While the presidential news continues to revolve around the Donald Trump & Barnum & Bailey Circus, by far the most significant political fact of the summer that just ended was the air that has been steadily leaking from the Hillary Clinton balloon. She no longer commands the support of a majority of Democrats. She’s 20 points down from her poll peak, and is now significantly trailing a 74-year-old Socialist in the first primary state of New Hampshire. The most forbidding front-runner in modern history has become just another front-runner.
Yes, it’s all going according to plan — the Clinton plan.
If the plan works, she’ll come down to earth slowly and then be buoyed up again later on, as the lack of a truly acceptable alternative becomes clearer. And, more important, as the tangle of potential problems surrounding her e-mail system just keeps getting more and more confusing.
Hillary has spent the year seeing her reputation compromised by the drip-drip-drip of scandal. But that drip-drip-drip is deliberate. It’s a way of releasing damaging information in the least damaging way, and it’s been carefully designed by her and her team in response to various congressional subpoenas and judicial orders.
They, and the administration she served, are dribbling out information in a haphazard manner that is designed to keep the drips from pooling together in a way that would eventually cause a flood.
Or, to try a different kind of elemental metaphor, there’s a lot of smoke but there’s no discernible fire. And that’s entirely on purpose.
“It’s the Clinton way. Worked before. Worth a try now. …And given the past, who’d bet on that?”
I follow these matters for a living, and by now I can’t make head or tail of where the Hillary e-mail scandal is. Just in the last few days we learned that Hillary had been using the e-mail server she had supposedly taken off line as recently as this year. So the wiped server wasn’t wiped. I think. And that’s bad. I think. But I can’t remember why, and if I can’t, nobody can.
Trying to assemble a coherent story from the information we have is like assembling a 1,000-piece jigsaw puzzle that’s missing 700 pieces.
Neither Bill nor Hillary is the type to wish away trouble or pretend it doesn’t exist. More important, if I know my Bill and Hillary, I think they probably expected something like this would happen.
They must have always known she would have to slog her way through a series of scandals to get the nomination and win the presidency. Indeed, they may even have made calculations about how much risk they could take on when it came to their family foundation’s discomfiting fundraising practices and Hillary’s role as secretary of state.
They are realists, not fantasists, and they are well acquainted with the effort it takes to run a campaign with scandals nipping at your heels.
That was the story of Bill Clinton’s career, after all.
Supporters cheer as Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks during New Hampshire’s Democratic convention. Photo: AP
They must have known Hillary the Candidate would be brought down to earth after running 40 or 50 points ahead, in part because they must also have known what was going to bring her down to earth.
It’s their Foundation, after all.
Their joint life experience offers proof that a candidate can weather scandals and reputational slings and arrows that would take down most other people. Bill survived the Gennifer Flowers sex scandal to win the Democratic nomination in 1992 and the Whitewater financial scandal to win a second presidential term in 1996.
In both cases, Hillary’s conduct was crucial to his survival and ultimate triumph. And Bill is surely attempting to return the favor by working to guide her through the brambles along her own path to the White House.
So what’s the strategy here?
First, scare serious rivals away. Her 50-60 point lead in the polls throughout 2014 and early 2015 didn’t happen by accident. It was the result of a slow and steady quiet buildup that began from the moment she announced her departure from the State Department in 2013.
Recall that Barack Obama went on “60 Minutes” with her and essentially endorsed her as his successor. That appearance didn’t just suggest, but shouted out, that the White House would look unfavorably on any bid for the presidency by VP Joe Biden.
An open seat for the White House should have been contended by several major political figures. But it would have been nuts for anyone really serious to challenge Hillary when she was already enormously famous, sitting atop an unparalleled fundraising machine and clearly willing to use hard knuckles if necessary against anyone who might deny her this last shot at the big brass ring.
Second, manage the scandal you know is coming. A Congressional investigation into her conduct during and after the US consulate in Benghazi was stormed in 2012 had been ongoing for two years before the State Department was forced to concede it did not possess tens of thousands of subpoenaed e-mails. Those e-mails were on a personal server Mrs. Clinton had set up just as she was beginning her tenure as secretary of state in 2009.
She knew those e-mails were under subpoena. She just didn’t let Congress know about the server. The information came out in late March 2015, by which time the window to begin a serious challenge to her had all but closed.
Since then, it’s all been drip drip drip, in classic Nixonian fashion — what Nixon lawyer John Dean called a “modified limited hangout.” First she said the server had been destroyed. Then she said it had been wiped clean. Now it appears it may not have been wiped clean, and that it probably wasn’t destroyed.
Third, keep lying. These are what is known, in technical parlance, as “lies.” But there isn’t a single big whopping lie (yet) that makes the entire pack comprehensible. It looks bad, and it smells bad, and everybody knows it. But not bad enough to cause a full-scale Democratic panic.
And if she can just keep it all at this dribbling level, the lack of clarity will continue. The bet here is that Congress and the Justice Department will never be able to fill in the jigsaw puzzle sufficiently to figure out the whole.
It’s the Clinton way. Worked before. Worth a try now. She’ll go into election day 2016 with close to 48% of the vote whatever happens — unless she’s indicted or in jail beforehand. And given the past, who’d bet on that?
