I decided after all to read "Shattered."

I'm 16% of the way into the book that goes "Inside Hillary Clinton's Doomed Campaign." (I know the percent because I'm reading it on Kindle (in combination with the "whispersync'd" audio version, useful when walking around).)

I just wanted to quote 3 things:

1. At the 5% mark, the unholy mess: "The campaign was an unholy* mess, fraught with tangled lines of authority, petty jealousies, distorted priorities, and no sense of greater purpose. No one was in charge, and no one had figured out how to make the campaign about something bigger than Hillary. Muscatine felt that the speech said nothing because it tried to say too much."

2. At the 9% mark, Huma, the croc-filled moat: "[Huma Abedin] had the final say on where Hillary went and who had access to her. Rather than just being a gatekeeper, Abedin took on the role of channeling Hillary for the rest of the campaign... That made her indispensable to both the candidate and the rest of the team... But many feared speaking their minds around her. She couldn’t be counted on to relay constructive criticism to Hillary without pointing a finger at the critic. If Hillary was a candidate often isolated from her formal campaign — and she was — Abedin was the croc-filled moat encircling her. The Royal Huma Guard made it harder for Hillary’s senior- and midlevel aides to get time with the candidate, and that made it impossible to really know the woman they were selling."

3. At the 14% mark, the Brianna/Bianna screwup: "In May [2015], as Bernie was starting to campaign in earnest and it was becoming clear that the press wouldn’t let the e-mail story go, Hillary’s aides began planning her first national television interview of the campaign, a chance to strike back at the widely held perception that she was hiding from the press. Palmieri asked Abedin to find out which newscaster Hillary would prefer, and the answer that came back was 'Brianna.' That meant CNN’s Brianna Keilar, and Palmieri worked to set up a live interview on CNN. Only it turned out that Hillary had said 'Bianna'— as in Bianna Golodryga of Yahoo! News, the wife of former Clinton administration economic aide Peter Orszag. By the time the mistake was realized, it was too late to pull back. Hillary went through with the interview on July 7, and it was a disaster." Here's what her own people perceived as a disaster:



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* The use of the word "unholy" to just mean awful or dreadful interested me. I wondered how long that completely nonreligious application of the religious-seeming word had been around. The OED finds the first published use in a letter written by Charles Dickens in 1842: "I am reminded of my promise to see to the Pantomime, and am called out at this unholy hour." A similar word is "ungodly," first recorded in the nonreligious meaning in a story by Robert Louis Stevenson, "Olalla" (1887)(whole text here):

I went to bed early, wearied with day-long restlessness, but the poisonous nature of the wind, and its ungodly and unintermittent uproar, would not suffer me to sleep. I lay there and tossed, my nerves and senses on the stretch. At times I would doze, dream horribly, and wake again; and these snatches of oblivion confused me as to time. But it must have been late on in the night, when I was suddenly startled by an outbreak of pitiable and hateful cries. I leaped from my bed, supposing I had dreamed; but the cries still continued to fill the house, cries of pain, I thought, but certainly of rage also, and so savage and discordant that they shocked the heart. It was no illusion; some living thing, some lunatic or some wild animal, was being foully tortured...

The idea that Hillary Clinton's relationship with honesty has "to do with the history of Bill Clinton and women in which she's had to defend him."

Carl Bernstein — who, among other things, wrote a biography of Hillary Clinton — had this to say about the interview Hillary gave to CNN. Hillary, as we were discussing earlier today, was unforthcoming when asked why so few Americans think she's honest and trustworthy.

First of all, we have to look at what politicians do generally in terms of fudging. It's endemic in the profession. But she has become a kind of specialist at it. Why has she become a kind of specialist? It has to do I think with the peculiarity of the Clinton situation. It had partly to do with the history of Bill Clinton and women in which she's had to defend him. It's been very difficult to do with the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

In the interview, CNN's Brianna Keilar asked Hillary 3 times to explain why people think she's dishonest and untrustworthy. Hillary's only semblance of an answer was an assertion that she could win the election because voters will know she will fight for us and be there when we need her. See how that clicks with Bernstein's theory? She fought for her husband. She was there for him. She did what he needed, and that wasn't about truthfulness. In this light, Hillary's answer to Keilar's question becomes more apt. It could be paraphrased: People should want a President who's all in, fighting for them, and I'm that kind of fighter, on task and determined, not swayed by fussiness about truthtelling.

And I suspect that when she talks this over with her advisers, a central idea is: Politicians are dishonest. Everyone knows that and everyone thinks that. It's trifling that it shows up in a poll that people think Hillary is dishonest. It's like a poll showing people think the sky is blue. The important thing is, people are familiar and at home with Hillary's dishonesty. It's a comfortable old friend. We know all about it. It's acquired a transparency of its own. But what is the dishonesty of all those other candidates? That is the mystery. That is what people should worry about — all the strange ways in which Jeb/Marco/Scott/Rand/Ted/etc. are dishonesty. So confusing and disturbing. Who knows how to begin to delve into that swamp? Best to stay with good old dishonest Hillary!

She can't come out and say that, but that's the secret hidden message, I'm guessing. 

"Oh, she's likeable enough. She's famous for being likeable enough."

Something I said, after Meade said something, as we watched highlights from that Hillary interview that was on CNN last night. We watched the whole thing last night, and I'm sorry I didn't live blog it and produce truly fresh observations. If I remember correctly, my exclamations last night included: "Wow, she's terrible," "This is with her hand-picked interviewer!," "This is a softball interview and she's coming across as so withholding," "That constant head-bobbing with that smile — it's like her people worked with her about looking like she's tolerating hearing questions and that's the best they could get her to do."

I did make some notes...



That's not an 11 after "I can only tell you." That's my count of how many times she used that phrase: twice. It was twice within a short space of time. I was motivated to start making notes because: What a horrible go-to filler phrase! She's coming across as guarded and withholding, so she shouldn't be saying something that expresses the idea that there's more but she's not going to reveal it. I know she thinks she's saying: This is actually the whole story. But we suspect her of holding back, so it seems as though she's honest enough that she inadvertently let the truth slip out in that phrase. She knows she's not supposed to tell the whole truth, and it feels as though she's operating under instruction from her lawyers: For each possible controversy: Only tell X.

(I want to coin the word "onlytell" — in the style of gainsay. Did you hear what Hillary onlytold in that interview?)

Hillary was prodded about the email, and she burst into what felt like a well workshopped 2-part response. Part 1 was for you legalistic sticklers:

"Now, I didn't have to turn over anything. I chose to turn over 55,000 pages because I wanted to go above and beyond what was expected of me because I knew the vast majority of everything that was official already was in the State Department system."

Part 2 was for the good people, the likeable people, the ooh-I-hate-lawyers-shut-up-lawyers people:

"Now I think it's kind of fun. People get to see a real-time, behind-the-scenes look at what I was emailing about and what I was communicating about." 

Fun! She thinks it's kind of fun! I mean, obviously, she wants you to move into the "fun" mentality. Isn't this a treat, peeking behind the scenes at Hillary and Huma chatting about that darned fax machine? At the very end of the interview, she once again displays this sense of "fun" that you'll probably scoff at because you're such a jerk:

So I'm just going to be my own little self and kind of keep going along and saying what I believe in and putting forth changes that I think would be good for the country....

Be my own little self... Is that something her people say behind the scenes, something like "Let Nixon be Nixon"? But Nixon never said: "I'm just going to let Nixon be Nixon."

Ah, here's the whole transcript. I can show you how "I can only tell you" came up twice within a very short sequence. This happened near the beginning of the interview, after the first couple questions, which were about whether Hillary would, like Bernie Sanders, raise taxes. Hillary had deflected that inquiry with a statement that she "will be laying out" her policies and is "going to be telling" us what they are, and as to whether raising taxes is even "on the table," she's going to be "making a speech about my economic proposals on Monday." That's when I started exclaiming "She's so withholding!"

BRIANNA KEILAR:  I'm wondering if you can address a vulnerability that we've seen you dealing with recently.  We see in our recent poll that nearly six in 10 Americans say they don't believe that you're honest and trustworthy. Do you understand why they feel that way?

CLINTON:  Well, I think when you are subjected to the kind of constant barrage of attacks that are largely fomented by and coming from the Right and...

That got 2 reactions here at Meadhouse: 1. She's doing "vast right-wing conspiracy" again!, and 2. "Fomented"! What do "everyday people" think of a somebody who says "fomented"? What do they think "fomented" means... something about foam?

KEILAR:  But do you bear any responsibility for that?

CLINTON:  - well, I - you know, I can only tell you that I was elected twice in New York against the same kind of onslaught.  

She's choosing to answer a question that the question reminds her of. The question asked is: Why do people feel you're dishonest and untrustworthy? The question she's answering is: Can you get elected even though people think you're dishonest and untrustworthy?

I was confirmed and served as secretary of state and I think it's understandable that when questions are raised people maybe are thinking about them and wondering about them. 

That acknowledges that people have feelings, not why they have them.

But I have every confidence that during the course of this campaign people are going to know who will fight for them...

Again, she deflects us to the future. She'll be telling us things later.

... who will be there when they need them and that's the kind of person I am.  And that's what I will do, not only in a campaign but as president.

She comes in for a landing with the most generic material possible. Keiler tries again (to seem like a tough journalist and not the chosen softballer?)):

KEILAR:  Trusting someone to fight for them and trusting someone, these are two different things. Do you see any role that you've had in the sentiment that we've seen, where people are questioning whether you're trustworthy?

CLINTON:  I can only tell you, Brianna, that this has been a theme that has been used against me and my husband for many, many years...

She already onlytold Brianna what she told Brianna she could onlytell.

She's honest enough.   

Likeable enough and honest enough. That's the secret slogan.

UPDATE: James Taranto quotes my "Let Nixon be Nixon" remark and I question whether there ever was a catchphrase "Let Nixon be Nixon."