Whatever it was that Hillary Clinton might have been up to at the State Department, she is not going to be given the automatic benefit of the doubt. Photo: Reuters
I'm not easily startled by much of anything in American political life these days. But I have to say that I watched Hillary Clinton's press conference this week with stunned amazement. Even by the usual standards of Washington theatricals, this was gobsmacking in its sheer temerity.
The Saga of Hillary's Emails, in which official State Department business turned out to have gone through the Clintons' own private email server, is not going to go away. There is far too much sense of deja vu for that. Even the week's silence, followed by an unapologetic attempt to brazen it out, is reminiscent of all those unhappy Clinton adventures of the past.
At worst, it is a reminder of everything the US electorate has suspected about the Clintons as a political phenomenon.
Finally, on Tuesday, we got the brief press conference. This took the form of a scripted statement with a few questions to follow in which the main points of the statement were reiterated verbatim. However odd or irregular the practice may now appear, it was not, Mrs Clinton repeatedly insisted, disallowed under the rules of her office. But she recognised that her decision seemed peculiar in retrospect and so the obvious question had to be addressed: why on earth did she do it? Why would someone holding a great office, presiding over the most sensitive area of government policy involving matters of high diplomacy and national security, decide to conduct all her communications on the same email address with which (she pointed out poignantly) she dealt with the plans for her daughter's wedding and her mother's funeral?
Well, that was just a matter of convenience. She did not want to have to carry "two devices" around, one with her private email and the other with a State Department one. And that's it, apparently: the only attempt at an explanation that the country is going to get. It seems that no one in her professional entourage advised her that a single mobile phone is capable of dealing with more than one email address, or that she might buy a larger handbag.
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This is so preposterous that it would be likely to increase speculation even without Mrs Clinton's new decision to hand over only the 50,000 printed emails which she claims constitute all the official State Department business. (For some reason she has destroyed the other, more personal communications.) In addition, she refuses to hand over the server itself, which could still retain records of those deleted personal emails, for inspection. This insistence on selecting the material that will be divulged and a blanket refusal to countenance any independent investigation is vintage Clinton.
At the very least, it is a risky display of arrogant defiance when you are (in every sense short of official announcement) running for the presidency. At worst, it is a reminder of everything the US electorate has suspected about the Clintons as a political phenomenon. At one point on Tuesday, Mrs Clinton actually uttered the emphatic words, "I did not..." in precisely the tone of voice of her husband's famous mis-statement, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman..."
Bill Clinton used to call himself the "comeback kid" in recognition of his stunning ability to recover from a succession of scandals (sorry, right-wing conspiracies) which would have destroyed most other politicians. Emerging from the depths of Arkansas politics (which has some pretty impressive depths), he managed to reinvent himself and his party's campaigning machine in a way that has influenced electoral life on both sides of the Atlantic.
Originally posted here:
Hillary Clinton's email saga leaves her presidential bid in a sad state