Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. writes a weekly column for the WSJ. He has not been a Trump supporter, but he now believes that Hillary Clinton, not Donald Trump, has become the “unsafe hands candidate.”
Via WSJ.
It’s hard to generalize about Hillary Clinton’s email situation except that she tried to afford herself an extraordinary privilege as a high-ranking official, and then caused for herself exactly the problems (and worse) that she presumably was trying to avoid.
It’s the White House Travel Office, the Rose Law Firm billing records, the Seth Ward option (don’t ask), the health-care task force, etc., all over again.
Mrs. Clinton is a screw-up. And when a trait takes such trouble to announce itself, note must be taken….
What a mess. It pays to recall that the federal machinery trying so hard to give her a pass is the same federal machinery that writes millions of rules for the rest of us. It doesn’t give us a pass. The IRS can’t make sense of its own regulations yet expects us to abide by them under pain of criminal prosecution.
Mrs. Clinton’s every plan involves only complicating America’s life with more rules, more legal pitfalls for citizens, more mandates for business. The tax code is not complicated enough for her. ObamaCare is just a down payment on fixing health care with more regulation and government mandates.
Donald Trump (or any candidate) may not be a solution in himself, but an outsider at least can be an instrument to dislodge an elite and replace it, for a while, with an elite less habituated to using public power to favor and enrich itself. With Mrs. Clinton, as with Mr. Obama, a voter naturally struggles to understand what the overarching vision is. There isn’t one. They exist to deliver the wish-list of Democratic lobby groups for more power over the people of the United States. Period.
A few weeks ago Mrs. Clinton was the “safe hands” candidate. If she wins, it now appears hers will be an embattled and investigated presidency from day one. Moderates will flee. Republicans will find it hard to cooperate with her.
She will be forced back on the hard left of her party. The same who already are drawing up “blacklists” of potential appointees suspected of sympathy for the private sector. The same who hesitate least about using government power to attack enemies (see Exxon). The same who are most comfortable relying on administrative diktat to impose policies the public doesn’t support and never voted for.
Her party’s most ferocious warriors will run the Clinton administration because they’re the ones willing to be most unhinged in savaging her enemies. It might seem far-fetched now that President Obama, after Election Day, would try to clear President Clinton’s path by issuing a pardon for offenses committed while secretary of state, but crazier miscalculations have been made by the players in this drama.
Tammy Bruce: It begins now: Election starts reclamation of nation
Good on HJ Jr.
WSJ is still on my bad list though. Especially because Jason Riley wrote a few days ago that the Republican nomination process should be changed to put more selection power in the hands of the Party elite. Grrr…