No Hapologies

This way to the helipad!

I like Hillary. I’ve been her supporter for a few presidential cycles. On her mailing list I think you’ll find me in the “Old School” section. I got seniority. And, depending how things go, she probably has my vote in 2016. The “probably” is a subtle hint that my vote is not ironclad. Not this time around.

Some people give Hillary a lot of shit. Some I agree with (to some extent). Some is just stupid, crass, and mean-spirited and falls under the category of “My Side Good, Your Side Bad” politics.

Me? I prefer to call ’em like I see ’em. And this is one such case.

Hillary had an email server. It seems that as a high-level player on the national political stage she might have been a skosh over-controlling and had an “above the law” mentality. Do you think she’s unusual in that regard? Hardly.

One headline screamed, “Jeb Bush pounces on Hillary Clinton’s e-mail woes.” Ah, yes. The going negative pounce. In politics this is known as the “high road.”

It turns out, though, that Jeb Bush did, pretty much, exactly the same thing with his emails when he was governor of Florida. He, like Hillary, wanted to be the ultimate arbiter and decider of what was applicable and was not. Letting people police themselves always works out well for the public interest, right?

Given the choice between two people who did pretty much the same thing, I’ll tend to favor the person who is the least hypocritical about it. Pro tip for Jeb: Don’t try to make political hay on the same shit.

That said, I don’t think Hillary is perfect. For example, this week, after failing to deflect the issue for months, she finally came out an apologized about the email scandal.

Some news media accepted the apology at face value and announced that this was a new side of Hillary, that she had a “more contrite tone.”

But what did she really say? Let’s analyze.

“At the end of the day, I am sorry that this has been confusing to people and raised a lot of questions.”

In the same breath, though, she claims what she did was “allowed and it was fully above board.”

There’s a lot going on here. First, we have to recognize that an apology without an admission of guilt is no apology at all. It’s basically a thing bracketed by “I didn’t do anything wrong.” Without the key ingredient of guilt it’s basically meaningless. So what is the thing, then? A ploy. An attempt at spin. Distraction. Diversion. Image. Damage control.

If it isn’t a sincere apology, what is it really? I believe the solution to that riddle revolves around the word “confusing.” Is she saying she was the one confused? Not quite.

She’s “sorry” the rest of us are “confused.”

See? She didn’t do anything wrong (in her humble opinion). Meanwhile the rest of us are “confused.” In other words, we’re not able to grasp the subtle complexities and shades of gray in her behavior. We’re confused by thinking that there are things like right and wrong.

In other words, she just insulted the intelligence of everyone not-Hillary.

I don’t care how you slice it: Getting up on the national stage and pulling something like that in broad daylight is a bold move. I think, ultimately, it brings this whole incident full circle back to what started it in the first place: massive amounts of ego and control.

As a Hillary supporter, that’s my two cents.