Clinton Looks for a Cloth

In her email scandal, Hillary Clinton is consistently breaking a basic rule of PR: if there is bad news, get it all out at once, so you can then beyond it.

Do you remember the Chicago Tylenol murders? Perhaps not. Seven people died from taking store bought Tylenol that had been laced with poison by a serial killer. Within a week after the first death, Tylenol pulled all its product, issued a warning not to use it, ceased advertising, stopped making it in capsule form. They and everyone else starting putting seals on the pill containers. A year or two later, Tylenol was back on top. Quick and smart PR prevented what could have been a permanent association of Tylenol with poisonings.

Hillary Clinton and her campaign have been doing the exact opposite. They keep putting out lame falsehoods minimizing the affair. These then serially get disproven step by agonizing step, keeping it all in the news for one more cycle. Just last week, we learned that her private server was not, in fact, “scrubbed,” or not competently. Her emails were probably recoverable. Friday, we learned that a large new cache of emails regarding Benghazi has been discovered, were missing from her previous “full disclosure.” She is establishing one fact clearly in the public mind: she cannot be trusted.

Why would she do this? Unless …

It is impossible, ultimately, to rule out pure incompetence. Most people find it difficult to admit guilt, even minor guilt. For a similar political PR disaster, we have the example of Watergate, a supposed “third rate burglary” which nevertheless brought down a president.

But frankly, I suspect Watergate was far more than that, there was a reason for all the covering up and stonewalling, and there was more than altruism in Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon. The preemptive pardon ended the investigation. Who knows what it might have turned up?

So too with Hillary. The simplest explanation is that something hiding in those emails would, if known, kill her presidential hopes, if not have her fitted for an orange jumpsuit. Why else would she have opted for a private server in the first place? She is just hoping against hope it isn't found.

The fact that she did not hand over al lthe emails regarding Benghazi specifically may be a clue...