The Joy and the Drama - By Josh Marshall
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On the merits, I think Hillary Clinton might make a good president. Obviously, I think she'd be infinitely preferable to anyone the GOP would nominate to challenge her. But the latest email blow up reminds me again - and I didn't need any reminding - why I also quietly dread her campaign and her presidency. In a word, the drama.
I have frequently criticized political commentary that focuses on the feelings and impressions of the commentators rather than the actual policy impacts and details of what politicians would do. And if this falls into that category, I have to plead guilty. But for me it's an inescapable part of a Clinton Restoration.
Though I have not plumbed all the depths of it, the email story is shaping up to be another classic Clinton scandal. On the merits, the hyperventilation seems way out ahead of the actual facts. It's not clear to me that any law in effect at the time was violated. And numerous politicians at all levels of government, as well as appointees, have done similar things - indeed, even the top officials in the preceding White House. There's even a lot of speculation about servers set up by Bill in the basement of the house in Chappaqua that seems to have no basis in fact.
But Hillary Clinton seems to have taken it a bit further than all the others combined - or perhaps combined together all the things that others individually had done. In any case, at the end of the day - like with every other Clinton scandal - I doubt very much that there's any there there. Did they actually do anything wrong or terribly embarrassing that they're covering up? I doubt it. And I say this because I've been to this rodeo before. Many times. I've seen how it eventually plays out.
And yet here we are again - with an almost infinite, process-driven scandal that can easily continue on into a Clinton presidency, if there is one. Consider it. Clinton and her lawyers have separated her work emails from personal ones and then sent the work ones to the State Department. But Republicans will never believe that the filtering was on the level. And by apparently destroying the personal ones, that means that Republican questions and press questions will meet a permanent question mark. Presumably even if she wanted to let a third party review all the emails now she can't. So the deleted emails will remain the permanent fantastical repository for the decision not to prevent a rescue of Chris Stevens, give orders to erase warnings about safety at the Benghazi consulate and more.
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