Americans of a certain age who follow politics and policy closely still have vivid memories of the 2000 US presidential election — bad memories, and not just because the candidate who lost the popular vote somehow ended up in office. For the campaign leading up to that end game was nightmarish too.
You see, then-US Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush was dishonest in a way that was unprecedented in US politics. Most notably, he proposed big tax cuts for the rich while insisting, in raw denial of arithmetic, that they were targeted for the middle class. These campaign lies presaged what would happen during his administration — an administration that, let us not forget, took the US to war on false pretenses.
However, throughout the campaign most media coverage gave the impression that Bush was a bluff, straightforward guy, while portraying then-vice president and Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore — whose policy proposals added up, and whose critiques of the Bush plan were accurate — as slippery and dishonest.
Gore’s mendacity was supposedly demonstrated by trivial anecdotes, none significant, some of them simply false. No, he never claimed to have invented the Internet. However, the image stuck.
Right now, I and many others have the sick, sinking feeling that it is happening again.
True, there are not many efforts to pretend that US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is a paragon of honesty. However, it is hard to escape the impression that he is being graded on a curve. If he manages to read from a TelePrompter without going off script, he is being presidential. If he seems to suggest that he would not round up all 11 million undocumented immigrants right away, he is moving into the mainstream. In addition, many of his multiple scandals, such as what appear to be clear payoffs to state attorneys general to back off investigating Trump University, get remarkably little attention.
Meanwhile, we have the presumption that anything Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton does must be corrupt, most spectacularly illustrated by the increasingly bizarre coverage of the Clinton Foundation.
Step back for a moment, and think about what that foundation is about. When former US president Bill Clinton left office, he was a popular, globally respected figure. What should he have done with that reputation? Raising large sums for a charity that saves the lives of poor children sounds like a pretty reasonable, virtuous course of action. and the Clinton Foundation is, by all accounts, a big force for good in the world. For example, Charity Watch, an independent watchdog, gives it an “A” rating — better than the American Red Cross.
Now, any operation that raises and spends billions of dollars creates the potential for conflicts of interest. You could imagine the Clintons using the foundation as a slush fund to reward their friends, or, alternatively, Hillary Clinton using her positions in public office to reward donors.
So it was right and appropriate to investigate the foundation’s operations to see if there were any improper quid pro quos. As reporters like to say, the sheer size of the foundation “raises questions.”
However, nobody seems willing to accept the answers to those questions, which are, very clearly, “no.”
Consider The Associated Press report suggesting that Hillary Clinton’s meetings with foundation donors while secretary of state indicate “her possible ethics challenges if elected president.” Given the tone of the report, you might have expected to read about meetings with, say, brutal foreign dictators or corporate fat cats facing indictment, followed by questionable actions on their behalf.
However, the prime example the report actually offered was of Hillary Clinton meeting with Muhammad Yunus, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize who also happens to be a longtime personal friend. If that was the best the investigation could come up with, there was nothing there.
So I would urge journalists to ask whether they are reporting facts or simply engaging in innuendo, and urge the public to read with a critical eye. If reports about a candidate talk about how something “raises questions,” creates “shadows,” or anything similar, be aware that these are all too often weasel words used to create the impression of wrongdoing out of thin air.
Also, here is a pro tip: The best ways to judge a candidate’s character are to look at what he or she has actually done and what policies he or she is proposing. Trump’s record of bilking students, stiffing contractors and more is a good indicator of how he would act as president; Hillary Clinton’s speaking style and body language are not. Bush’s policy lies gave me a much better handle on who he was than all the up-close-and-personal reporting of 2000, and the contrast between Trump’s policy incoherence and Hillary Clinton’s carefulness speaks volumes today.
In other words, focus on the facts. The US and the world cannot afford another election tipped by innuendo.
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