As the presidential campaigns sink to the challenge of demonstrating that there is no such thing as rock bottom, remember this: When the Clintons decamped from Washington in January 2001, they took some White House furnishings that were public property. They also finished accepting more than $190,000 in gifts, including two coffee tables and two chairs, a $7,375 gratuity from Denise Rich, whose fugitive former husband had been pardoned in President Bill Clinton's final hours. A Washington Post editorial ("Count the Spoons") identified "the Clintons' defining characteristic: They have no capacity for embarrassment. Words like shabby and tawdry come to mind. They don't begin to do it justice."
Today, Hillary Clinton strives to live again among some White House furnishings that she and her helpmeet were compelled to disgorge. Her campaign flounders because as secretary of state some of the nation's business might have been melded with the contents of a computer that is pertinent to an FBI investigation of a former Democratic congressman's alleged sexual texting with a female minor. Ransack the English language for words to do this justice.
During the recent welter of reports about the Clintons' self-dealing through their charity that has been very charitable to them, The New Yorker, reporting her plans to uplift the downtrodden, quoted her aspiration: "I want to really marry the public and the private sector." This would solve the Clintons' problem of discerning the line between public business and private aggrandizement: Erase the line.
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