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What You Say, Not What You Do
All things act according to their nature. You must keep this truism in mind when reading anything about the Clintons:
While media coverage has focused on a half-dozen of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s personal emails containing sensitive intelligence, the total number of her private emails identified by an ongoing State Department review as having contained classified data has ballooned to 60, officials told The Washington Times.
That figure is current through the end of July and is likely to grow as officials wade through a total of 30,000 work-related emails that passed through her personal email server, officials said. The process is expected to take months.
It won’t matter. Irrefutable proof could be obtained that Hillary Clinton had accidentally CC’d in the Chinese Ambassador with America’s latest encryption algorithms and nothing would happen. Attachments could be found containing images of the former First Lady hunting lions in the African bush and nothing would happen. An accidental “reply all” might have given Vladimir Putin detailed insights into US strategy in the Crimea – hint: surrender! – and still nothing would happen. Bill Clinton was the teflon president, and the Wife of Bill is the teflon candidate.
This overwhelming nothingness, this deafening silence, is the fault of the media only up to a point. The conceit of armchair political strategists notwithstanding, the electorate is not so witless as to believe everything they see on television. The MSM can twist, fudge, and adjust, but it has not yet acquired the power of mind control.
The Clintons have littered the political landscape with nearly a quarter century’s worth of scandals, corruptions, and double dealings. Only the very young or the very inattentive can plead ignorance about the nature of Clintonism. The tires have been kicked very firmly and the Pinto has toppled over. If the deal still makes the sale, who’s fault is it really? A sucker and his freedoms are soon parted.
At the heart of the e-mail scandal is a new truism: Actions don’t matter in modern American politics. Gross incompetence did nothing to impair the re-election of Barack Obama. A crippling national debt and deficit seem like an afterthought in the media cycle. The world of objectively demonstrable action is taken to be nothing more than shadows on the wall. The deeds no longer matter. What does matter are certain words, as they exist in the mind of the voter.
Now imagine if Hillary Clinton was to accidentally drop the n-word. She would have her defenders – her payroll is mighty large and mighty long – but if anything could destroy the good ship Clinton once and for all that might be it. When Donald Trump said Megyn Kelly had “blood coming out of her wherever,” the words were imbued with an electrified meaning. Had the world’s most famous billionaire inflicted actual physical harm on Fox News’ most famous broadcaster, I doubt the outcry would have been much worse.
The modern politician — unlike his predecessor from even a generation ago — doesn’t really care what he or she is caught doing. Taking drugs? Marion Barry survived and thrived after that video surfaced. Manslaughter? Chappaquiddick. Extra martial affairs? The list is too long to count. Scandals that once destroyed careers and toppled governments today are not just survivable but easily manageable.
What the modern politician is terrified of doing is uttering an incorrect thought. Words that were once innocuous are today career-killers. Vague expressions are easily interpreted as “dog-whistles” to the lunatic fringe. Those who seek high office are in the tightest of verbal straight jackets. This is reflected in the strange paradox of tongue tied politicians with loose personal lives. They know perfectly well where the greatest risk lies.
A greater degree of cynicism among the electorate doesn’t fully explain this paradox. It tells us why voters care less about actions, but not why we care more about words. There has been a shift in judgment — not simply in standards but in the method of judgment as well — in American culture. Actions were once the paramount standard. Did you tell a lie? Did you mow the lawn? Did you save the drowning child?
Today, your actions pale in significance to your emotional intentions. I really wanted to tell the truth. I truly felt that mowing the lawn was a good idea. I grieve for the loss of the child. If we feel the right feelings, then we are good people. Using an evil word betrays evils feelings. This is why the gaffe is so potent an element in political discourse, it’s an alleged glimpse into the soul of the speaker. Someone might do the right thing out of social obligation. No one feels the right thing of social obligation.
Hillary Clinton has played the game long enough to keep her soul very well hidden.
Published in General
“It won’t matter. Irrefutable proof could be obtained that Hillary Clinton had accidentally CC’d in the Chinese Ambassador with America’s latest encryption algorithms and nothing would happen.
The Clintons have littered the political landscape with nearly a quarter century’s worth of scandals, corruptions and double dealings. Only the very young or the very inattentive can plead ignorance about the nature of Clintonism.”
Well written, Mr. Anderson. We are seeing and have seen the same thing repeatedly. There is a segment of the powerful which won’t indict Hillary! because she is theirs. So if brazen is required to protect Hillary!, brazen it is.
There is another segment that’s scared of the first segment. The Republican establishment falls into this later class.
Can you imagine what would have happened if this was a Republican administration?
One might say a Republican President would already have been impeached. However, it would not have gotten that far. Within the first few hours of a Republican cabinet member using a private email server, half a dozen civil servants would have hit their Bob Woodward speed dial buttons. The cabinet member would have been fired on the spot and replaced with a Democrat as a conciliatory gesture.
Great piece. Again, though, it’s not who controls the sound, but the echo. Our team is lousy with the echo.
Well, then, let’s get better at the echo:
Opinion
Essay;Blizzard of Lies
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
Published: January 8, 1996
Americans of all political persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our First Lady — a woman of undoubted talents who was a role model for many in her generation — is a congenital liar.
The Democrats’ attitude to the importance of character in their choice of president was demonstrated in this quote from White House correspondent Nina Burleigh, in the context of whether Bill Clinton was guilty of sexual harassment of a young female intern:
The word “theocracy” is what really gives away the Leftist game. The thing that they really hate is God.
This is very astute. Well done.
But then, if words matter more than actions, these words should doom her:
Indeed.
In an earlier time, say, the 1970s*, a president who had disgraced himself the way Bill Clinton did would have slunk off with his First Lady to semi-obscurity, in the manner of Richard Nixon. At that time, the wife of such a president would never have sought office as a senator or secretary of state. The idea of such a former First Lady’s seeking the presidency for herself, thereby returning the disgraced president to the White House, would have been unthinkable. Furthermore, having any former First Lady serve as president, returning even an honorable living former president to the White House, violates the spirit of the 22nd Amendment.
In a kind of political version of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, Hillary Clinton’s seeking the presidency actually disqualifies her for the office.
(*And in a much-earlier time, the honorable way out for Bill Clinton would have been a revolver in his study.)
This current cultural moment has been predicted for years. See The Triumph of the Therapeutic and The Culture of Narcissism.
Melissa O’Sullivan
Great piece. Again, though, it’s not who controls the sound, but the echo. Our team is lousy with the echo.
At the public level I am not sure that we are good with either.