In dual columns Tuesday and Wednesday, National Journal columnist Ron Fourier tore into Hillary Clinton and her e-mail scandal, declaring her to be “[a] pay-phone candidate in an iPhone world” and having utterly failed to answer numerous questions as to why “she seized control of documents that were supposed to be on a government server.”
The former Associated Press Washington bureau chief began his Tuesday post with the first of many proclamations concerning the likely 2016 Democratic presidential candidate: “Hillary Rodham Clinton is an ancient presidential candidate. Not age-wise. Attitude-wise.”
Facing droves of reporters, Fournier wrote that Clinton “faced a choice between the right way and wrong way to manage a public-relations crisis in the post-Internet era, when the 1990s tactics of deflection, deception, and victimization are far less effective.”
After stating his belief that she chose “the wrong way,” he blasted her poor performance:
Rather than be transparent, completely honest, and accountable, Clinton doubled down on the 1990s. She refused to turn over her emails stored on a secret service in violation of federal regulations. She defended contributions to her family's charity from foreign nations that discriminate against women and support terrorism, a brazen contradiction to her public profile.
“I fully complied with every rule I was governed under,” she said, a legalistic dodge that rivals Al Gore's lame defense of his fund-raising shenanigans in 1997: “There is no controlling legal authority.”
She dodged legitimate accusations, parried accusations that were never in play, and coolly laid out a defense that you could boil down to five words: “Trust me, I'm a Clinton.”
Unfortunately for Democrats, the Clinton crisis-management operation is a pay phone in an iPhone world, stuck on the stale side of Bill Clinton's famous bridge to the 21st century. She fired up the way-back machine to ensure that the controversy gathers steam and long legs.
Fournier then boiled down Clinton’s response to why she used private e-mail exclusively to four statements and then proceeded to tear apart each of them. He diagnosed what occurred Tuesday as another example of “a decades pattern” where, for the Clintons, “[r]ules are for little people, not them.”
Turning to this scandal’s impact on the broader 2016 campaign, Fournier had plenty more to say:
I wish I could ask her: Why seek the job, Mrs. Clinton, if you can't reshape it? While you may be able to disqualify Democratic and GOP rivals with your tired tactics and stale strategies, the office you'll win will be a caretaker's. A discredited caretaker overseeing a political system that you helped make even less appealing to Americans, particularly young voters.
Is that what you want? I didn't think that's what you were about.
I've known both Clintons since mid-1980s, when I covered the state legislature for the Arkansas Democrat (now Democrat-Gazette) and the Associated Press. I admire their intelligence and passion and empathy. They've been good to my family. I've actually long thought that she has the potential to be a better president than he was.
Today I wonder if she's even up to the job.
In his Wednesday column, he detailed the significance of her refusal to answer five key questions surrounding her private e-mails and her server. Regarding one question about whether she considers e-mails involving the Clinton Foundation to be personal messages (and thus some of the ones she deleted), Fournier warned readers:
Beware of Clinton spin. Her team is already trying to cast this as a brave fight to keep her private emails from public view. That's a straw man. What she is doing is waging a fight to keep control of emails that were supposed to be in the government's possession.
After surgically explaining why questions such as “[w]hat was her motive for stashing emails on a secret server registered to her home” and “what else might she be hiding” matter, Fournier concluded: “Most know the Clintons' history of stonewalling. And to those people, her answer to legitimate questions about government email and the Clinton Foundation is, ‘Trust me.’”
