OPINION:
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.” That bit of wisdom is often attributed to Shakespeare, but it’s actually from Sir Walter Scott, and he must have been talking about Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Mrs. Clinton finally answered a few questions Tuesday about her email accounts, and why she didn’t use the prescribed government account like everyone else in the Cabinet, and she made her predicament not better but worse. Bill and Hillary apparently don’t talk to each other often. She said she set up the private email account in part to correspond privately with her husband, and some of the emails she deleted were between the two of them. In a remarkable coincidence of unfortunate timing, the former president’s spokesman had just disclosed to The Wall Street Journal that Bill never uses email to communicate with his wife or anyone else.
Matt McKenna, the spokesman, told The Journal that “the former president, who does use Twitter, has sent a grand total of two emails during his entire life.” Alas, neither was to Hillary. One went to John Glenn, the astronaut and former senator, and the other to American soldiers abroad. It’s apparently another case of what the meaning of is, is.
The gaffe, or whatever the Clintons call such a fib, defeated the elaborate precautions Hillary had set up to protect her from close and hostile questions. Her press conference was held in a room at the United Nations, which is notoriously difficult for reporters to gain access, and was deliberately scheduled on short notice to prevent reporters getting the credentials permitting them to attend the session. Aides carefully selected the reporters permitted to ask questions; the first one, a remarkable concoction of mush and mashed potatoes, asked whether she would be subjected to questions about her emails if she were a man.
Some of the mush and mashed potatoes quickly softened around the edges, and to further queries she said she set up her own Internet server and established a separate email account for her personal use because it was more convenient.
“I fully complied with every rule,” she said. Would she allow an outside arbiter to examine her server since only she knows what she deleted from it? Not a chance. There would be “no turnover of the server,” she said. The controversy is clearly taking a toll. She looked weary and even haggard, and she was impatient with the questions. She dismissed security concerns about her emails, assuring everyone that everything is secure. There’s no reason to invite anyone to scrutinize the server because other than the professional work emails they would find only personal emails about her yoga lessons, arrangements for her mother’s funeral and her daughter’s wedding. And, of course, her correspondence with Bubba. She took “unprecedented” steps to turn over all of her work emails, or the ones she thinks were “work,” but she never used the email account for classified material.
Hillary, like Bill, always asks that everyone take a lot on faith. Neither Clinton ever offers a full explanation for the shady stuff. She says she never did anything wrong but won’t offer evidence, such as a private examination of her Internet server. The Washington Post, which has a long history of devoted partisan defense of Bill and Hillary, observes that “the circus is back in town.” A circus is great fun, but a call to bring in the clowns is a curious way to open a campaign to get back to the White House.
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