Breitbart News has obtained confirmation on State Department letterhead that Hillary Clinton did NOT sign a mandatory OF-109 “Separation Statement” when she left the State Department.
That statement would have required her to affirm that she had returned all classified materials in her possession. Clinton’s top aide Cheryl Mills also avoided signing a separation statement.
Additionally, Clinton never certified that she went through a mandatory security debriefing to learn how to handle classified information. State Department officials, meanwhile, admitted that they “mistakenly” mailed out sensitive information involving the Clinton case.
Citizen researcher Larry Kawa has provided to Breitbart News the most clear-cut evidence to date that Clinton avoided going through mandatory channels to return classified government information.
Clinton failed to sign a separation agreement when she left the State Department, around the time she was required to give back all of her classified materials. Clinton signed a “Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement” on January 22, 2009. This document is known as an SF-312. It is standard for government employees to sign an SF-312 when they begin working in a role that gives them access to classified information. But she was also required to sign an OF-109, or “Separation Statement,” when she left the job.
That OF-109 document would have required her to affirm the following:
I have surrendered to responsible officials all classified or administratively controlled documents and material with which I was charged or which I had in my possession. I am not retaining in my possession, custody, or control, documents or material containing classified or administratively controlled information furnished to me during the course of such employment or developed as a consequence thereof…
But Clinton never signed an OF-109, even though the State Department Foreign Affairs Manual requires all employees to do so. The office of the Speaker of the House and others have been desperately trying to figure out if Clinton signed an OF-109. Now we know.
On September 11, 2015, researcher Larry Kawa received a letter from State Department official Clarence N. Finney Jr. from the Office of Executive Secretariat Staff (S/ES-S). Finney claimed that, “Departing secretaries of state do not complete an OF-109 due to their continued need for a security clearance after their resignation.”
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In other words, the State Department claimed that Clinton, as Secretary of State, was exempt from the requirement in the Foreign Affairs Manual. But Kawa was not satisfied.
Kawa wrote to State Department Office of Information Programs and Services director John Hackett on November 19 and asked, “Can you please forward me written documentation that allows for the exemption of the Secretary of State?”
“Mr. Kawa, I do not have this information at hand. I recommend that you submit an additional FOIA request,” Hackett replied. Kawa submitted another FOIA request two days later seeking evidence for the exemption, but his FOIA request was never returned.
The State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual Volume 12 Section 564.4 is crystal clear that all employees must sign a separation agreement and undergo a security debriefing:
a. A security debriefing will be conducted and a separation statement will be completed whenever an employee is terminating employment or is otherwise to be separated for a continuous period of 60 days or more.The debriefing is mandatory to ensure that separating personnel are aware of the requirement to return all classified material and of a continuing responsibility to safeguard their knowledge of any classified information. The separating employee must be advised of the applicable laws on the protection and disclosure of classified information (see 12FAM 557 Exhibit 557.3) before signing Form OF-109, Separation Statement (see 12 FAM 564 Exhibit 564.4).
b. AID’s Office of Security, IG/SEC, will conduct a security debriefing upon the separation of AID employees.
Kawa asked State Department Office of Information Programs and Services litigation and appeals branch chief Brandi Garrett for the “pertinent exemption” that would have allowed Clinton to skip out on signing a separation statement, but Garrett did not provide any evidence to show that Clinton was exempt.
Cheryl Mills also skipped the exit procedure.
A Separation Statement exists for top Clinton aide Cheryl Mills, and a copy of it was quietly released by the State Department.
You might notice something fairly jarring: the statement was never signed, by Mills or anyone else. It was left blank.
Cheryl Mills, like Clinton, avoided having to affirm that she “surrendered to responsible officials all classified or administratively controlled documents and material with which I was charged or which I had in my possession.”
Unlike Mills, Clinton aide Huma Abedin signed a separation statement and security debriefing acknowledgment in February 2013.
Citizen researcher Larry Kawa found the information during a series of exchanges with State Department officials in which the Department admitted to “mistakenly” mailing out sensitive information on the Clinton case.
On the evening of Friday November 13, 2015, Kawa received an email from Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Martha Grafeld. That same night, he received a voicemail message from State Department information officer John Hackett. Both Grafeld and Hackett told Kawa that he had been mailed sensitive information about Clinton and her aides. Even though Kawa had not received any information, the State Department officials seemed panicked.
They both asked him to return the sensitive information as soon as he gets it in the mail. They also both warned him not to disclose any of the information they thought he’d been sent.
Audio of Hackett’s voice mail message, reviewed by Breitbart News, referred to information that was “mistakenly” sent out:
Mr. Kawa, this is John Hackett with the Department of State. Area code [redacted]. The documents we recently mailed you relating to your FOIA request, um, these documents were mistakenly mailed to you without proper processing. They may contain, um, information that is exempt from public disclosure including Social Security numbers. We ask that you not distribute or disseminate these documents. We’ll be sending you an email to ask you to return these documents. Um, also we’ll be sending you a link where these documents that have been properly processed may be found. We regret any inconvenience. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to give me a call. Thanks a lot. Bye now.
Grafeld wrote:
I am writing to follow up on a phone call you received today. In that call, our staff informed you that documents you recently received in the mail from the Department of State were mistakenly mailed to you without proper processing, as they include information that is exempt from disclosure, potentially including Social Security numbers. The Department asked that you not distribute or disseminate these documents or copies of these documents. Substitute documents that have been properly processed are posted at: https://foia.state.gov/Search/Results.aspx?collection=HRC_NDAS.
We will forward to you a prepaid envelope to return to us the documents that were mistakenly sent and any copies you may have made. This return will be at no cost to you.
As you may know, many states have enacted privacy laws that prohibit the disclosure of the Social Security number of another person. With that in mind, we appreciate your safeguarding the Social Security numbers on the documents mistakenly sent to you.
We regret any inconvenience that this may cause you and appreciate your cooperation.
Clinton’s lack of an OF-109 is especially relevant in light of her SF-312, a sworn agreement in 2009 that she made to return all classified materials “upon the conclusion of my employment”:
7…I agree that I shall return all classified materials which have, or may come into my possession or for which I am responsible because of such access: (a) upon demand by an authorized representative of the United States Government; (b) upon the conclusion of my employment or other relationship with the Department or Agency that last granted me a security clearance or that provided me access to classified information; or (c) upon the conclusion of my employment or other relationship that requires access to classified information. If I do not return such materials upon request, I understand that this may be a violation of Sections 793 and/or 1924, Title 18, United States Code, a United States criminal law.
But Clinton did not return her private server, with classified information on it, when she left the State Department in January 2013. She only gave her private server to an inter-agency task force led by the FBI in August 2015, more than two years after her employment with the State Department came to an end.
Thus, Clinton violated her sworn SF-312 statement and could have violated the Title 18 sections cited in the agreement: Section 793, on “Gathering, transmitting, or losing defense information,” and Section 1924, on “Unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material.” If she is convicted of violating either of those sections, she could face prison time.
Clinton did not sign the second line on the bottom of the SF-312 document, the “Security Debriefing Acknowledgment.” The signature line was left blank. Thus, Clinton did not certify that she was debriefed on her security obligations regarding classified information.
The Hillary Clinton campaign and the State Department did not return requests for comment for this report.
Category Archives: Hillary Clinton email
Hillary has NO Defense Under the Law or Executive Order
Executive Order #13526 Espionage Act
WASHINGTON — Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the president of Afghanistan, gets regular payments from the CIA and has for much of the past eight years, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
The newspaper said that according to current and former American officials, the CIA pays Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the CIA’s direction in and around Kandahar.
The CIA’s ties to Karzai, who is a suspected player in the country’s illegal opium trade, have created deep divisions within the Obama administration, the Times said.
Allegations that Karzai is involved in the drug trade have circulated in Kabul for months. He denies them.
Critics say the ties with Karzai complicate the United States’ increasingly tense relationship with his older brother, President Hamid Karzai. The CIA’s practices also suggest that the United States is not doing everything in its power to stamp out the lucrative Afghan drug trade, a major source of revenue for the Taliban.
Clinton email chain discussed Afghan national’s CIA ties, official says
FNC: EXCLUSIVE: One of the classified email chains discovered on Hillary Clinton’s personal unsecured server discussed an Afghan national’s ties to the CIA and a report that he was on the agency’s payroll, a U.S. government official with knowledge of the document told Fox News.
The discussion of a foreign national working with the U.S. government raises security implications – an executive order signed by President Obama said unauthorized disclosures are “presumed to cause damage to the national security.”
The U.S. government official said the Clinton email exchange, which referred to a New York Times report, was among 29 classified emails recently provided to congressional committees with specific clearances to review them. In that batch were 22 “top secret” exchanges deemed too damaging to national security to release.
Confirmation that one of these exchanges concerned a reported CIA asset means the emails went beyond issues like the drone strike campaign. Democrats repeatedly have said some messages referred to this, reinforcing Clinton’s position that the documents are over-classified.
Based on the timing and other details, the email chain likely refers to either an October 2009 Times story that identified Afghan national Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half-brother of then-Afghan president Hamid Karzai, as a person who received “regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency” — or an August 2010 Times story that identified Karzai aide Mohammed Zia Salehi as being on the CIA payroll. Ahmed Wali Karzai was murdered during a 2011 shoot-out, a killing later claimed by the Taliban.
Fox News was told the email chain included then-Secretary of State Clinton and then-special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke and possibly others. The basic details of this email exchange were backed up to Fox News by a separate U.S. government source who was not authorized to speak on the record.
It’s unclear who initiated the discussion – Clinton, Holbrooke or a subordinate – or whether the CIA’s relationship with the Afghan national was confirmed, because the classified documents are not public.
Holbrooke died in December 2010, during his service as a special envoy.
A CIA spokesperson told Fox News they had no comment on the email chain.
A spokeswoman for the Office of the Intelligence Community Inspector General also had no comment.
The U.S. government official’s account of the Clinton email chain dovetails with a Feb. 3 interview on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom,” where Republican Rep. Chris Stewart, a member of the House intelligence committee, said, “I have never read anything more sensitive than what these emails contain. They do reveal classified methods. They do reveal classified sources and they do reveal human assets.”
Stewart added, “I can’t imagine how anyone could be familiar with these emails, whether they’re sending them or receiving them, and not realize that these are highly classified.”
While the Clinton campaign claims the government classification review has gone too far, Executive Order 13526, in a section called “classification standards,” says, “the unauthorized disclosure of foreign government information is presumed to cause damage to the national security.”
Fox News was first to report that the Clinton emails contained intelligence beyond “top secret,” and some of the information was deemed “HCS-O” – a code that refers to human intelligence from ongoing operations.
National security and intelligence experts emphasized to Fox News that security clearance holders are trained to not confirm or deny details of a classified program in an unclassified setting, which would include a personal unsecured email network, even if the classified program appears in press reports.
“The rules of handling classified information dictate if something is reported in open source [news reports] you don’t confirm it because it’s still classified information,” said Dan Maguire, who spent more than four decades handling highly classified programs and specialized in human intelligence operations.
As secretary of state, Clinton signed at least two non-disclosure agreements (NDA) on Jan. 22, 2009, and received a briefing from a security officer whose identity was redacted. As part of the NDA for “sensitive compartmented information” (SCI), Clinton acknowledged any “breach” could result in “termination of my access to SCI and removal from a position of special confidence and trust requiring such access as well as the termination of my employment or any other relationships with any Department or Agency that provides me with access to SCI.”
It is remains unclear how classified materials “jumped the gap” from a classified system to her personal server.
On Feb. 12, Clinton’s national press secretary Brian Fallon emphasized that classified information would have been marked as such. “I think when this review plays itself out, at the end they’ll find that what we have said is true,” he told CNN. “Nothing was marked classified at the time it was sent.”
Fallon also attacked the State Department inspector general, Steve Linick, for what he described as “fishing expedition-style investigations” since Clinton decided to run for president. “There is no basis. It is intended to create headwinds for her campaign, but it is not going to work,” Fallon said. He leveled a similar allegation against Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough, III, after his office notified Congress the emails contained information beyond top secret.
Inquiries by Fox News to Clinton’s attorney David Kendall about the status of or changes to her security clearance, and access to classified information, have not been returned.
Subpoena: State Dept vs. Clinton Foundation
How the Clinton Foundation is organized
What We Know About WJC, LLC, Bill Clinton’s Consulting Company
Financial disclosures show that the former president started a pass-through company to channel his consulting fees.
Clinton Foundation received subpoena from State Department investigators
Investigators with the State Department issued a subpoena to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation last fall seeking documents about the charity’s projects that may have required approval from the federal government during Hillary Clinton’s term as secretary of state, according to people familiar with the subpoena and written correspondence about it.
The subpoena also asked for records related to Huma Abedin, a longtime Clinton aide who for six months in 2012 was employed simultaneously by the State Department, the foundation, Clinton’s personal office, and a private consulting firm with ties to the Clintons.
The full scope and status of the inquiry, conducted by the State Department’s inspector general, were not clear from the material correspondence reviewed by The Washington Post.
A foundation representative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing inquiry, said the initial document request had been narrowed by investigators and that the foundation is not the focus of the probe.
A State IG spokesman declined to comment on that assessment or on the subpoena.
Representatives for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and Abedin also declined comment.
[How Huma Abedin operated at the center of the Clinton universe]
There is no indication that the watchdog is looking at Clinton. But as she runs for president in part by promoting her leadership of the State Department, an inquiry involving a top aide and the relationship between her agency and her family’s charity could further complicate her campaign.
For months, Clinton has wrangled with controversy over her use of a private email server, which has sparked a separate investigation by the same State Department inspector general’s office. There is also an FBI investigation into whether her system compromised national security.
Bill Clinton used LLC as a pass through
Clinton was asked about the FBI investigation at a debate last week and said she was “100 percent confident” nothing would come of it. Last month, Clinton denied a Fox News report that the FBI had expanded its probe to include ties between the foundation and the State Department. She called that report “an unsourced, irresponsible” claim with “no basis.”
During the years Clinton served as secretary of state, the foundation was led by her husband, former president Bill Clinton. She joined its board after leaving office in February 2013 and helped run it until launching her White House bid in April.
Abedin served as deputy chief of staff at State starting in 2009. For the second half of 2012, she participated in the “special government employee” program that enabled her to work simultaneously in the State Department, the foundation, Hillary Clinton’s personal office and Teneo, a private consultancy with close ties to the Clintons.
Abedin has been a visible part of Hillary Clinton’s world since she served as an intern in the 1990s for the then-first lady while attending George Washington University. On the campaign trail, Clinton is rarely seen in public without Abedin somewhere nearby.
Republican lawmakers have alleged that foreign officials and other powerful interests with business before the U.S. government gave large donations to the Clinton Foundation to curry favor with a sitting secretary of state and a potential future president.
Both Clintons have dismissed those accusations, saying donors contributed to the $2 billion foundation to support its core missions: improving health care, education and environmental work around the world.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.), Clinton’s opponent in the Democratic primary, has largely avoided raising either issue in his campaign. Last spring, Sanders expressed concerns about the Clinton Foundation being part of a political system “dominated by money.”
Sanders has batted away questions about the email scandal, famously saying at a debate last fall that, “The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.”
The potential consequences of the IG investigation are unclear. Unlike federal prosecutors, inspectors general have the authority to subpoena documents without seeking approval from a grand jury or a judge.
But their power is limited. They are able to obtain documents, but they cannot compel testimony. At times, IG inquiries result in criminal charges, but sometimes they lead to administrative review, civil penalties or reports that have no legal consequences.
The IG has investigated Abedin before. Last year, the watchdog concluded she was overpaid nearly $10,000 because of violations of sick leave and vacation policies, a finding that Abedin and her attorneys have contested.
Republican lawmakers, led by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), have alleged that Abedin’s role at the center of overlapping public and private Clinton worlds created the potential for conflicts of interest.
Hillary Emails Back in the News, Again
Yoga and wedding arrangements? Not so much..
State Dept: Top Official Didn’t Know About Hillary’s Server, Even Though He Was On Email Discussing It
DailyCaller: A spokesman for the State Department insisted during a press conference on Wednesday that Patrick Kennedy, the Under Secretary of Management at the department, was not aware Hillary Clinton maintained a private server in her home while she was secretary of state.
But that claim — made by spokesman Mark Toner — is a curious one given that emails published by The Daily Caller last month show that Kennedy was involved in an August 2011 email exchange with two of Clinton’s top aides and another State Department official in which Clinton’s private email server was discussed.
Whether Kennedy knew about Clinton’s private server is a key point in the ongoing email kerfuffle. In his role, the 42-year veteran manages all facets of State Department business, including personnel matters, logistics, information technology, and budgetary issues. He is also the official who has served as the State Department’s main point of contact with Clinton, her attorneys, and her aides throughout the ongoing email scandal. He sent the letters requesting that Clinton and her aides hand their emails over to the State Department.
Given his central position at State, it would stand to reason that Kennedy should have known — and should have been informed — that Clinton was using a private email server housed in her New York residence.
As one reporter put it during Wednesday’s press briefing: “How could he not know if he’s responsible for both [Diplomatic Security] and for the people who do the technical and computer stuff at State?”
But Kennedy knowing about the server would also raise questions about why the career diplomat allowed Clinton to use an email system was vulnerable to outside threats. Not to mention the risks posed by Clinton’s sending and receiving of classified information.
Kennedy’s name popped up on Wednesday when Fox News’ Catherine Herridge reported that he was one of the State Department officials who handled 22 “top secret” emails found on Clinton’s server. Clinton and her aides, Jake Sullivan, Huma Abedin, Cheryl Mills, and Philippe Reines all either sent the sensitive emails, received them, forwarded them, or commented on them.
The State Department has determined that the emails are so sensitive that they will be withheld from the Clinton records being released in batches at the end of each month since June.
Fox’s Herridge also reported that Kennedy told the House Select Committee on Benghazi during an interview earlier this month that he knew about Clinton’s personal email account from the beginning of her tenure, but that he was not aware of the “scope” of its use for government business.
A spokesperson for the Committee declined to comment on matters involving private interviews.
During Wednesday’s questioning, Toner said three times that Kennedy, who frequently emailed with Clinton about work-related issues, did not know about Clinton’s private server.
“He’s spoken to it before — or we’ve spoken to it before — that he did not have knowledge of the computer server that she set up in her residence,” said Toner, who also stated that Kennedy told the Benghazi Committee that he did not know about the server.
“What his knowledge or what his awareness at the time — other than what he has said already, or what we have said already — which is that he was not aware of her having a private server at her home,” Toner said later in the press briefing.
But an Aug. 30, 2011 email chain obtained by TheDC last month through a FOIA lawsuit shows that Kennedy was involved in a conversation that explicitly mentioned Clinton’s server.
In the email, Stephen Mull, then-executive secretary at State, thanked Cheryl Mills for alerting him to problems that Clinton was having sending emails on the personal Blackberry that she used to send and receive work email. The Blackberry was “malfunctioning,” Mull noted, “possibly because of [sic] her personal email server is down.”
Kennedy was copied on that email as well as on a response from Abedin. On top of indicating that Kennedy was made aware of Clinton’s use of a personal server, the emails also show that Abedin, Clinton’s deputy chief of staff and an official on her presidential campaign, vetoed a proposal to set Clinton up with a second Blackberry equipped with a State.gov email address.
“Doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” Abedin said in response to the proposal. Clinton was never provided a State Department-issued Blackberry. Why Kennedy did not intervene at that time is anybody’s guess.
TheDC reached out to the State Department to find out more about the apparent inconsistency between Toner’s comments on Wednesday and the August 2011 emails. Perhaps Kennedy didn’t see the email? Perhaps he assumed that another email server that was linked to Clinton’s Blackberry was being discussed by Stephen Mull, the executive secretary of State?
But the agency provided few additional details.
“Today the State Department indicated that comments made by Under Secretary Kennedy to the Benghazi Committee were being misconstrued. Beyond that, we are not going to speak to this further,” a State Department official told TheDC.
Hat tip Chuck!
Hillary has no Message, then this Memo
FreeBeacon: MSNBC reporter Andrea Mitchell slammed Hillary Clinton’s campaign for its “pretty shocking” memo that it “defensively” released in anticipation of losing to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) in New Hampshire.
Sanders, as predicted by the polls, defeated Clinton there Tuesday night, with networks making the calls just moments after the final polls closed.
PBS reported on the memo:
Hours before official New Hampshire results appeared Tuesday, Hillary Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook conceded to staffers, supporters and some reporters that the Granite State race was lost, in a memo obtained by PBS NewsHour that urged the Clinton team to focus past February and on March.
“The first four states represent just 4% of the delegates needed to secure the nomination,” Mook wrote, “The 28 states that vote (or caucus) in March will award 56% of the delegates needed to win.”
The Democratic Party is “completely splintered,” Mitchell said.
“Hillary Clinton had the Democratic Party establishment,” Mitchell said. “She still has their endorsements, but he has out-raised her in January. He now will have a ton of money on those online contributions in February, and the Clinton team anticipated this with this three-page memo.”
Host Rachel Maddow interrupted to say that the memo “shocked” her.
“Is this normal?” Maddow asked.
“No, this is pretty shocking because it is a three-page memo from the campaign manager defensively explaining how they can come back and win the nomination in March with the delegate-rich first 15 days in March,” Mitchell said, her voice hardened.
Mitchell added she’d had it for a half-hour, showing the campaign pre-emotively wrote it in anticipation of losing to Sanders.
“Embargoed until 8:00,” Maddow said. “They knew they were going to lose.”
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The gaping hole at the heart of Hillary Clinton’s campaign
WaPo: There are many stories one could tell about Bernie Sanders’ defeat of Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire. One is that Sanders has captured the prevailing sentiment among Democrats, a fervent desire for political revolution to unmake a corrupt system, and he will ride this desire all the way to the nomination. Another is that yesterday’s result was a function of some idiosyncratic features of that primary, particularly New Hampshire’s demographic homogeneity and the fact that independents are allowed to vote in the party primary; now that the race moves to states that better represent the Democratic Party, Clinton’s strength among Latinos and African-Americans will move her back into command for good.
Either of those stories might be true. But right now, the Clinton campaign has a much bigger problem than the story it wants to tell about New Hampshire. That problem is this: the campaign has no story to tell the voters about Hillary Clinton and why she should be president.
Having a good story doesn’t guarantee you victory, but nobody becomes president without one. The story has to contain three simple elements. First, it explains what the problem is. Second, it explains what the solution is. And third, it explains why this candidate, and only this candidate, is the person who can bring the country from where it is now to where it ought to be.
As Greg discussed this morning, both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders have very simple messages that are resonating with substantial parts of the base voters in each one’s party. Trump says that America is being played for chumps, and only a fantastic, luxurious individual like him can make us win again. Sanders says that the political system is corrupted by the influence of the wealthy and corporations, and a revolution delivered by an unsullied figure like him is necessary to break their stranglehold on our politics. Anyone who has paid attention to the campaign for five minutes understands what those messages are, whether you agree with either one of them or not.
Now tell me: what’s Hillary Clinton’s message?
She doesn’t have one. She doesn’t have a clear diagnosis of the problem the country faces, nor does she have an explanation of what the solution is, nor can she say why only she can bring about the better future voters are hoping for.
Of course, Clinton can make a persuasive argument for her preferred solution on any policy area you can name. She also has a strong argument for why Sanders is being unrealistic about much of what he wants to do, an argument I basically agree with. And if you asked, she could tell you all about her ample qualifications for the presidency. But it doesn’t add up to a coherent story.
What’s remarkable about this gaping hole in her candidacy is that she faced exactly the same problem eight years ago, and lost in part because she never solved it. Barack Obama told voters that our politics was being constrained by partisan bickering and small thinking, and only he, a new, inspiring figure, could forge consensus and bring the kind of change our future demanded. You might not think he succeeded in that, but at the time it was exactly what voters believed we needed. Far more than Obama’s specific policy ideas — which barely differed from Clinton’s at all — that vision and the way he embodied it was what drew first Democrats and then general election voters to him.
I’m a little reluctant to make this critique, because reporters and pundits are often too eager to play political consultant and tell candidates and operatives how to do their jobs, when there are more important things we could be talking about. And candidates don’t need more encouragement to oversimplify things and reduce all the complexities of policy and politics to bumper sticker-ready slogans.
Nevertheless, the fact is that human beings understand the world through stories, which help bring coherence to complex situations. And there’s no reason a campaign can’t offer voters both lengthy policy plans and a simple, broad structure that organizes them into an understandable whole.
Clinton’s campaign would argue that she has such a story to tell. In her speech in New Hampshire last night, she listed many of the problems she wants to solve and explained how she can solve them through commitment and hard work. Sources near to her tell Politico that now she will “push a new focus on systematic racism, criminal justice reform, voting rights and gun violence that will mitigate concerns about her lack of an inspirational message.” That’s directed primarily at African-Americans, the Democratic Party’s largest and most loyal constituency group, and the one no Democrat can win the nomination without. If Clinton can hold those voters, she can probably turn back Sanders’ challenge.
But that’s far from guaranteed, and it’s a message that only addresses some of the problems the country faces. In contrast to broad ideas like Sanders’ call for revolution or even Trump’s claim that we’re a country of losers, it can’t be easily and logically applied to any problem a voter might see as urgent. And it doesn’t tell you much about Hillary Clinton in particular, other than the fact that this is something she cares about.
There’s another successful presidential candidate we can remember who knew that being smart and experienced and having popular policy ideas wasn’t enough. His name was Bill Clinton, and he told the country that as an innovative thinker hailing from a place called Hope, this representative of a new generation could carry America out of its doldrums. He may have been more of a natural politician than his wife, but he also had a story to tell, one the voters found compelling. Hillary Clinton hasn’t told the country a story that connects their worries with her potential as a president. But she’d better find one soon.