http://nypost.com/2015/05/30/history-bound-to-repeat-itself-for-hillary/History bound to repeat itself for Hillary
By Michael Goodwin
May 30, 2015 | 11:51pm
With another shoe dropping in the Hillary Clinton scandal nearly every day, America is witnessing an unprecedented spectacle. Never in modern times has a presidential candidate been so tarnished — and yet also so popular.
Oops, there was one other time. Actually, two. Those were the times when Bill Clinton ran for president.
Like her husband, Hillary’s a human Rorschach test. He captured the White House twice without ever winning a majority of the popular vote, and polls paint an eerily similar challenge for her.
Half the country thinks she is fundamentally dishonest and untrustworthy. The other half is ready to make her president. One recent survey showed her beating each leading Republican rival head-to-head, but never getting to 50 percent.
The here-we-go-again feeling is so distressing that, in addition to worrying about the future, I find myself second-guessing the past. I wonder whether we would be better off if Bill Clinton had been thrown out over Monicagate.
Along with most of the country, I thought the Senate made the right decision in 1999 not to convict him on the House charges of impeachment. I believed a constitutional crisis wasn’t worth the candle, and that the long drama involving Lewinsky, her blue dress, the cigar and the impeachment charges were punishment enough.
Now I’m not so sure. Despite Bill’s apologies at the time, the couple clearly saw his escape as vindication. In hindsight, the experience might have convinced the Clintons that they are bulletproof.
To recap the lowlights, the president of the United States had sex with a young intern in the Oval Office, lied about it to the public and a grand jury — and basically got away with it.
Would conviction have served as a cleansing agent for American public life? Would we even be talking about a President Hillary if President Bill had been perp-walked out of the White House?
The questions matter because history could be repeating itself. Once again, a Clinton running for president is loved for her politics and hated for her ethical depravity in nearly equal measure.
Remember, too, that neither of them ever gave up the grifter habit. On the way out the White House door, they grabbed goodies like thieves in the night.
And the evidence is solid that he sold a pardon to Marc Rich for cash and sold pardons for votes for Hillary’s first Senate race involving crooked New York Hasidim and violent Puerto Rican nationalists.
The Clintons were unchastened then, and 15 years later, they’re still cutting corners and maybe worse. Far from being hobbled by a sordid record that would have ended the career of almost anyone else, they’ve stayed on top and gotten really, really rich at the same time.
The continuing revelations about their foundation, then, amount to much more of the same old, same old. Serving as a tax-free slush fund and a holding pen for their cronies, the sleazy doings add another black mark against her tenure as secretary of state.
The overlap of oligarchs, companies and foreign governments that got help while also contributing millions to the foundation and paying one or both Clintons ungodly sums for personal appearances smells to high heaven. Naturally, they’ll turn to many of the same people to fund her campaign.
All this on top of her use of a private e-mail server, apparently without regard to federal rules or cybersecurity. In her first public admission, she lied several times that we know of, including about how many electronic devices and e-mail addresses she used.
Then there are those tens of thousands of messages she deleted before giving the government the rest, asserting the ones she erased were all about yoga classes and Chelsea’s wedding.
What, you don’t believe her? Then prove her wrong. Of course, you can’t, because she wiped the server “clean,” according to her lawyer.
We’re still 17 months from Election Day, and already Bob Kerrey’s great line comes to mind. The former Nebraska senator and governor once accused fellow Democrat Bill Clinton of being “an uncommonly good liar.”
Hillary is not quite as skilled, but certainly she’s no slouch, as the late William Safire noted when he called her a “congenital liar.”
In short, nothing has changed — except one thing. This time, the world is on fire and the nation is in a deep crisis. And if you can’t trust a Clinton, how can you trust one to save America?
