Hillary’s email problem: still here… | #Ethics on Blog#42

Hillary Clinton told ABC News “That was a mistake. I’m sorry about that. I take responsibility” and “And I’m trying to be as transparent as I possibly can.”

https://youtu.be/Cf04vThZ-Vs

According to the New York Times, in an interview to The Associated Press just the day before, Clinton told them she did not need to apologize for running state email on her own private server. A couple of days before that, she told Andrea Mitchell of NBC all she was sorry for was the confusion. This slow crawl of an evolution towards an apology has taken so much time it is hard to believe.

As I’ve written previously about this, it isn’t just about email and appearances do matter! Apologizing a day after saying no apology was needed makes the apology seem insincere. Tearing up during the interview after being asked if she ever second-guessed her decision to run again, she said she had, but then brought up her mother’s advice to “fight for what you believe in, no matter how hard it is.”

So, again, we ask: fight for what?  To do a job for the people or fulfill some sort of dynastic legacy? How does a thoughtful leader take months to apologize for doing something that should have been a no-brainer not to do. How does a smart, honest, thoughtful politician – an educated woman – take the plunge and not only decide to run government correspondence outside the government, but also decide what the public will eventually get to see, by destroying historical records? At a minimum, we expect a leader to exercise good judgment.

How serious is it when you tell the press one day that no apology is needed, and then turn around the next and say you’re sorry?

Apologizing, at this point, isn’t enough. We need to hear from Clinton what the real rationale was behind running a home server for State Department email, and what she thought entitled her to do such a thing.

Then, there are the optics of her former IT guy pleading the 5th and refusing to testify in Congress about his role in setting up the email server.


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This email story isn’t going away any time soon. Had Mrs. Clinton been less careless and more ethical, there would be no email server to talk about. File this under “self-inflicted.”

3 thoughts on “Hillary’s email problem: still here… | #Ethics on Blog#42”

  1. Admitting a mistake and apologizing ate important first steps, true. But next answer the questions of WTF were you thinking in the first place, how could the single most responsible person for national security think that running her correspondence outside of the government would be an ok thing to do, since when did the convenience of carrying a cellphone outweigh national security, why do you think your IT guy is going to plead the fifth, what does this whole issue say about your recurring sense of entitlement?

    1. Rick,

      Exactly! This isn’t about Benghazi but treating government as private property. You can’t do that and expect to get away with it.

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