomatic dinner.
5) Military assets did not meet timelines, in some cases sitting ready to go for hours without orders.
6) Libyan forces with whom the CIA and State Department had developed relationships did not come to the rescue of the compound.
Further review of the Benghazi committee reports show that over both the long run and in the weeks, days and hours leading up to the attack, there are several areas in which complex events negatively impacted the security situation. The conclusions of the report discuss a failure of intelligence. One indication of the lack of real time intelligence is the fact that Ambassador Stevens, upon receiving a security briefing after having arrived in Benghazi was seen as ‘surprised at how far the security situation had deteriorated’, according to one of the briefers. Other examples include the fact that security which at been provided by one Libyan militia up until two days before Ambassador Steven’s return to Benghazi was suddenly withdrawn over criticism of the US government regarding a candidate which the militia thought was being supported in national elections. Another example is that security had been decreased in Tripoli, the capital of Libya where the actual American Embassy stands, so there were no extra agents to send to the smaller consulate in Benghazi.
I will not further detail my selection of portions of this report, it is readily available on line. I will just observe that despite a strong political motivation to do so, the committee specifically could not find culpability or bad faith in the way the Secretary of State handled the event.
As far as what the Secretary told the American people, here is the official GOP conclusion.
“Immediately after the attack, intelligence about who carried it out and why was contradictory, the report found. That led Susan Rice, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, to inaccurately assert that the attack had evolved from a protest, when in fact there had been no protest.
“But it was intelligence analysts, not political appointees, who made the wrong call, the committee found. The report did not conclude that Rice or any other government official acted in bad faith or intentionally misled the American people.”
As far as Clintons supposed mischaracterization of the event as not being a terrorist event,
“She never said that that Benghazi attacks were due to the video. Clinton has criticized terrorism. Clinton has criticized the video. Clinton has criticized protests and violence against US embassies due to the video. She never said the Benghazi attack was due to the film. She mentions the film and Benghazi in the same speech, but doesn’t blame one on the other.”
The results of our clearly, admittedly inadequate military preparation for the growing security threat in Benghazi, and failure to respond effectively in real time are a real tragedy, and one which we can all as Americans hope never occurs again. One would hope, that with the 9 investigations into the event, enough has been learned to try to assure such does not occur again. What is also clear is that the attempt to politicize this event is both unprecedented, and ineffective. Secretary Clinton’s role in Benghazi has been investigated intensively many times, some of which demonstrably with an agenda to take her down. There has never been a conclusion made in any of the official reports that she was in any way culpable.
Would Republican heroes, Bush and Reagan withstand the same level of scrutiny were, say, the wisdom of the placement of Marines in Beirut, or the addressing of the threat by Ben Laden, or the planning for a post invasion Iraq subjected to eight investigations from a hostile Congress? One wonders. It is said politics ends at the shores. I wonder how much our current Republican congress has embraced that notion.
4. The Email ‘Scandal’. Certainly, this is the accusation which has the most traction, and in large measure because there is the semblance of a “there” there.
To be fair, even the most dyed in the wool Hillary Clinton supporter has to concede that,
(1) the choice of a personal email address for government business is on its face problematic,
(2) that the use of such a server for classified or sensitive information puts that information at more risk, perhaps than a government server would.
(I say perhaps because there are now multiple instances in which the state department itself, a major political party, and even major industry servers have been hacked. It may well be, ironically, that secrets were just as safe or safer in Hillary’s basement than they would be on a government server, but then at least she would not be to blame!),
(3) when the use of such a server came to light she was not as prescient about the risks to her campaign and reputation as she should have been, and that she did not get out in front of the story quickly enough or transparently enough, and finally
(4) she has consistently attempted to minimize, belittle, dismiss and rationalize criticism of her actions with regard to the server.
These are all grievous faults. And “grievously has Caesar paid for them”! Were there to have been no Clinton email server controversy, the likelihood is that Republicans would be struggling to prevent a 50 state sweep, not being ‘dead even’ on Labor Day. It is a problem, it is a wound, it is a concern.
But before addressing this concern, though, please take at least take a moment an review my arguments that the Context of supposed Clinton Dishonesty into which this event has been placed is, upon scrutiny as outlined above, not really fair, and not really accurate. Then let’s proceed.
Secretary Clinton has many times acknowledged that his was an error, and that she would not make a similar error again.
James Comey, originally appointed to the Justice Department as Deputy attorney general by George W. Bush, appointed FBI director by President Obama. He was, at least until he disagree with the desired Republican outcome widely perceived to be fair.
Taking all into consideration, and with his reasons clearly articulated, the highest law enforcement official in the land put his reputation on the line to state that there was no basis for a criminal prosecution of the
Secretary. To fair minded Americans, it seems to me, that has to mean something. This even considering the number of ‘I do not recalls’.
It is completely valid to wonder, and pains even those of us who are Clinton supporters, to realize that having a private Email invited unwanted scrutiny and showed less than stellar judgment. It was, one has to agree, in Director Comey’s words, “careless’, perhaps even “extremely careless”, at least with regard to threat assessment. That is a concern for a US president, even the most die-hard Clinton supporter has to concede. And perfectly fair, then, to ask the American voter, taking each part of the public record available for both candidates, to consider their history of judgment.
Still, the fact remains, that in the judgment of the top law enforcement officer in the land, one respected enough to have been appointed by both democratic and republican presidents to the highest offices in law enforcement, Hillary Clinton is not a criminal.
It remains ironic that those who claim to be most in favor of “law and order” are happy to ignore law and order when they don’t agree with it. “Lock her up”, was the most often articulated platform of the Republican party. What is it called when you “lock up” someone who has never been charged, much less convicted of a crime? It is called kidnapping. That is a felony and in some states, I believe, was a capital offense. If the party of ‘law and order’ is calling for felonious assault on the freedom of someone who has never been charged or indicted, what does that tell you about the sincerity of their wish for real law and real order?
There continues to this day to be attempts to find some hidden ‘smoking gun’, close to a year and well over 30,000 emails later. There appears, at least after a year of intense scrutiny, to be none.
So finally, those of us who passionately support Hillary Clinton, and who wish to ask those who don’t to at least take a long, hard look again at the two candidates are left with four questions.
(1) Why is it that Hillary Clinton cannot consistently represent herself with the transparency, and capacity to accept responsibility for fault, which would lead others to see her as honest, trustworthy, and likely to learn from rather than repeat mistakes regarding transparency.
(2) Do those instances in which Clinton has either misperceived a threat, or presented herself or her decisions in such a way as to minimize her own culpability really constitute threats to her ability to govern effectively?
I cannot answer these first two concerns definitively. I would observe that taking responsibility for one’s errors, and public mea culpas tend not to be the stock in trade of most politicians, perhaps doubting oneself publicly is not a good survival tactile for them.I would also make one additional observation, based on my experience as a physician and that is this. As physicians, we do sometimes make errors, and errors which hurt people. If we could not, in front of our peers and teachers, admit and dissect our mistakes, we could not become better. This is the culture of the medical “mortality and morbidity rounds”. However, for the longest segment of our history, we have known that if we make these admissions of error too publicly, or to the wrong ears, we are likely to be sued. It is a dilemma. How do we privately learn from our errors without giving fodder to those waiting to take advantage, sometimes unfair advantage, of our honesty.
My guess, and it is just a guess, perhaps just something I wish to believe, is that Secretary Clinton has dissected every step in the error of her email saga, just as I am sure she has with the run up to the attacks on the compound in Benghazi. The current political climate, I think a fair person may agree, is not conducive to airing one’s errors in public. Still, even as in medicine, where the public stance has now shifting to early public acknowledgement and apology for error, it may have been a better time for the Secretary to have clearly and unequivocally acknowledged poor judgment, ‘confessed’ the error, and taken her chances with the sympathies of the press and public. Should she lose this election for failing to do so, it will be a sad irony for someone who worked hard on the Watergate hearings, where an otherwise remarkably skilled leader compromised his legacy for failure to quickly admit error and wrong doing. I hope that does not become the case, and would ask the reader to indulge be a few more moments of time in review of the next two finishing concerns we must ask ourselves.
(3) How do Hillary Clinton’s supposed ‘lies or concealments’ stack up against those of prior leaders? How does “email gate” stack up against Johnson’s Gulf of Tonkin Watergate, or IranContra, or the the run up to the war in Iraq? Or even the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which she handled, I think with real dignity? Even if she has mischaracterized her mis-remembered that “C” meant classified on at least three documents, where does this place her in the hierarchy of presidential dishonesty?
(4) Finally, this is, as we keep hearing a “Binary” election. I suppose, if Hillary Clinton were running against liberal Giants of the past, Clinton versus Roosevelt, Clinton versus Kennedy, Clinton versus Carter, or even against Clinton 42, Obama, or even Gore, Biden or Kerry, we might consider how important these, in my view, if not white, then fairly pale “lies” are. Even if she were running against a frighteningly practical, philosophically open, and central leaning Republican, one could at least ask the question. But running against Donald Trump?
I would ask the reader, please, in the name, not just of our future as a nation, but in the name of our tradition of giving people a fair and decent hearing, perhaps one of our best American values. Please examine the innuendos, the dark suggestions, the implications, the drum beat supposed accusation of fraud, lying, dishonest, “crookedness”, examine them in the light of the real data. I think for all the reasons outlined above, a fair consideration of the record will show that Hillary Clinton is honest enough and trustworthy enough that she should be considered, with respect to her opponent, not on this continued drum beat of suggestion, but rather on the merits of their positions, visions and arguments, and capabilities.
Because, in the long run, that is what our elections are supposed to be about.
Respectfully proposed,
Dr. Richard Nierenberg