"They're both awful"? Clinton vs. Trump

[steuard]

I've seen lots of people talk about this year's Presidential candidates in terms of equivalency: "They're both so awful this year," or "Why do we have two people who ought to be disqualified this time?" I doubt anyone's going to change my mind at this point, but I always really want to understand viewpoints that differ from my own. And yet when I

Comments

[jon_leonard]

To start with, I don't plan on voting for either of them, and as a resident of California I can vote third party with a clear conscience: If, somehow, opinion shifts so that California is in play for the electoral college, then the rest of the country has already made California irrelevant.

Nor will I say much positive about Trump: The best I can say at this point is that I think he'd be an ineffective president. In order to get policy positions through he'll need support in Congress (and to a certain extent the bureaucracy), and he hasn't made political allies there.

So, my concerns about Hillary Clinton:

I suspect her of being corrupt. For example, her cattle futures trading matches a bribery pattern in use at the time, where the broker places two offsetting trades, and assigns the winning trade to the bribe recipient's account, and the losing trade to the bribe payer's account. I find that explanation at least as likely as her deciding to bet her net worth on a coin flip of an investment, or having the financial brilliance to turn $1000 into $100,000 over a matter of months, and then somehow losing interest in the market.

I view the primary thing that a president needs to do is to pick a good collection of advisers. Based on the email server story, I have doubts about her doing this: It's pretty clearly not a safe way to handle sensitive information, nor does it intrinsically comply with requirements about document retention or FOIA requests (Indeed, I suspect that was the point). If she had selected and listened to a team of good advisers, she wouldn't have done that. I have little faith that she'd do much better as President.

For what it's worth, the classified information thing should qualify as sufficient for a charge: The law in question does not have an intent requirement, though in practice it's usually handled by a loss of security clearance (and any job that relies on such) instead of a criminal proceeding. The decision not to pursue charges looks odd when compared to how other figures have been treated for classified-information infractions recently.

I'm also dubious about policy choices. As far as I can tell, her policy positions are somewhere between a continuation of Obama's policies, her campaign promises, and her private speeches to bankers and such. You'll probably disagree with me over this, but I strongly prefer something closer to a center-right policy set, and I think Clinton would be fairly effective at getting her policies through (and Supreme Court nominees, etc.).

I might be willing to forgive one or two of those in a lesser-evil sort of election tactical vote, but the combination leaves me seriously considering whether a Trump or Clinton presidency would be worse. In short, I wish both parties had nominated more suitable candidates.

Maybe we'll get lucky with the Electoral College, and it'll get thrown into the House and we can get someone better.

[steuard]

The cattle futures thing is new to me (or rather, old: I'm not sure that I was paying enough attention to the details when it came out before I went to college). You're right that it looks suspicious. It's certainly possible that she just didn't recognize the risks she was running and got unreasonably lucky, but the bribery scheme also seems plausible. It seems like a very valid point of concern, and America's comparatively non-corrupt government is an essential asset of ours. That said, I'm not sure that it ranks up there with "risk of destabilizing the world economy" or "bringing white nationalism back into the mainstream" as a deal breaker for me. (If nothing else, this issue long predated Bill's time as President: it wouldn't be dragging the office into the mud in any new ways.)

Regarding the email server: This one feels like a case where one sees what one wants to see, on either side. I've read that Powell used his personal email account as Secretary of State just as Clinton did, though he evidently didn't use his own server for it. (I use a private email server, as you're very aware. :) ) The non-corrupt explanation that I've seen is that she (like Powell) didn't want to have to carry around two separate smartphones for personal and government email, and she already had a personal account on the family's server. Given that someone trying to dodge the FOIA could just have used the State Department account for routine messages and an anonymous Hotmail account for the shady stuff, I'm not sure what using a private server would supposedly gain her. But again, especially given that people are almost never criminally prosecuted for mishandling classified info without intent, I'm hesitant to see this as rising to the "advocating heinous war crimes" level of disqualification.

Obviously, you and I disagree on policy goals and how well Clinton's line up with our ideal desire. It's hard for me to see anything in the "policy differences" category as new in this election, though, in a way that would make Clinton appear to be a uniquely terrible candidate compared to other Democrats. (And honestly, I don't know how much sensible content we can deduce about what Trump's policies would be at all: he hasn't talked about them much, apart from ridiculous stuff like building a giant wall or terrifying stuff like forcing American Muslims to register in a database. I assume you're not too fond of his plans, either. But maybe you're optimistic that he wouldn't be able to get them through.)

I really do appreciate the time you've taken to talk about some of this, and to help me understand what some of the other half of the nation is seeing in this election. To my eye, it's still awfully hard to see anything that you've suggested for Clinton's list as approaching the level of awfulness in Trump's, even in aggregate. But maybe that's a place where I just need to work harder on seeing another point of view.

(I don't think that the House choosing some third candidate that most of the nation hasn't heard of and who almost nobody voted for would go over very well. Trump's supporters would seriously have a beef about "rigged elections" then and might well rise in armed rebellion, and Clinton's would be equally livid but probably with fewer guns and more sit-ins.)

[jon_leonard]

The cattle futures thing isn't the only example, but it's clearer in terms of means, motive and opportunity. If, hypothetically, she'd accepted a suitcase full of cash, there'd be less evidence. But for more recent examples, consider how people with business before her in the State department paid her husband substantial sums for speeches, and/or donated large amounts to their charity. Even more recently, her husband had a private conversation with a high official in the justice department who had the unenviable task of deciding whether or not to charge her with a crime.

We can argue about whether these cross the line into actual illegality, but that's not really the point: We're voters deciding if her character and leadership are what we want in a president; not prosecutors trying for a conviction. The honorable choice in such cases is recusal from decisions carrying the appearance of impropriety, and that didn't happen much. So in terms of corruption: I look at the pattern of what I've seen reliably reported, and conclude that I have no honest or legal explanation for much of it. She looks corrupt to me.

In terms of the email server, I also look at this from a combination of perspectives. I don't think it was legal, but set that aside. Was it wise from a perspective of how to run a state department? There is the security argument, in a modern form of "Loose lips sink ships". Some information is of high value to adversaries, and it's appropriate to make economic trade-offs as to the cost of protecting the information and the cost if it is revealed. As you point out, we're both well aware that you have a private email address. To the best of my knowledge, you aren't using it for high-value information, but in case you are: I take only moderate security precautions. A black-bag job on my house could get access, and the hosting center is likely vulnerable to nation-state level attacks and national security letters. Nor do I know if your employer cares about the use of a private address. Most places I've worked have had relevant rules limiting work email on private accounts, but a school might not. I also doubt that your email is relevant to any ongoing legal investigations. Please let me know if I've made any bad assumptions here...

In contrast, Clinton's email pretty clearly did have high-value information on it, just from the stuff that has been published. Decisions of whom to target with drone strikes are of high value to the targets and maybe to foreign intelligence agencies. The Keyhole data is presumably of similar value to foreign agents, though it is of course possible that those capabilities have already leaked somewhere else. In short, this is material where lives are at stake, and more security measures are appropriate; air gaps, armed guards, that sort of thing. It's also should have been against policy for both federal records reasons and handling of confidential data reasons. If it weren't against such policies, a wise Secretary of State would have had a policy review and improved it, right? Legal or not, this raises serious doubts about her judgement. I'm not pleased with Powell using a personal email account for work purposes, but that doesn't mean it's OK for Clinton to have done so, and the scale in terms of content that shouldn't have been there appears to have been vastly different.

In terms of policy stuff: Why should it matter if it's new? Bad policy can be timeless. And, in fact, I agree that many of her goals would be nice. But, critically, noble goals are not enough. The paths taken towards those goals matter, and I don't think her approach is likely to work well. So from a results perspective: What are her triumphs as Secretary of State? Presumably not the reset with Russia (Ukraine, Syria), Libya, or Iraq. Maybe that's too mixed in with other people's efforts, so how about Clinton foundations deep involvement with Haiti, which now has an even less functional farm system and government, and now has a cholera epidemic. There may be some of bad luck involved, but there's a lot of policy that sounds good in theory but doesn't work well in practice.

[steuard]

My thoughts on a lot of the "history of corruption" stuff are complicated. I agree that there are more incidents of "insufficient separation" than I'd like to see. But I also expect that over a decades-spanning political career, it would be hard for almost anyone not to accumulate some number of events that might look bad in that way, even if they were reasonably careful. One way to frame that might be this: how different would "Jane Doe's" history look from Clinton's if you assume that Jane didn't ever intentionally engage in corruption during her high-level political career but had political opponents trying their hardest to make it look like she did for 30 years straight? (I don't have a solid answer for that question.)

I guess that's why the "never any official findings of wrongdoing" carries some weight with me, even though I agree that I don't need to hold myself to a jury's standards. It's hard for me to tell the difference between "someone with poor character" and "someone whose opponents have tried for most of my life to present as having poor character." The fact that after all these years, none of the accusations against her have been substantiated enough to produce a conviction makes me suspect that it's at least partly the latter. (I don't know how to guard against the "where there's smoke there's fire" bias, otherwise. Yeah, it could be fire. Or it could be someone doggedly following her around with a fog machine.)

As for high-value information and email, my (limited) understanding is that classified data isn't allowed on anyone's email server, even those run by the State Department itself, for exactly the reasons you've discussed: their email servers aren't built to be secure at that level either. If Clinton violated those rules, that's a real issue, but it's pretty thoroughly independent of whose server it was stored on or relayed through. (Meanwhile, my email contains no high-value anything, and I think the college would mostly agree. :) Bit my work email is handled through my school account, anyway.)

Lastly: The only reason I focused on policy stuff being new is that Clinton has been portrayed again and again as the worst candidate (or second worst) people have ever seen, so terrible that she's on the same level of awfulness as Donald Trump. (That was the focus of my post here, anyway.) So I don't understand what policies of hers would make her look vastly worse than Obama or Kerry or her husband. I understand that many people wouldn't want her to have the chance to pursue that agenda (and boy, do I wish we'd had a campaign where we could have discussed it!), but what about it makes her uniquely bad on this level?

[jon_leonard]

The standard of "never any official findings of wrongdoing" is really a very weak standard. To apply it to a not-fully-comparable case: Why do people make such a big deal about Al Capone? He was only ever convicted of a tax charge, after all.

Reacting to your use of the word "uniquely": I think we may be arguing to different standards. I don't think that Clinton is uniquely bad, though her particular level of apparent corruption, competence in pursuing an agenda I think destructive, and national prominence is certainly unusual.

But that raises the question about Trump, is he uniquely bad? I think if you expand your range of comparison to other countries (even democratic ones), or politicians with less prominence (or other eras), do you really think he's that much worse? As a hypothetical, if you were faced with the unappealing choice of Donald Trump or David Duke in the presidency, which would you go for?

I "merely" hold that I think Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are both very bad choices for US president.

[jon_leonard]

On further reflection, what counts for "official findings of wrongdoing"? Have you read Director Comey's findings?

In particular, the bit "there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information." strikes me as both official and a finding of wrongdoing. Admittedly he goes on to recommend against prosecution, but it's not all smoke and no fire.