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...

The Manchurian Candidate?

We could tell you what film this still is from, but then we'd have to kill you.

There is an aphorism, “never attribute to malice what can be sufficiently explained by ordinary incompetence.” That may be so; there is much incompetence in the world. But I fear, as I grow older, it is too optimistic. There is also a good deal of malice.

Why did Hillary Clinton use a private server during her time as Secretary of State?

Was it pure incompetence? That is her own defense. She says she wanted it so that she could do all her messaging on one device, one smartphone.

However, it is perfectly possible to have two email accounts on one phone. Did she not know this? Did she ask no one? Given that the Clintons, were tech unsavvy, they managed to get someone to set up a private server for them. Could not get someone to set up a cell phone for them?

And didn’t she know about the need for security? Wouldn’t any one of us know? She was no neophyte to the issue—having spent eight years in the White House. Could nobody in the State Department have ever advised her on security? Moreover, if she was so naïve about security, how is it she took the trouble to have her private server scrubbed before it was turned over to Congress?

Nah. We must rule out incompetence. Although this level of incompetence in itself would disqualify her from the presidency.

No, it must have been cunning. Clinton must have had a motive, from the beginning of her tenure as S of S, for keeping her official business off the record. Not simply the matter of sending classified materials in the open. She had no motive for that. That much must have been collateral damage. Whatever her motive was, it must have been so disreputable that she was ready to accept such collateral damage, and even perhaps letting the public know about it, in order to keep the real secret.

Beyond that, we can only speculate.

What was I doing behind the couch? Oh, just looking for spare change...

The most obvious and perhaps least disreputable thing she might have had in mind was the peddling of influence; using her official capacity to enrich herself. Every politician, after all, seems skilled in it. Fundraising is a constant necessity. Most seem to become lobbyists as soon as they leave office. Theoretically, of course, this is not supposed to happen. Theoretically, there is a bridge for sale in Brooklyn.

But, unfortunately, even that does not seem an adequate explanation. By using a private server, Clinton was concealing what she was doing from the American public. But she was probably revealing it to Russia and China. Both, we have long known, have teams of hackers busily at work. They have cracked US government servers. They no doubt would have found a private server a beginner’s exercise. It is hard to believe the State Department, and the Secretary of State, had never been briefed on this issue.

So Hillary was not doing this for secrecy, exactly.

In fact, if Clinton was trading influence in the usual way, with businesses and lobby groups, she was opening herself up to blackmail by foreign powers.

If so, it would be a very bad idea to elect her president. Was she politically suicidal?

Which leaves, I think, only one possibility. Forgive me if I am missing something here, but doesn’t this mean that Russia and China must have been complicit in whatever she planned to do? If so, they could not blow her cover without blowing their own, and losing a valuable asset. They would not blackmail her, because they had no need to.

It all sounds a little paranoid, but what’s the alternative explanation? What am I missing? As I said, mere stupidity seems ruled out.

Oh, Dmitry, you can press my 'reset' button any time!

And now that I think about it, what other thesis better explains the Obama administration’s foreign policy record? Not just Benghazi, which still seems to make no sense on the information we have: there was that line in the sand that Assad crossed in Syria, and then Putin dramatically riding in and saving his ally from US intervention. Could that have been set up, in whole or in part? There was the bizarre inability to come to a SOFA with Iraq, and all the US troops leaving, obviously counter to both US and Iraqi interests. There was Putin’s apparently breathtakingly risky gamble of annexing the Crimea. Did inside information give him the confidence to try it? There was the deal with Cuba, asking virtually nothing of the Castros at a point when Cuba was on the ropes and probably could have been forced to make concessions. There was the failure to back a significant popular uprising in Iran. There is the current nuclear deal with the Ayatollahs. There’s that time Obama’s mic picked him up saying to Russian President Medvedev, off the record, that he would have more freedom to give Russia what it wanted after his re-election. Can it all have been mere American incompetence?

Of course, to explain all these apparent bungles, our conspiracy theory must extend beyond Clinton herself, to include Obama, and probably John Kerry. On the other hand, if she were a particularly effective operator, she might have crippled the American position badly enough that they had few cards left to play.

Perhaps one day we will know. It would certainly not be the first time in history that a foreign minister or other important courtier turned out to be in the pay of a foreign power. All that ever prevents it is personal ethics, fear of exposure, and pure patriotism. For there is obviously a lot of money to be made.

But in the end, we are left with this: either Hillary Clinton is too stupid to be trusted with the presidency, or she is not.

Pray that she is stupid.

Why Obama Will Not Be Impeached

Objectively, the current scandals surrounding the Obama White House are worse than Watergate. But in important ways the situation is different. Impeachment seems unlikely.

1. Nixon was unlikeable. Obama is likeable.

2. The press hated Nixon. The press loves Obama. The press was primarily responsible for Nixon's resignation.

3. Obama's air of aloofness works in his favour. It is easy for the public to believe he was not personally involved.

4. There was an air of tawdriness about the Watergate scandal that we do not see here, and it more than the actual seriousness of the crimes made the public fed up. The Watergate break-in was indeed a "third-rate burglary," and tactically unnecessary. Margaret Mitchell's late-night ramblings to the press. The ham-fisted obviousness of the Saturday Night Massacre and the gap in the tape. The foul mouths of Nixon and his cronies. The patronizing spectacle of the president saying "I am not a crook." Obama's scandals so far lack that gag factor, that nausea factor.

5. It's been done. Does anyone have the stomach to go through something like that all over again?

No, Obama will limp along, and the Democrats will probably be crushed next election.

Petraeus's Resignation

The timing of David Petraeus’s resignation seems very odd if it does not have to do with the Benghazi mess. Is it really probably that the FBI just happened to uncover something salacious in his private life just after the election and just before he was to testify before Congress? Indeed, is it really likely that the FBI would not spy on the head of the CIA continually simply as a matter of prudence? One does need to be sure that such officials are really on our side, after all…

The affair happened over a year ago. And apparently there were pretty well-known rumours among the press corps at the time that something was going on. So it seems far more likely that the affair itself has been known to people in the administration for some time.

We also know that it used to be the standard procedure for the FBI under Hoover to compile dossiers of dirt on various prominent people, which could be offered to the president if useful to strongarm someone.




It also seems, frankly, a bit unnecessary for him to resign over this. Granted, the affair makes him vulnerable to blackmail. The solution to this is to make it public, as he did, and then he is no longer vulnerable to blackmail. So resigning as well seems--well, unnecessary. Unless Obama wanted his resignation for other reasons.

The intent of bringing this out now cannot be to prevent Petraeus from testifying on Benghazi. He can still be made to testify, and Congress is now sure to subpoena him. The intent also cannot be to make him the scapegoat for the Benghazi affair. If that were the intent, it would have made far more sense to have him resign over Benghazi, and keep this affair a secret.

The most plausible scenario, as I see it, is this: note,  it is clear that someone behind the scenes has been carefully leaking Benghazi material to the press, day by day. The most likely source is the CIA. The administration might have threatened to release the information in order to force Petraeus to make this stop. They might also have wanted to be sure they can control his testimony before Congress.

And Petraeus said, like the great Wellington under similar circumstances, “publish and be damned.”

This seems to fit with everything we know about his past and his character. Their bluff called, they then had to publish, and force his resignation.

But if so, this could clearly backfire. He now is under no constraints of cabinet solidarity in any future testimony. He has given himself an absolutely free hand, no loyalties to betray, nothing to lose and everything to gain by breaking ranks and blowing whistles. He can say whatever he wants to say.

His testimony before Congress, accordingly, could be interesting.

It all sounds as though there is more to come out about Benghazi, and as though it is quite damaging to the administration.