by exploited » Sun Sep 17, 2017 2:22 pm
I disagree. The media did a fine job uncovering the facts and Comey did an even better job with his even-handed, incredibly fair conclusion, which held her to be extremely careless but not criminal. It never would have even got to that point if she was honest from the start - there would have been no need for an investigation if she had just played it straight. But she didn't. She forced the media and the FBI to dig up the truth, and in the process made a giant nothing into a giant something. Totally unnecessary, IMO. Had she not lied, had she not deleted e-mails and destroyed devices, had she simply been honest about it, there was no real issue. At worst she would have taken a minor hit for a small amount of time, but she'd have months to make up for it. Instead it got dragged out.
When you are campaigning for the Presidency, the last thing you want to do is be disingenuous about something like this. All she had to do was say "Yes, I used a private email server, which is fairly common. I did not properly comply with FOIA regulations, and I was wrong to do what I did. When I am President, the first thing I will do is modernize our classification laws and our digital infrastructure, and I will enact strong rules that prevent something like this from happening in the future. I was wrong and I apologize fully and hope that the voters will understand I made a bad mistake, but I have learned from it. Which is something my opponent will never do."
I mean, it isn't like the criminal probe was ever going anywhere. I don't think anybody really believed that she would be charged and put on trial. At least I never did. I can see how that fear would influence her behaviour but that is yet another miscalculation on her part. It just wasn't a serious issue, but she certainly made it one.