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Kristof: Is Hillary Clinton Dishonest?

cigaretteman

HR King
May 29, 2001
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Pretty fair appraisal of Secretary Clinton by Nick:

AFTER the New York primary, the betting websites are giving Hillary Clinton about a 94 percent chance of being the Democratic nominee, and Donald Trump a 66 percent chance of ending up as the Republican nominee.

But Clinton’s big challenge is the trust issue: The share of voters who have negative feelings toward her has soared from 25 percent in early 2013 to 56 percent today, and a reason for that is that they distrust her. Only a bit more than one-third of American voters regard Clinton as “honest and trustworthy.”

Indeed, when Gallup asks Americans to say the first word that comes to mind when they hear “Hillary Clinton,” the most common response can be summed up as “dishonest/liar/don’t trust her/poor character.” Another common category is “criminal/crooked/thief/belongs in jail.”

All this is, I think, a mistaken narrative.

One of the perils of journalism is the human brain’s penchant for sorting information into narratives. Even false narratives can take on a life of their own because there is always information arriving that can confirm a narrative.

Thus once we in the news media had declared Gerald Ford a klutz (he was actually a graceful athlete), there were always new television clips of him stumbling. Similarly, we unfairly turned Jimmy Carter into a hapless joke, and I fear that the “Crooked Hillary” narrative will drag on much more than the facts warrant.

This is a narrative that goes way back and that this newspaper helped establish: My late friend and Times colleague William Safire in 1996 dubbed Clinton “a congenital liar.” But I think this narrative goes way too far.

One basic test of a politician’s honesty is whether that person tells the truth when on the campaign trail, and by that standard Clinton does well. PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking site, calculates that of the Clinton statements it has examined, 50 percent are either true or mostly true.

That compares to 49 percent for Bernie Sanders’s, 9 percent for Trump’s, 22 percent for Ted Cruz’s and 52 percent for John Kasich’s. Here we have a rare metric of integrity among candidates, and it suggests that contrary to popular impressions, Clinton is relatively honest — by politician standards.

It’s true, of course, that Clinton is calculating — all politicians are, but she more than some. She has adjusted her positions on trade and the minimum wage to scrounge for votes, just as Sanders adjusted his position on guns.

Sanders’s positions seem less focus-group tested than Clinton’s, and she can be infuriatingly evasive. Partly that’s because she’s more hawkish than some Democrats, and partly that’s because she realizes she’s likely to face general election voters in November and is preserving wiggle room so she can veer back to the center then.

Does that make her scheming and unprincipled? Perhaps, but synonyms might be “pragmatic” and “electable.” That’s what presidential candidates do.

Then there’s the question of Clinton raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars from speeches to Goldman Sachs and other companies. For a person planning to run for president, this was nuts. It also created potential conflicts of interest, but there’s no sign of any quid pro quo (in a broader sense, companies write checks to buy access and influence, but if that’s corrupt then so is our entire campaign finance system). Bill Clinton, Colin Powell and other prominent figures were speaking for high fees, so she probably thought she could get away with it as well.

Jill Abramson, who spent decades as a journalist either investigating Clinton or overseeing investigations of her, and who certainly isn’t soft on the Clintons, concluded in The Guardian: “Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest and trustworthy.”

Then there are the State Department emails, which are the subject of an F.B.I. investigation. What was she thinking in using a private email server? Why on earth would she do such a stupid thing?

Clinton is thin-skinned, private, controlling, wounded by attacks on her and utterly distrustful of the news media. Where Bill Clinton charms, she stews. My bet is that she and her staff wanted to prevent her emails from becoming public through Freedom of Information Act requests.

All this is self-inflicted damage, which Clinton compounded with evasions and half-truths, coming across as lawyerly and shifty. A more gifted politician might have gotten away with it, but Clinton is not a natural politician. Her warmth can turn to remoteness on the television screen, her caution to slipperiness.

As for the fundamental question of whether Clinton risked American national security with her email server, I suspect the problem has been exaggerated. As President Obama put it, “she has not jeopardized America’s national security.”

Clinton’s private email server may have been penetrated by the Russians, though we don’t know that. But we do know that the official State Department nonclassified email system was indeed penetrated by the Russians, along with the White House unclassified email system.

The bottom line: If she had followed the rules and used her official email address, Vladimir Putin might actually have had a leg up on reading her correspondence.

So as we head toward the general election showdown, by all means denounce Hillary Clinton’s judgment and policy positions, but let’s focus on the real issues. She’s not a saint but a politician, and to me this notion that she’s fundamentally dishonest is a bogus narrative.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/opinion/sunday/is-hillary-clinton-dishonest.html
 
Yes she is and that is quite fine. Parents need to lie to their children every now and then. She is getting the seat regardless of what the other children believe. I say we all unite and join her as we move into this new and exciting era.
 
Color me surprised when a CFR member such as Kristof, comes to the rescue of Hillary, whose daughter Chelsea and husband, Bill, belong. Ciggy, you do know the news is controlled...right?
 
Yes she is and that is quite fine. Parents need to lie to their children every now and then. She is getting the seat regardless of what the other children believe. I say we all unite and join her as we move into this new and exciting era.
What excitement is coming our way?
 
Pretty fair appraisal of Secretary Clinton by Nick:

AFTER the New York primary, the betting websites are giving Hillary Clinton about a 94 percent chance of being the Democratic nominee, and Donald Trump a 66 percent chance of ending up as the Republican nominee.

But Clinton’s big challenge is the trust issue: The share of voters who have negative feelings toward her has soared from 25 percent in early 2013 to 56 percent today, and a reason for that is that they distrust her. Only a bit more than one-third of American voters regard Clinton as “honest and trustworthy.”

Indeed, when Gallup asks Americans to say the first word that comes to mind when they hear “Hillary Clinton,” the most common response can be summed up as “dishonest/liar/don’t trust her/poor character.” Another common category is “criminal/crooked/thief/belongs in jail.”

All this is, I think, a mistaken narrative.

One of the perils of journalism is the human brain’s penchant for sorting information into narratives. Even false narratives can take on a life of their own because there is always information arriving that can confirm a narrative.

Thus once we in the news media had declared Gerald Ford a klutz (he was actually a graceful athlete), there were always new television clips of him stumbling. Similarly, we unfairly turned Jimmy Carter into a hapless joke, and I fear that the “Crooked Hillary” narrative will drag on much more than the facts warrant.

This is a narrative that goes way back and that this newspaper helped establish: My late friend and Times colleague William Safire in 1996 dubbed Clinton “a congenital liar.” But I think this narrative goes way too far.

One basic test of a politician’s honesty is whether that person tells the truth when on the campaign trail, and by that standard Clinton does well. PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking site, calculates that of the Clinton statements it has examined, 50 percent are either true or mostly true.

That compares to 49 percent for Bernie Sanders’s, 9 percent for Trump’s, 22 percent for Ted Cruz’s and 52 percent for John Kasich’s. Here we have a rare metric of integrity among candidates, and it suggests that contrary to popular impressions, Clinton is relatively honest — by politician standards.

It’s true, of course, that Clinton is calculating — all politicians are, but she more than some. She has adjusted her positions on trade and the minimum wage to scrounge for votes, just as Sanders adjusted his position on guns.

Sanders’s positions seem less focus-group tested than Clinton’s, and she can be infuriatingly evasive. Partly that’s because she’s more hawkish than some Democrats, and partly that’s because she realizes she’s likely to face general election voters in November and is preserving wiggle room so she can veer back to the center then.

Does that make her scheming and unprincipled? Perhaps, but synonyms might be “pragmatic” and “electable.” That’s what presidential candidates do.

Then there’s the question of Clinton raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars from speeches to Goldman Sachs and other companies. For a person planning to run for president, this was nuts. It also created potential conflicts of interest, but there’s no sign of any quid pro quo (in a broader sense, companies write checks to buy access and influence, but if that’s corrupt then so is our entire campaign finance system). Bill Clinton, Colin Powell and other prominent figures were speaking for high fees, so she probably thought she could get away with it as well.

Jill Abramson, who spent decades as a journalist either investigating Clinton or overseeing investigations of her, and who certainly isn’t soft on the Clintons, concluded in The Guardian: “Hillary Clinton is fundamentally honest and trustworthy.”

Then there are the State Department emails, which are the subject of an F.B.I. investigation. What was she thinking in using a private email server? Why on earth would she do such a stupid thing?

Clinton is thin-skinned, private, controlling, wounded by attacks on her and utterly distrustful of the news media. Where Bill Clinton charms, she stews. My bet is that she and her staff wanted to prevent her emails from becoming public through Freedom of Information Act requests.

All this is self-inflicted damage, which Clinton compounded with evasions and half-truths, coming across as lawyerly and shifty. A more gifted politician might have gotten away with it, but Clinton is not a natural politician. Her warmth can turn to remoteness on the television screen, her caution to slipperiness.

As for the fundamental question of whether Clinton risked American national security with her email server, I suspect the problem has been exaggerated. As President Obama put it, “she has not jeopardized America’s national security.”

Clinton’s private email server may have been penetrated by the Russians, though we don’t know that. But we do know that the official State Department nonclassified email system was indeed penetrated by the Russians, along with the White House unclassified email system.

The bottom line: If she had followed the rules and used her official email address, Vladimir Putin might actually have had a leg up on reading her correspondence.

So as we head toward the general election showdown, by all means denounce Hillary Clinton’s judgment and policy positions, but let’s focus on the real issues. She’s not a saint but a politician, and to me this notion that she’s fundamentally dishonest is a bogus narrative.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/opinion/sunday/is-hillary-clinton-dishonest.html

Why do you keep quoting the nytimes? They are liberal, which means they can never be trusted. They have no problem with lying, that is acceptable behavior to liberals.
 
In all honesty, I think Hillary's dishonesty has been largely overblown. The factchecker sites actually have her quite honest compared to other politicians. But in the end, it still doesn't matter. It's a narrative that will stick to her. The best she can hope for is to drag down whomever she runs against as being more dishonest.
 
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In all honesty, I think Hillary's dishonesty has been largely overblown. The factchecker sites actually have her quite honest compared to other politicians. But in the end, it still doesn't matter. It's a narrative that will stick to her. The best she can hope for is to drag down whomever she runs against as being more dishonest.
The main problem with the Politifact analysis is that not all positions are equal.

Being correct on how many states there are is not the same as being honest on climate change or war. But the fact checkers rarely rate the significance of the comments they evaluate.
 
The main problem with the Politifact analysis is that not all positions are equal.

Being correct on how many states there are is not the same as being honest on climate change or war. But the fact checkers rarely rate the significance of the comments they evaluate.
It is what it is. They can't factcheck subjective statements.
 
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