If Hillary wants to be president, she will have to learn to live an inconvenient life

"Because only Hillary Clinton controls her personal email account and admitted she deleted many of her emails, no one but Hillary Clinton knows if she handed over every relevant email," Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus

In 1959, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was running for President of the United States. After giving a televised speech which he knew his father had watched, he called the senior Kennedy to ask how he had done. A friend of Jack’s later recalled watching Kennedy listen to his father on the phone for about fifteen minutes before hanging up. The friend then asked Jack how he had done. He replied that he had no idea. If, while running for president, he said, in front of all the cameras, he had fallen flat on his face, “Dad would have said ‘boy the way you picked yourself up was great!’” And that is the attitude many seem to be taking towards Hillary Clinton’s most recent scandal.

It began about ten days ago when it turned out Hillary, as Secretary of State, had not had a government email account, (and thus a protected, classified account). The email account, while it apparently did not have classified information going over it, did have “sensitive information” going over it. Information that it would be much easier for foreign nations to hack because the email account was not a government one.

Hillary did not say much about it for over a week, during that time it was discovered that she not only had had a private email account, she had also decided, by herself, which documents, (she has to turn over all work related document) were indeed work related, and which she would keep. She kept more than half.

Now the shouting match has begun, some say laws were broken, some say they were not, I'm not a lawyer, I don’t know. But one thing is clear, the guidelines states she had to have a government account, and she did not. Her response at last was this: She did what she did for convenience. (Watch the video here.) Whatever is in the emails, I doubt there will be some major revelation that will suddenly force all of us to make public apologies to conspiracy theorists and tell them they were right all along.

But Hillary Clinton clearly broke guidelines she was supposed to follow, and her response is oopsey-daisey, oh well, it was more convenient that way. Although she did admit she made a mistake, she clearly has no interest in doing her best to remedy it. Even Democrats are saying she needs to allow a private arbiter to go through them. As one Republican Senator said, you don’t calling holding on yourself in football, and it is not up to her to say what is important evidence on her, and what is not.

Making a mistake as a person in public service is one thing, telling everyone it was better for her that way, she is not going to answer our questions on the rest of the emails, and so, basically, we should all just get lost, is quite another. And the response of many Democrats is that she should now run for president to stop the questions-what a response. Completely unbelievable. I can recall no parallel in history. When you make major mistakes, usually, you either don’t run for president, or you wait a while to prove to us that you are trustworthy, and won’t make the same mistake again. A presidential campaign should never be a stunt to avoid a congressional hearing.

Being president is, I hear, really inconvenient some days. You have to tell the truth even when you goof up. You have to do unpopular things, its not all just flowery beds of ease, and if Hillary Clinton ever wants to be president, she will have to learn that. 

If it is inconvenient for Hillary Clinton to follow the law now, her breaking it as president would be inconvenient for the rest of us.

Andrew C. Abbott