Trust Hillary?

Can Hillary be trusted? The biggest slam against her is that she is dishonest. That is a very damaging accusation. If the President or a candidate for that office cannot be trusted, the nation may be in serious trouble. So what seems to be the evidence that she doesn’t deserve the confidence of her party, nor that of the general electorate? The complaints are not new, but neither have they festered without a response. Yet they remain part of the political discourse.

Perhaps the oldest accusation is that she continued to stand by her wayward husband. When that one resurfaced at the beginning of this primary season, it didn’t even attract a spark. Yet it still may hover somewhere in the atmosphere.

The most persistent attack has had to do with her use of a personal e-mail account for government business. While there is no evidence that any government confidences were threatened or marked “top secret” until later, Hillary has admitted that while not illegal, it was probably unwise.

The fact that she seemed to tell two different stories about the tragic Benghazi attack has persisted, but it has produced no serious new legs since she spent eleven hours before the very unfriendly Congressional Committee examining the episode. Pouring gasoline on dead ashes did not produce an explosion, but an odor hangs around.

Then there is the accusation that since she has taken money from and given speeches for Wall Street bankers and energy companies, she would not bite the hands that have fed her. But looking at her public record offers no evidence that she has tailored her positions to be accommodating to these funders.

In an effort to uncover any other hard evidence of her duplicity, little has been unearthed. There are issues within the Democratic Party on which she and Bernie have disagreed—like her vote to enter the Iraq war. But they are matters of policy, not honesty. And yet her approval rating continues to erode.

I think there is another reason why so many people continue to harbor a suspicion that Hillary cannot be trusted. It lies in the skill by which advertisers sell their products through the use of repetition. For years, dating back to Travelgate and the tragic death of Vincent Foster over twenty years go, there has been a whispering campaign suggesting that she is dishonest. That cloud over Hillary just won’t go away. But perhaps it is only the continual passing of the accusation on that has kept it alive.

While for years we have watched the Republicans cast this dark cloak of suspicion over the Clintons, recently I have heard a number of my Democratic friends repeat the charge, “She cannot be trusted.” When I have asked why they believe the accusation, the best anyone has come up with is the fact that they have continued to hear it, so it must be true. If you are told hourly that Pepsi is bad for you, your Pepsi intake will plummet.

I have a profound respect for Bernie Sanders, and I support each of the four points he continues to make: the disparity in incomes in our nation, the call for new regulations to control Wall Street, the need to have the “Citizens United” decision reversed and Medicare for all. And yet his continual raising the suspicion that Hillary is not to be trusted seems disingenuous. If the truth of the accusation is only in relationship to the consistency with which it is articulated, then we just need to stop passing it on. Do you trust Hillary? I do.

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Your response to last week’s column

That column was about Bernie Sanders. In it I voiced my total approval of the issues he has continued to champion. Yet even though I believe he has been consistently on target, I offered four reasons why I have hesitated to support his candidacy. Your response was overwhelming, and I have taken seriously what you had to say. While about two/thirds of the responders supported the position I had taken, a few were vigorously opposed. But here is what I found interesting. Those who were most horrified about what I had written rarely mentioned Sanders! What they really wanted to talk about was how Hillary was dishonest and untrustworthy.

Today’s column was drafted over a week ago, before the Bernie column went out, so what you have gotten today is not a reaction to what you had to say. It is my long-time feeling that for a variety of reasons many enlightened Democrats just do not trust Hillary. Today’s column is my effort to suggest the reasons I believe that to be true. I’ll respond to your responses down the road.