A “CLASSIC WASHINGTON OMELETTE”A “CLASSIC WASHINGTON OMELETTE”
He who permits himself to tell a lie once finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual. He tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world’s believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions.
—Thomas Jefferson
In the past, Hillary had always managed to wriggle out of tight places, and many of her supporters on the Left were rooting for her to pull off another Houdini act.
Her followers had good reason to believe Hillary would succeed. After all, the Clintons were past masters at weathering scandals, from the trivial (revelations that the Clintons took a tax deduction on Bill’s donated underwear) to the consequential (an impeachment trial for lying under oath about Bill’s sexual relationship with Monica Lewinsky).
“The Clintons have been sent off to their certain doom more times than Tyrion Lannister,” wrote Matt Latimer, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush. “Yet whatever the storm—from blue dresses to funny money from China to an actual impeachment trial—Bill and Hillary are this generation’s Six-Million Dollar Man (and Woman). They always rebuild faster, stronger, and a hell of a lot richer than ever.”
The Clintons’ battle-tested strategy was simple: wait out the first wave of attacks, then step forward and say there’s nothing new.
“Republicans trying to turn the Benghazi attacks into a scandal that taints Hillary Clinton’s chances at a 2016 presidential run must realize that scandals don’t weaken Hillary Clinton,” left-wing scourge Bill Maher sounded off on his cable TV show. “They only make her stronger. Travelgate, the Rose Law Firm, Whitewater, Vince Foster, Monica Lewinsky. . . . Hillary eats scandals for breakfast.”
But this time it appeared that the scandals might be consuming Hillary, rather than the other way around.
Because this time was different.
During Hillary’s previous scandals, she had not occupied a public office. “Co-president” was a nickname, not an official title. As secretary of state, however, she had been confirmed by the U.S. Senate. She held a great public trust. She was the face of America around the world, the first among equals in the president’s cabinet, and the fourth in the presidential line of succession.
And now she was asking Americans to trust her and elect her as their president.
“Hillary Clinton,” wrote Michael Barone, author of The Almanac of American Politics, “is in a different position. She is a candidate . . . and candidates are easily dispensed with, as former Senator Gary Hart learned when the photos of him sailing on the ‘Monkey Business’ appeared in May 1987 when he was seeking the Democratic nomination for president. His staffers vowed he would hold onto his support, but it wasn’t his to hold on to. He quickly withdrew and faded from view.”
Turning a $1,000 bet on cattle futures into $100,000 when you were the first lady of Arkansas was one thing; turning the office of the U.S. secretary of state into a money machine for your husband, your relatives, and your family’s foundation was something else.
If you believed the polls, Hillary’s cheating and chicanery were beginning to erode her reputation among potential voters. According to a Quinnipiac poll that was conducted in the spring of 2015, 61 percent of independent voters—the voters she needed to win the White House—did not think Hillary was honest.
A month later, Quinnipiac did a poll of Democratic voters and came up with pretty much the same result: a majority—53 percent—did not feel that Hillary was “honest and trustworthy.”
Yet another poll, this one conducted by the Associated Press and GfK, one of the world’s largest marketing research organizations, found that a majority of people did not find Hillary inspiring and likeable.
And the rapid drop in Hillary’s “favorability” ratings continued throughout the summer months and into the fall, dimming her prospects of capturing the White House.
For instance, another Quinnipiac University poll found that Hillary would lose Colorado by nine points in a matchup against Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, and that she would lose Iowa by at least six points to Walker, former Florida governor Jeb Bush, and Senator Marco Rubio.
When voters were asked if Hillary “cares about the needs and problems of people like you or not,” 57 percent of respondents in Colorado replied that she did not.
In late July, Niall Stanage, associate editor of the political paper the Hill, published a story about the mounting fear among Democratic insiders that Hillary was a deeply flawed candidate who could lose to a Republican challenger in 2016. And Charlie Cook, the highly respected political analyst and editor and publisher of The Cook Political Report, wrote a piece for National Journal titled “Is Clinton’s Tide Shifting?”
“Up until now,” Cook wrote, “the controversy regarding then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private email server has been one that has consumed only those who fit into one or more of the following categories: conservative Republicans, regular Fox News–watchers, conservative talk-radio listeners, or Clinton-haters (both professional and amateur). . . .
“The most recent development—that the inspector general of the intelligence community found that in a sample of 40 e-mails provided by Clinton from her server, four (or 10 percent) included classified material—potentially puts a different twist on things. . . . this story would seem to reinforce critics’ claims that the Clintons don’t play by the rules.”
Going one step further, Gabriel Schoenfeld, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., asserted: “The bad news for Team Hillary is that this issue [using her private e-mail server for classified material] is going to fester. Indeed, over the next months, given the law, precedent and facts already on the record, the imbroglio holds the potential to kill her candidacy.”
“We . . . see a pattern of financial transactions involving the Clintons that occurred contemporaneous with favorable U.S. policy decisions benefiting those providing the funds,” Peter Schweizer noted. “During Hillary’s years of public service, the Clintons have conducted or facilitated hundreds of large transactions [with foreigners]. Some of these transactions have put millions in their own pockets.”
Skeptics raised an objection.
They said the evidence of wrongdoing by Hillary was purely circumstantial; no one had produced proof that she had provided favors in return for speaking fees or donations to the Clinton Foundation.
“It is highly unlikely that very much of what Schweizer alleges will stick, if only because that classic Washington omelette made of equal parts policy and political reasons can never be unmade once it’s cooked,” wrote one of the skeptics, Michael Hirsh. “Especially among the uber-cautious Clintons, you’ll never find the smoking ingredient; no one will ever be caught saying, ‘Let’s make a policy decision for Bill’s donors.’”
The skeptics demanded a smoking gun.
They were demanding hard evidence.
Something on paper.
Like a document or a sworn affidavit or . . . an e-mail.
But Hillary had wiped her private e-mail server clean. She had destroyed half of all her e-mail communications while she was secretary of state.
She had made it all but impossible to find a smoking gun.
Or had she?