What's so hard to understand about Hillary Clinton and her emails? It's really very simple. "I thought it would be easier to carry just one device for my work and for my personal emails instead of two." That's why she mixed her personal and public emails. Only it turns out she didn't. Later she explained how she carried both a Blackberry and iPad with her, and kept her private emails in both devices. Understand? We don't, either.
Why did she decline to make her emails public for so long, and then agree to share them with the State Department? Because she was replying to a routine request from State addressed to any number of government officials, not just her. Only she turned out to be the one official with lots of missing emails. Understand? We don't, either.
What about classified material in her private emails? "There is not classified material" there. Except that, according to the State Department, hundreds of her private emails (more than 400 and counting) contained classified material. She can explain that, too. For example, they weren't classified when she got them but were reclassified later. As if by an occult hand. Understand? We don't, either.
The plot thickens. It's not that Hillary Clinton has had so many course corrections over her nigh-endless political career that's striking. Lots of politicians change their views from time to time. It's that she's never had a course to correct. For she doesn't just change her opinions over the years, but her identity, even the names she uses. She makes the succession of New Nixons back in the last century seem few and far between.
It's hard to recall just which name the lady was going by at any given point in her time as first lady of Arkansas--the Hillary Rodham who was going to keep her maiden name, then the Hillary Clinton who did the politic thing at the time by recognizing that it was customary for wives to adopt their husbands' names. Only later did she become Hillary Rodham Clinton . . . and now she seems to have only one name, just long enough to fit on a bumper sticker, like Cher or Liberace.
What's more, Ms. Clinton's image seems to change every time her name does. What does she stand for today? There's no telling, since she's got more images than a funhouse mirror. To quote one observer (Joshua Green in the Atlantic) one day she's "a shots 'n' beers brawler, the next a Hallmark Channel mom.'' And tomorrow? Not even she may know. Maybe it all depends on what the country's political mood calls for. By now she's gone through so many re-introductions to the American public that it's a wild guess who'll she be next. The only sure bet is that she's bound to be somebody else.
Editorial on 10/10/2015