As the unfolding Clinton email story plays out, I have some simple counsel for my friends in Congress, the conservative movement and right-leaning opinion media: Stop talking unless and until you have a plan. Better to go dark than play this game by the Clinton Rules.
Hillary really put a wrench in the media’s plans this week. After eagerly cheerleading Barack Obama for eight years, they stood ready to help break the ultimate glass ceiling and play their role as part of the uncritical chorus of Hillary Clinton’s coronation, first as the Democratic nominee then as President. It’s why they hate this story. It brings alive the memories of thirty years of the slimy, predatory Clinton enterprise and how its venal, sleazy, one-step-ahead-of-the-law hillbilly hustle stains everything it touches.
Cursed with both arrogance and inertia, the Bill and Hillary machine is stumbling toward political peril as the story of her possibly illegal (and certainly dodgy and ill-advised) use of private email servers consumes a Washington and New York press corps that for once can’t easily look away. The Clintons know we’re only at the end of the beginning of this story and the national security, legal and political implications for Hillary will get worse. The Clintons are depending on their old skills at manipulating the press and hoping the GOP and conservatives will save her by mishandling their response as badly as she’s mishandling hers.
While the media’s passive “attention span” excuse du jour is real, many in the press are possessed of a boundless ideological desire to change the subject right now. That’s why the press is waiting breathlessly for (and in some cases, actively trolling for) Republicans to blow it. An intemperate remark from Congressman Jackass would fit the bill perfectly. Don’t be the squirrel. Don’t give them a shiny object. Don’t give them an excuse to turn this into “Krazee Republicans Sure Hate Hillary Because She’s a Woman.” For God’s sake, candidates, take a deep breath and skip talking about your favorite social issue for just a few days. The media is desperate for another riff on evolution or vaccines or gay marriage or prison sex from a GOP contender so they can turn their undivided attention to the Republicans.
Let’s try something new: maintain message discipline, hold focus and keep an eye on a bigger objective than your daily press release, social media hits or email fundraising drops. This is about her, not us, so unless GOP elected and opinion leaders are smart and subtle, and execute with the right timing and tone, she wins. Try for once to play the long game and help Hillary Clinton take on water.
You can sense the Clintons are on the back foot; her now-infamous tweet and promises of transparency last week were nothing more than rehashed Clinton stalling tactics from the 1990s, when there were only a handful of media outlets and a relatively hermetic press culture. It was as stale as a faxed statement, three days late in the era of always-on social media. That won’t work today, if we’re smart. She’s blowing this; let’s help.
It’s vital to have a plan, to execute it with discipline and proceed against Clinton with a measured pace and tone. Speak more in sorrow than in anger. Don’t make it all about Benghazi (they’re expecting that) or the record-keeping laws (boring). Touch on those selectively, but focus instead on the grave national security risks that her amateur-hour email server shenanigan posed and more broadly what this says about the Clinton culture. Her team can yammer on about the legality of it all, her motivations or the traffic content, but the moment this becomes about the Chinese, Iranians, Russians or even just random hackers reading the email (classified or not) of the Secretary of State, it’s a new ballgame.
I encourage you to use the smarmy D.C. construction of “I just want to work in a bipartisan way for good, transparent government and to protect national security secrets from the Chinese, Russians, and other threats” that the Acela Media claims to worship. Republicans have heard the hard ideologues on the left use it a million times while grinding their teeth in frustration. Avoid making wild claims about either the substance or political outcomes of investigations. Reduce expectations, rather than raise them. Don’t let one single member of Congress or leader be the only face in the room; the Clintons love to demonize a single target, so vary your portfolio. Be persistent. Be serious. Be smart.
Just shut the fuck up.
