Slick Hillary: Too Slippery for Her Own Good?

Hillary Clinton likes to pretend that her use of a private email server as Secretary of State was a matter of “personal convenience” only.

That may or may not be true.

    

But what seems plain to me and irrefutable is that by doing so—and, in so doing, managing to circumvent security protocols built into State Department servers—Secretary Clinton needlessly compromised national security and the conduct of international diplomacy for no good reason, at all.

Since, as she has argued, her personal server was intended only for “convenience” and held no classified or super-secret data (which, as we all now know, it certainly did) we’re left to wonder why she didn’t similarly err on the side of personal convenience when she resigned as Secretary of State, and simply allow her server’s data to be transferred in its entirety (after deleting, of course, her truly personal emails — yoga schedules, birthday wishes, etc.) to the State Department for archival access and permanent storage.

I can only think of two reasons, and only one is incompetence. 

The other is criminal malfeasance, since her action in ordering the server to be wiped clearly violates federal statutes regarding the “destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in Federal investigations,” which may also constitute deliberate obstruction of justice, depending on where the FBI’s investigation ultimately leads.

If you’re like me and find yourself thinking this is an awful lot like a weird, unpleasant dream our nation shuddered through nearly 20 years ago, all I can do is to repeat the classic evasion of the ultimate obfuscator: “It depends upon what the meaning of ‘is’ is.”

Kinda does, dudn’t it?

We Won't Get Fooled Again

I never thought I’d say this — much less feel obligated to point it out in public—but Paul Krugman doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.

Not, at least, when it comes to Bernie Sanders and the amazing political revolution he’s helping to inspire nationwide.

“Bernie Sanders’ Political Revolution,” Rolling Stone, 11/18/15

Example? Paul Krugman seems to think, mistakenly, that the Bernie Sanders campaign is about Bernie Sanders. It isn’t, as every Sanders supporter understands and as Bernie himself points out in virtually every public statement he makes.

It’s easy to see, though, how Krugman was misled: The campaign of Paul’s latest political crush and apparent BFF, Hillary Clinton, is most certainly about HER and how qualified SHE is, as she endlessly declares in droning detail about what SHE will do for US.

And it isn’t just Hillary. Her top-down approach is no different, really, than the campaigns of Trump and Ted and Marco and Jeb and Carly and Christy, et al.

Their campaigns are all about THEM and their BIG-ASS IDEAS no less than Hillary’s is — whether the BAI in question is building a really GREAT WALL to keep the boogeymen out or carpet-bombing ISIS into infinity and (presumably) beyond.

The only real difference is in the margins and the marching orders that will inevitably trickle down from their Too-Big-To-Fail benefactors and donors.

Bernie’s campaign is different — from the unkempt silver strands atop the candidate’s balding head down to the bottoms of his well-worn shoes and all points north, south, east and west, left, right, and center.

And I think I know what I’m talking about, because I’ve felt the feeling that Bernie inspires before: 

First, when I was 9 years old, lying on the floor watching the TV image of a bare-headed young president take the oath of office on a frozen January day, as I puzzled over his summons to “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”

I felt it again, eight years later, when that President’s brother, celebrating a seemingly-crucial victory in the 1968 California Primary, jabbed his hair out of his eyes with one hand and waved a final benediction to his supporters with the other: “Now it’s on to Chicago and let’s win there.”

I’ve felt that feeling flicker from time to time in the years since, but it never glowed as brightly as it did during the 2008 campaign of Barack Obama. I was so filled with what I took for holy fire in Obama’s soaring oratory that I was persuaded to believe in Barack Obama​, in the exact same way that Ursuline and Dominican nuns had long ago taught me to believe in Jesus Christ.

I bought into Obama so completely and felt the resonance of his “Yes We Can” campaign ethos so totally that I took the entire year off to serve as a volunteer in Arizona, then New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Oregon, South Dakota, Georgia, and Alabama before finally signing on as a campaign staffer in North Carolina for the general election.

What’s this got to do with anything? Everything.

Three of the smallest Barack Obama supporters I was able to ID in Rapid City, SD, May, 2008.

Because what resonated most in me about Obama 2008 was the candidate’s promise that election day wouldn’t mark the end of the campaign, but its real beginning.

And after the 10,000 or so conversations I’d had with voters in every stop I made, in every state I stayed, I knew Obama was right. Or I knew what I thought he’d told us was right.

Turns out I was wrong. After his inauguration, Obama apparently decided he could do it himself, turning his campaign poetry into legislative prose on the strength of his own considerable intelligence and personal integrity. And that’s where HE went wrong, and we all know it.

Luckily for us, Bernie Sanders is around to pick up Obama’s fallen “Change We Can Believe In” banner and reclaim Obama’s lost Organizer-in-Chief focus.

Bernie understands very well that his campaign isn’t about him. He knows he’s a temporary focal point and catalyst for US (you and me and folks like us) to build a movement around to achieve the change and opportunity WE want and demand of our nation.

One thing we understand to perfection, hard-earned through our collective experience of the last eight years: It isn’t going to come just by voting in a single election or standing up in a single caucus.

But it will come if we don’t allow ourselves to get fooled again, by politics-as-usual hacks like Hillary Clinton and the establishment yes-men (and yes-women) propelling her uninspired and uninspiring candidacy.