The NYT has been — for reasons I’ll get to later this week — been harsh in its reporting on Hillary Clinton’s self-inflicted email woes. And Frank Bruni is no exception. Here’s a little something from his latest:
Behind her forced smile, which was practically cemented in place, she seemed put out by all the skepticism and all the questions. She shouldn’t be. This latest Clinton controversy is not the work or fault of Republican enemies or a ruthless, unappeasable press corps. It’s her doing.
She made a choice when she stepped into the secretary of state’s job that was bound to be second-guessed if it ever came to light, as everything eventually does. And when it did, she was silent about it for a week, letting suspicions fester.
She was on the spit Tuesday because she placed herself there.
The thing is, accusations of a “vast right-wing conspiracy” aside, all of the Clintons’ many troubles have been self-inflicted. Bill had so many women on the side that his team coined the phrase “bimbo eruptions.” And that’s back when he was still just a small-state governor. As for Hillary? Nobody forced her to engage in shady options trading, fire the White House travel office and fill it with cronies, take her public health care commission deeply private, play Tammy Wynette to her serially cheating husband, set up her own private email server, or any of the rest.
Bill and Hill do this crap to themselves and to each other — and that in a nutshell is why they both always seem so “put out by all the skepticism.”
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