Tag Archives: Secretary of State

Clinton needs to steel herself over server

Hillary Rodham Clinton is getting the third, fourth and maybe the fifth degrees over this server business.

The Democrats’ presidential frontrunner is under fire over the way she handled e-mail communications while she was serving as secretary of state and her use of a personal e-mail server to conduct State Department business.

She cut off a press conference when the question kept coming about the server issue and whether she destroyed information that belongs to the public.

At one level, this continuing investigation has partisan politics written all over it. Republicans do not want her to become the 45th president of the United States; thus, it’s understandable that they would do whatever they can to deny her the office.

The e-mail controversy — and I refuse to call it a “scandal” — has given them a quiver full of ammo to fire at former secretary of state.

She said today she did everything that is prescribed by law and insisted she broke no laws.

On a human level, I understand her continuing frustration over the continuing coverage of this matter.

On another level, though, I want this matter settled. She has turned her server over to the Department of Justice. My hope is that Clinton will answer all the questions posed to her.

At some point it will have to become as obvious to the rest of the country — as it is to Clinton — that the investigations into the e-mail matter will produce zero criminal culpability.

Therefore, all the politicians involved in seeking to undermine her candidacy will realize they are doing more damage to themselves than they are to her.

First things first, though. Hillary Clinton needs to deliver all the goods about this e-mail business for thorough public inspection.

Is HRC 'likable enough' to get elected?

A young U.S. senator, Barack Obama, uttered arguably one of the signature lines of the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primary campaign when he told fellow Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, “You’re likable enough, Hillary.”

I’m betting that Clinton didn’t appreciate the “compliment.”

Now, eight years later, she’s launching another bid for the presidency.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/04/12/clinton-campaigns-challenge-make-her-likeable/

And as the Wall Street Journal reports, her task is to make her “likable enough” to get elected president of the United States next year.

As the WSJ reported: “She needs to try to humanize herself, because in some ways she’s kind of become a cardboard cutout figure,” said Douglas Brinkley, a history professor at Rice University.

So, the campaign begins anew for the former first lady, senator and secretary of state.

Many in the media refer to her simply as “Hillary.” Just a mention of that name and you know to whom the reference is being made. Does the first-name familiarity make her likable? Hardly. I continue to believe she needs to translate likability into authenticity.

She remains a political powerhouse. The strength, though, doesn’t always connect with voters in a tangible manner. Clinton at times appears evasive, which hardly lends itself to likability.

I will be among millions of voters looking for signs that she’s capable of understanding the problems, worries and concerns of average American citizens. If she does, she’ll prove she’s for real, that she’s authentic.

And likable.

HRC set to launch bid; now the fun really begins

You may take this to the bank.

The moment Hillary Rodham Clinton declares her candidacy for the presidency is when the campaign for the White House becomes really and truly a blast.

Clinton is set to announce her candidacy on Sunday. She’ll make known what almost every political junkie on Planet Earth has known all along. She wants to make history by becoming the first woman president of the world’s greatest power.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/exclusive-hillary-clinton-to-launch-presidential-campaign-on-sunday-en-route-to-iowa-%e2%80%93-source/ar-AAaFyvT

Why the “blast” factor?

Because the growing horde of Republican candidates are going to set their sights on Clinton. They are going to virtually ignore each other. They’re going to be talking to their party’s base voters, trying to persuade them that only they — and no one else — can defeat the Democratic nominee in November 2016.

As for Clinton’s possible Democratic primary rivals, a couple of them are beginning to show themselves in public. Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley has talked openly about running. Just this seek, former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee, a one-time Republican who’s turned Democrat, announced plans to form an exploratory committee to help him decide whether to run.

U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Mass.? She says she isn’t running for the White House, but she has yet to make that statement that she won’t run change her mind between today and, say, the day after tomorrow.

Many on the left and far left yearn for an alternative to Clinton. Meanwhile, many on the right and far right think the former U.S. senator, secretary of state and first lady is as evil as her husband, the former president and the current president.

Oh, boy. This campaign is going to be worth watching.

Go for it, Hillary!

 

HRC is going to run for president

Anyone who thought that Hillary Rodham Clinton was going to decide against running for president next year — and I believed that was a possibility — well, you’d better put those notions into the trash bin.

It looks as though Clinton is in. Email controversy and all. Criticism from the right and from the far left, too.

She’s in.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/hillary-clinton-atlantic-city-speech-116236.html?hp=c2_3

Clinton gave what everyone in the know says is the last speech she’ll give for money. She spoke to the American Camp Association and collected her usual handsome speaking fee.

After that, it’s done. No more money for speaking. We’re going to hear from the former secretary of state about why she wants to run for president and why she’s the best candidate out there.

Honestly, her political stamina is utterly amazing.

She has been battered almost beyond recognition from the day her husband, Bill, took the oath of office on Jan. 20, 1993. It never let up during President Clinton’s two terms. He got impeached but was acquitted of “high crimes and misdemeanors” by the Senate. When the president left office in January 2001, Hillary took office as a senator from New York, serving with the very people who sought to get her husband kicked out of office; I “predicted” back then she wouldn’t do it … silly me.

Her 2008 presidential campaign was another exercise in political battering. The man who defeated her then named her secretary of state — and she’s been dogged even more by harsh criticism.

Now she’s going for the Big One.

An announcement is expected soon, perhaps within the next month.

This ride will be a rough one.

And what if Hillary doesn't run?

This notion of a congressional investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of personal email accounts while she was secretary of state is beginning to sound laughable.

Some of us out here will break out into hysterical howls if Clinton does the improbable — and doesn’t run for president of the United States next year.

Why the guffaws?

Congress will drop the story like a bad habit.

House Speaker John Boehner is considering a congressional probe. House Benghazi Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy is going to peek into whether Clinton’s personal account email use somehow is related to the Benghazi mess of September 2012, the fire fight that killed four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya.

This has all the apparent earmarks of a political hatchet job.

Clinton is likely to run for president. Her Republican critics in Congress and elsewhere don’t want her in the White House. She’d be a formidable candidate and as it stands right at this moment she remains a strong favorite to defeat almost any GOP challenger.

But what if she doesn’t run? What if she decides, “You know, I just don’t think I have the stomach for this. I’ve taken enough of a battering over this Benghazi thing, during my time in the U.S. Senate and, oh yeah, when I was first lady and trying to push through my husband’s health care overhaul — which went nowhere.”

My hunch is that all these probes, these searches for the truth, these quests to find an email scandal where none exists will disappear.

The opposition will pat itself on the back, say “so long” to Hillary Clinton and go about looking for demons behind other closet doors.

 

 

In a word, the Hillary email story is about 'trust'

You can sum up the difficulty that is building around Hillary Rodham Clinton’s probable presidential campaign in a single five-letter word: trust.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/03/hillary-clinton-press-conference-115989.html?hp=b3_r1#.VQaz71J0yt8

Can she be trusted to tell us the truth all the time?

The Politico story attached here talks about the history she and her husband, the former 42nd president, Bill Clinton, had in using the English language to wiggle their way out of difficulty.

President Clinton sought to tell Americans that he “did not have sexual relations” with the young White House intern. It turned out that likely did have what almost anyone describe as a sexual relationship with her — but not in the way he defined it.

Does anyone recall how the president defined the word “is”?

Hillary Clinton’s email mess, on its face, likely isn’t a huge story. It’s becoming one, though, because of her own seemingly slippery use of language to define what she did and when she did it.

The Politico essay refers to her talking about “not saving” email communications. What happened to the word “delete”? Did she delete the messages, send them to the trash bin on purpose?

It’s that kind of imprecise language that seems to be getting the former secretary of state/U.S. senator/first lady into a bit of a jam as she ramps up her 2016 presidential campaign.

Hillary Clinton once seemed like the inevitable 45th president of the United States. She remains the prohibitive favorite to become the Democrats’ next nominee for the office.

That aura of White House inevitability, however, suddenly is needs some major repair.

Straight talk would help build some much-needed trust.

 

HRC turns over 55,000 emails; Colin Powell, none

A friend distributed this tweet, from Joe Conason, a liberal columnist who wonders about the Hillary Clinton email flap.

“If Beltway press isn’t satisfied that @HillaryClinton turned over 55K emails, why don’t they care that Colin Powell turned over ZERO?”

I think I know the answer.

Colin Powell isn’t considering a run for the presidency in 2016; Hillary Clinton is likely to declare her White House candidacy in a month, maybe two.

That’s the reason for the interest.

Colin Powell served as secretary of state during the first term of the George W. Bush administration. He used a personal email account, just as Clinton did. In no way does that justify anything, other than to suggest that the media have this way of applying double standards whenever and wherever possible — and against whomever they feel like doing so.

I suppose if Powell, a retired Army general as well, were to decide to run for president, then he’d become fair game, too.

HRC's email tempest is going to build

Oh, how I was hoping Hillary Rodham Clinton would quell the unrest over her use of private email accounts while she was secretary of state.

Silly me. I knew it likely wouldn’t, but I was hanging on to a glimmer of hope.

Her press conference today likely guaranteed this tempest is going to follow her onto the 2016 presidential campaign trail, assuming that she makes the race — which everyone in the know seems to think will happen.

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/235286-clinton-fails-to-calm-email-storm

She said something today about deleting tens of thousands of private emails from her server at home. She said she never breached national security with private communications. Clinton said she used the private account for “convenience” sake and said if she could do it over, she would have used the State Department account to communicate about State Department matters.

Her critics on the right — led by Fox News and other conservative mainstream media — will ensure that this matter keeps bubbling up.

Now, though, her critics on the left are likely to start beating the bushes for an alternative candidate to seek the Democratic presidential nomination next year. Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts says she won’t seek the presidency.

Hmmm. Can she be talked into running? I’m betting some operatives are going to try.

This email matter hasn’t risen to the level of “scandal,” as some on the right have called it. But it does raise some questions — in my mind, at least — about whether Clinton kept public information away from public scrutiny.

This mess is far from being cleaned up.

 

Sen. Graham: No emails from me

U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham is appealing to the technologically challenged.

The South Carolina Republican says he’s never sent an email and prefers to talk face to face with his South Carolina constituents. Well, good for him.

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/235040-graham-president-must-be-good-with-people-not-just-technology

Graham said on “Meet the Press” that the next president of the United States — which might be him, although that seems to be among the longest of long shots — should be good with people, not technology.

That’s quaint talk, senator. It’s also meaningless.

The subject came up in a discussion of the email flap that keeps hounding Hillary Rodham Clinton and her use of a private email account while she served as secretary of state. Some Republicans, such as Rep. Darrell Issa of California, suggest Clinton might face “criminal charges.” Oh, brother.

Graham said Sunday: “The way I communicate is that I talk to people face to face, I’ll pick up the phone. I think the best thing is … to go to the Mideast, not email about the Mideast, not be told about the Mideast, but get on the ground.”

Maybe it’s just me, but my strong hunch is that in the remote chance Graham gets elected president next year that he’ll have plenty of staff sitting around waiting to communicate via email with a pertinent foreign leader. Were he climb aboard Air Force One just to talk to someone, say, in the Middle East, well … that could get a little expensive.

And haven’t Republicans been casting stones at the current president, Barack Obama, and his family over their alleged overuse of that big jumbo jet?

 

Let's quit the Hitler references

Randy Weber is making a strong case for the title of looniest Texas member of Congress.

The right-wing Republican who represents Southeast Texas — where I used to live — has gone overboard in criticizing President Obama for his absence from the massive Paris “unity rally” the other day.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/13/randy-weber-obama-hitler-parsi_n_6460280.html

The GOP nimrod posted on Twitter that Adolph Hitler bothered to go to Paris for the wrong reasons, while the president didn’t go “for the right reason.”

Good bleeping grief, dude.

Hitler went to Paris in 1940 to declare victory over the French during World War II. And this episode has reached some sort of moral equivalency? Give me a break.

I’ve criticized the president for failing to attend, or for the absence of a high-level, high-profile American official at the event; the U.S. ambassador to France did attend. And the White House did offer an unusual admission that it erred by not sending, say, the secretary of state to the enormous rally.

To compare the president of the United States to the 20th century’s most hideous dictator?

Keep your mouth shut, congressman.