Are Hillary and Trump Just an Exception?

May 28, 2016

This week, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee was essentially found guilty of what she claimed she hadn’t done by the State Department Inspector General. The majority of her assertions were knocked down. She doesn’t have a leg to stand on. It probably doesn’t matter.

For over a year, Hillary Clinton has maintained she had permission to set up a private server. She didn’t. The new argument is she made an error, but we should view this oversight through the larger arc of her career contributions. As the Trump campaign is reminding us on a daily basis, that lengthy career is studded with controversy.

Of course, when your opponent is looking forward to a fraud trial, these things are all relative. Way back in the 19th century, scurrilous things were said about presidential candidates on a regular basis. Before the Civil War, most newspapers were specifically linked to political parties. Whatever your take on the bias of MSNBC, Fox News, et al, it’s nothing compared to what you would have read a couple hundred years ago.