Hillary doesn't control her destiny

LeRoy Goldman

December 13, 2015

The calendar will soon say 2016, and that’s when the campaigns for the White House will kick into high gear. The Clinton Campaign has done all that it can to exude a sense of confidence and inevitability about first securing the Democratic nomination and then winning the general election. It appears that her nomination is in the bag.

Her competitors, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley, don’t even rise to the nuisance level. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who would have been a formidable opponent, demurred. Vice President Joe Biden teased us for a couple of months but then said no.

But do not let appearances deceive you. All is not as rosy as it might seem. Clinton faces two existential challenges that may well derail either her nomination or her election.

The first is the ongoing FBI investigation into the private email system she created and controlled when she was President Barack Obama’s secretary of state. And the second is the daunting task of trying to separate herself from the problematic policies of the Obama administration in which she served without putting at risk the African-American and Hispanic voters she will need to win.

Last August, the inspector general for the intelligence community said some of Clinton’s work-related emails from her private server contained top-secret information. And that revelation led to the ongoing FBI investigation by that agency’s counterintelligence section. Details of the investigation are appropriately shrouded in secrecy, though FBI Director James Comey has testified to Congress that he is following the investigation “very closely.”

The centerpiece of the inquiry is whether Clinton’s use of her private email system compromised national security. If Clinton or her aides knew the server contained classified information and it was mishandled, they may be exposed to criminal prosecution.

In addition, Secretary Clinton signed nondisclosure agreements with respect to the handling of classified information. In so doing, she acknowledged that “the unauthorized disclosure, retention, or negligent handling of Sensitive Compartmented Information by me could cause irreparable injury to the United States or be used to advantage by a foreign nation.”

Also, it appears the FBI probe is looking into whether Clinton or her aides may have made “materially false statements” to agents conducting the probe. That, too, is a violation of federal law, which can result in a prison term of up to five years.

It’s reasonable to assume that the results of the FBI investigation will be public before the Democratic National Convention next summer. And, while none of us knows now what the investigation will conclude, we do know this: Comey is a man of principle and beyond reproach. Comey has testified to Congress that politics will not be a factor in the investigation. He said, referring to the investigators, “If you know my folks, you know they don’t give a rip about politics.”

An FBI report that does not give Clinton an undiluted clean bill of health could destroy her presidential campaign in a nanosecond and leave the Democratic Party twisting in the wind.

Even if Clinton is exonerated by the FBI, she’s not out of danger. The outcome of most presidential elections is determined by the economy. And, while there is no doubt that the economy will be a central issue in 2016, it is also the case that foreign policy and national security concerns will play a pivotal role, too.

The stalemated Korean War destroyed any hope that Harry Truman might have had for another term in 1952. After the Democrats tried and failed to recruit Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, they nominated Adlai Stevenson, who lost in a landslide.

On March 31,1968, President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not seek another term as president. He was a casualty of the failed American war policy in Vietnam. And his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, lost to Richard Nixon.

President Jimmy Carter was denied a second term in office in large measure because of his failed attempt to free American hostages in Iran.

Obama’s election in 2008 was made inevitable by the fact that most Americans had turned against President George W. Bush’s pre-emptive war in Iraq.

The point is that when the American people come to believe that their president can’t handle foreign policy, can’t win wars or can’t keep us safe, he and his party flame out.

The evidence suggests that we may be there again. If so, Clinton will pay the price for the nation’s increased vulnerability to radical Islamic terrorism and, even worse, a president whose arrogance and bubble isolation leads him to believe the American people are stupid enough to not figure out he neither knows what to do nor how to do it.

Clinton is caught in a vice. As Obama’s secretary of state, her fingerprints are all over the Obama administration’s foreign and national security policy. And it has been a policy of failure in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya, Egypt, Iran, the Palestinian State and Israel. And now the long arm of ISIS has demonstrated its ability to kill and terrorize innocent people from Paris to San Bernardino.

Look at it this way: If Hillary Clinton is nominated, the American people may do her a favor and save her from having to move out of the White House for a second time complaining that she and Bill are “dead broke.”

LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Reach him at: EmailMe

The Shadow Welcomes Comments