The toughest job in politics these days is defending Hillary Clinton, mocked brilliantly by The Post as the Deleter of the Free World.
Her beleaguered defenders, as they retreat behind the bunker door, are settling on a crude legal defense.
Their mumbo jumbo chorus begins with the claim that she didnt break any laws by doing government business on her private e-mail and ends with the insistence that everybody does it.
Thats their story, and they are sticking to it until they are forced to find another one.
That will be soon because, while Hillarys Helpers may have a point about fuzzy laws, their argument is ultimately futile. Shes not on trial and opponents dont have to meet a persnickety legal standard to win their case.
Shes running for president and she must meet a less precise but more difficult standard. Its the test of integrity, and shes failed it often during her 30 years in public life.
As the e-mail debacle proves, the leopard hasnt changed her spots.
Photo: Post Composite Graphic
The test requires obedience to the unenforceable, a phrase my friend Daniel Rose suggests amounts to doing the right thing. Rose, a New York builder and philanthropist, uses the phrase in a collection of essays and speeches he has published.
Coined by an English judge nearly a century ago, the phrase was summarized by the late educator John Silber as the domain that exists between law and free choice.
It may include moral duty, social responsibility and proper behavior, all reflected by the idea of manners, he wrote.
Nobody can force you to obey manners you should do it without being forced. But proper behavior and the Clintons are oil and water. These are the people who tried to steal furniture from the White House!
To them, the concept of obedience to the unenforceable must seem as alien as little green men from Mars. They recognize no constraint on themselves other than the outer limits of whats legal, and sometimes not even that.
They have spent a lifetime parsing words, splitting hairs and cutting corners in pursuit of power. In their world, any behavior not indictable is acceptable.
Their success has come at a cost to the country. Their ability to walk away from multiple collisions with the law, ranging from her suspect profits on cattle futures to his impeachment case, had a corrosive impact on public morals.
Like a political Bonnie and Clyde, their notoriety spawned a generation of pols who aspire to be just like them. Their business is booming, and just about everybody really does do it now.
From town halls to state houses to Washington, American government is growing in size, complexity and corruption. A seeming paradox, though really no surprise, is that the bigger government gets, the less people actually trust it.
Marking new record lows, only 11 percent of Americans now have confidence in the executive branch and only 5 percent in Congress, according to the General Social Survey conducted by the University of Chicago.
It finds that, by contrast, half of the nation has a great deal of confidence in our military.
Somethings going on here and the Clintons personify the cultural rot. Despite the string of seedy revelations, shes still her partys front-runner and her quest remains on course.
But if or, rather, when other scandals pop up, her helpers ought to recalibrate their strategy.
My modest proposal is this: Stop the ridiculous game of denying her obvious character defects and embrace them as a perfect match for the corrupt era she helped to shape.
Instead of trying to persuade voters that Hillarys honest, Team Clinton should sell her as a president who will meet the publics low expectations.
Vote for me, she could say, because you already know you cant trust me.
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With each passing day, it gets harder to see the reports of pending criminal charges against Sen. Robert Menendez as anything other than a political hit job.
Its now been 10 days since every major news organization reported that anonymous sources in the Justice Department said the New Jersey Democrat would be charged with corruption, yet no charges have been filed.
The time lag adds to the suspicion that the rumors aimed to punish Menendez for opposing President Obamas feckless Iran policy and to scare off senators who might join him.
If there is a criminal case against Menendez, lets see it now. If there isnt, then Barack Obama really is Richard Nixon.
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