OPINION:
The idea that telling a lie in Washington is somehow shameful was probably born with the fabricated tale of little George, his hatchet and his father’s favorite cherry tree at Mount Vernon. Lies are to Washington what cars once were to Detroit. In our own time Bonnie and Clod have made deceivers fashionable, demonstrating that speaking in fable is no dishonor.
Hillary, aka Bonnie, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, is trying to see whether she can successfully follow Bubba’s example with her passionate denial that she ever got a subpoena from the congressional committee investigating the magic private email server she used when she was the secretary of State. She isn’t as adept at it as Bubba was, with his aw, shucks, good ol’ boy charm. Few pols are. But the larger question is whether Americans in 2015 will let her get by with this abuse of the facts. The answer will say as much about the nation as it does about her.
She cast herself into the trap. In her first full-fledged TV interview since she announced officially, she assured CNN correspondent Brianna Keilar that she had received no subpoena directing her to produce the electronic messages that she had stored on her personal server at home, rather than on official State Department computers. “I’ve never had a subpoena,” she said. “Everything I did was permitted by law and regulation. Now, I didn’t have to turn over anything. I chose to turn over 55,000 pages because I wanted to go above and beyond what was expected of me because I knew the vast majority of everything that was official already was in the State Department system.”
Those specific words didn’t fool a former prosecutor who hasn’t allowed his current job as a congressman cloud his understanding of the law. The next day Rep. Trey Gowdy, chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, issued a sharply worded rebuttal of Mrs. Clinton’s subpoena denial. “The committee has issued several subpoenas, but I have not sought to make them public,” said Mr. Gowdy. “I would not make this one public now, but after Secretary Clinton falsely claimed the committee did not subpoena her, I have no choice [but] to correct the inaccuracy.”
The Benghazi committee’s investigation has pursued Mrs. Clinton since it began its investigation of her role as secretary of state leading up to the 2012 terrorist attacks on U.S. diplomats in Libya. The committee’s revelation that, as the nation’s top diplomat, Hillary kept official records private and only turned over a carefully chosen selection when she was forced to has only intensified the chairman’s interest in the missing messages. Her appearance before the committee has been delayed as the committee waits for the Benghazi-related emails trickling in from Foggy Bottom.
It takes courage to run for president, and it takes bravado to tell lies that invite easy exposure. To tell them suggests that she calculates, after carefully weighing the relative impact of truth and falsehood, that the lie wins. A Quinnipiac University poll in May found that 53 percent of U.S. voters believe she is neither honest nor trustworthy. Nevertheless, 60 percent say she has strong leadership qualities.
A good coat of wax can sometimes put a shine on an old pickup (with a faded Confederate flag in the back window). But can a candidate for president from a famous political family buff out rust, holes and blemishes? If her name is Hillary Rodham Clinton, she might. She learned from the best.
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