COMMENTARY

BRUMMETT ONLINE: A little prudence, please

Hillary Clinton has always been committed to the noble purposes of public service. It’s a Methodist thing with her.

But she also has been insufficiently circumspect about ethical appearances. It’s a privacy thing with her. It’s an entitlement thing as well.

Clinton has never believed that she and her family should be punished for public service by giving up opportunities for the level of income others of their meritocratic station in life enjoy.

She toiled to improve public education and children’s health in Arkansas. She led a failed effort in the White House to achieve universal health insurance, then worked to expand a children’s health-insurance program. She spoke bravely for women’s rights globally. She fought successfully as a U.S. senator from New York for ongoing health monitoring for first responders after 9/11.

She thinks that alone should define her, that to look beyond public policy to personal matters is to invade a “zone of privacy” and engage in inquiries that are none of our business.

Meantime, she always felt it was largely her private responsibility to provide for the financial security of her family. Her husband, Bill, wasn’t making real money as governor of Arkansas during their daughter Chelsea’s formative years.

She could have declined to go work for the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock while he was governor, citing the deep political connections of the firm. She could have continued an important non-conflicting profession as a law school instructor and professor. They say she was excellent — better than Bill — on the faculty of the law school in Fayetteville. That would have been circumspect. But she didn’t.

She could have declined appointment to the board of Wal-Mart from 1986 to 1992, citing complications for her husband as governor of Wal-Mart’s home-base state. That would have been circumspect. But she didn’t.

She could have said as U.S. secretary of state that no one with her husband’s global foundation would be permitted to call upon the department for a favor of any kind. That would have been circumspect. But she didn’t.

She could have said it would weigh down her imminent presidential bid if she joined the board of her husband’s foundation upon her exit as secretary of state. That would have been circumspect. But she didn’t.

She could have said, “Sorry, but I’d better not” when Goldman Sachs sought her out to do what other former secretaries of state had done, which was give high-dollar private speeches. That would have been circumspect. But she didn’t.

Instead she said that other secretaries of state had given such speeches and that $225,000 per was what Goldman Sachs was paying.

There is nothing wrong with being a Rose Law Firm lawyer. There is nothing wrong with being a Wal-Mart board member. There is nothing wrong with serving on the board of your family foundation, especially one doing worthy charitable work throughout the world. And there is nothing wrong with — or at least criminal about — making a paid presentation to a rich investment-banking firm.

Those things simply look bad and invite problems if your husband is governor or if you are the secretary of state or if you are running for president.

No one cares whether Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice gave a speech to Goldman Sachs. They’re in the cash-in phase of their lives.

Hillary’s problem is cashing in on past service one day and staying in the active arena the next. She seeks to have it all.

She is clearly guilty of actions and affiliations that look bad. Yet she remains, at this late date, even after enduring all that the vast right-wing conspiracy has thrown at her, elusive of anything that actually was verifiably wrong.

For a classic example: The right-wing Judicial Network last week released 296 pages of emails it gleaned from a lawsuit. So what was the big revelation?

It was that a leading Clinton Foundation official, acting through aides of Clinton and not Clinton herself, sought to get a meeting with a State Department official for a Nigerian-Lebanese billionaire donor named Gilbert Chagoury who supposedly had insight into Lebanese elections. The meeting appears never to have taken place.

Let’s look at that once more and scour through the odor in search of the actual scandal: A Nigerian-Lebanese billionaire gives the Clinton Foundation money for do-good initiatives in the world. A Clinton Foundation official asks the State Department to listen to the guy on what he thinks he knows about elections in Lebanon, where he has business and family interests. There never was a meeting.

The actual scandal never materializes. Lack of circumspection and the attendant odor do not always mean scandal.

In another release of emails by the conservative group on Monday, a Clinton Foundation official is engaging a Hillary aide to try to get a meeting with Clinton the next day for the crown prince of Bahrain, a major donor.

In another case, the same foundation official asks of the same State Department aide that a meeting be arranged with the British Embassy so that a client of a sports-marketing executive who was a friend of the foundation could try to get a visa. The athlete was facing a criminal charge. That one made Hillary’s aide “nervous.” The foundation official said tersely: “So don’t do it.”

That’s actually an example on the State Department aide’s part of appropriate ethical attention to appearances.

Foreign donors have favored large sums on the Carter Center in Atlanta and George W. Bush’s presidential center in Dallas. But Rosalyn Carter and Laura Bush aren’t running for president.

It may be that Hillary Clinton indeed can have it all — that she can both cash in and stay in. But it won’t be without deserved discomfort.

And if she becomes president, more circumspection on her part would be vital to a credible presidency and a welcome reflection of personal growth.

John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers’ Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.

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