My thoughts for the day….
Trusting Hillary
Politifact.com, which rates the veracity of statements by politicians, gives Hillary a high rating for truthfulness: 72% of her public statements are partly true or better. On the other hand, Trump has 70% of his statements rated in the false range, with a whopping 19-20% rated “pants on fire.”
Perhaps the most common pejorative aimed at Hillary Clinton is “I just don’t trust her” or words to that effect. If we are to be honest with ourselves, we need to ask where this originated. This started in the early 90’s when she was First Lady, and the GOP was trying to drag her and Bill through the mud in order to regain access to the White House. Somehow the label has attached itself to her like glue, so much so that even many Democrats accept it.
Hillary is certainly not a perfect person. Who is? And, yes, she has been caught in lies on occasion. But the actual facts do not support a diagnosis of “untrustworthy.” It would be better to apply that accusation to (a) Reagan when he denied the Iran-Contra scandal, (b) GW Bush when he invented the excuse for invading Iraq, (c) the GOP congressional caucuses who obstructed every effort by Obama to improve our economy and who then try to pin the slowness of the recovery on Obama, or (d) Donald Trump.
By comparison, Hillary’s lapses are much more benign and do not involve actual harm to individuals, to the economy, or to national security. Yes, it’s true that a lot of wingnuts still blame her for the deaths in Benghazi in spite of the fact that nine(!!) inquiries and investigations have found no culpability on her part. Where, by the way, was the outcry when 241 marines (and 64 others) were killed in Lebanon in 1983 during Reagan’s administration? Where is the outcry over the thousands of service people lost and maimed in a fruitless and unnecessary war in Iraq started by GW Bush? Where indeed is the outcry for the more than five million emails “lost” by Bush and Cheney in 2007? It is obvious that GOP officials have set a different standard – a double standard – for Hillary (and women in general) than they have for themselves.
Over the past quarter-century, during Hillary’s tenure as First Lady, U.S. Senator, and Secretary of State, Republicans and the extreme Right have tried – always unsuccessfully in terms of factuality – to taint her with some unbelievable lies and accusations. These include: serial killer, racketeering and money laundering, covering up rapes, running an Arkansas drug-smuggling ring, voter fraud, rigging an FBI investigation (despite the FBI director being Republican), manipulating Chelsea for political purposes, creating ISIL and causing Captain Kahn’s death, rigging the debate schedule this year, all sorts of email “crimes,” and a host of other indictments. Hillary must be pretty effective to get the opposing party so riled up that they entertain and pursue all manner of false and slanderous accusations. Unfortunately, it’s like throwing spaghetti sauce against the wall: some of it will stick. Even if false, these accusations sink into the subconscious of low-information voters and create an atmosphere where so many think she’s untrustworthy.
Take a look at (only) some of the attacks, every one of which has been proven FALSE:
- She intentionally lied about the Benghazi attacks, even as they were in progress.
- She refused to provide adequate security for Benghazi. (That was the fault of the cost-cutting GOP Congress.)
- She broke the law by using a private email server. (It was not illegal and was also practiced by Colin Powell and Condi Rice, her predecessors.)
- She deleted 30,000 top-secret emails. (They were personal emails unrelated to secrecy.)
- She will raise taxes on the middle class. (Only on the super-wealthy.)
- She will destroy the environment. (She is the only viable candidate trying to save it.)
One can go on and on listing bogus attacks (Whitewater, Wall Street, Monsanto, Iran deal, etc.) that have actually been leveled at her, but the point is clear: Hillary is the object of unjust hate and vituperation from the right wing, and they will do or say anything to discredit her. Since there is so little actual factual basis in these attacks, they are mostly made up out of whole cloth.
The result of all this calumny is a large portion of our population, including Democrats, who simply accept the myth that Hillary is a crook without questioning the source of the myth. We’ve heard time and again that the two candidates are the most unpopular ones in living memory, and while that is a fair assessment of Trump, we seem to forget that for the majority of the past 24 years, Hillary has been rated as the most admired woman in the world.
If Hillary actually were as Machiavellian as she has been painted by the right wing, to have survived all the inquiries and investigations without being charged would indicate a superhuman ability to manipulate the media and the people around her, along with an ability to consistently present a compassionate face to the public. It is doubtful that even her enemies would wish to grant her that much ability.
The current charges being leveled at her pertain to the FBI investigation into her emails and to her connection with the Clinton Foundation. Let us review these from a factual perspective:
- The FBI director (a Republican) found no reason to indict or otherwise charge Hillary. He stated flatly that she did not lie to the FBI during the investigation, and that only three of the thousands of emails in question had markings indicating they were confidential. The thing here is that the markings were a lower-case “c” in the body of the text, something that is easily missed. Blogger Mark Sumner summed it up best in this article, the essence being that there is no “there” there: www.dailykos.com/...
It should also be noted that Hillary’s comments to the FBI are supposed to be confidential.It is doubtful that anyone in the FBI would leak the comments, so it is apparent that one or more GOP Congresspersons or Senators did the leaking. That in itself constitutes a felony.And, of course, the leaked comments were cherry-picked to put Hillary in the worst possible light. Since then, the notes have been made public, and there is still no indication of any wrongdoing.
- As for the Clinton Foundation, no one disputes the good work it does, and to terminate it would not only cause tremendous organizational disruption, but would condemn thousands – perhaps millions – to death from curable illnesses. First things first: the Foundation needs to be able to continue its good work, whether under the name of Clinton or some other. The Foundation has received top ratings from the Charity Navigator, a non-partisan evaluator, receiving four stars out of a possible four. Hillary has already pledged to dissociate herself and Bill from it in the event of her election, and to do so now would deny them the ability to continue their good work in the event that she loses the election. The Hillary haters are more concerned with smearing Hillary than they are with saving lives. As Secretary of State, Hillary did erect a firewall to keep her from undue favoritism toward Foundation donors. While she did grant audience to about four score donors (as opposed to thousands of other audiences), there is zero evidence that those audiences were anything like a quid-pro-quo. A note on hypocrisy: GOP Senators and Congresspeople all have large donors; do we expect them to refuse to answer the donors’ calls or requests? It’s also noteworthy that during the 2008 campaign when she ran against Obama for the nomination, the issue of her ties to the Foundation was not raised, even by the GOP.
The upshot? Hillary is basically honest and does care for others, especially children and women who need more attention. She has real and sensible solutions to things like climate change, gun legislation, pay equity, minority issues, the economy, and so on. Is she ambitious? Obviously. No one seriously running for President can be otherwise. But the fact that she is female and ambitious is used against her in this misogynistic society in which we live. Were she a male with her same qualifications, the attacks on her would be far less acceptable. We owe it to ourselves and our nation to look at her qualifications objectively and see that – for whatever faults she may have – she is far more fit for the office than her opponent.