Joshua Green is back, in this month's Atlantic. Last February I blogged about an earlier piece of his in the same venue. At that post you can read what I wrote for the American News. The earlier article was one of the best pieces of campaign reporting I have ever read, until now. In the current article, Green takes advantage of a mountain of memos, minutes, and e-mails, to tell an appalling story. That such materials were kept at all suggests the degree of "paranoid dysfunction" that set into the bones and sinews of Hillary. Inc. You can view most of the material itself at the link Green provides. What does that pile of material tell us?
Two things struck me right away. The first was that, outward appearances notwithstanding, the campaign prepared a clear strategy and did considerable planning. It sweated the large themes (Clinton's late-in-the-game emergence as a blue-collar champion had been the idea all along) and the small details (campaign staffers in Portland, Oregon, kept tabs on Monica Lewinsky, who lived there, to avoid any surprise encounters). The second was the thought: Wow, it was even worse than I'd imagined! The anger and toxic obsessions overwhelmed even the most reserved Beltway wise men. Surprisingly, Clinton herself, when pressed, was her own shrewdest strategist, a role that had never been her strong suit in the White House. But her advisers couldn't execute strategy; they routinely attacked and undermined each other, and Clinton never forced a resolution. Major decisions would be put off for weeks until suddenly she would erupt, driving her staff to panic and misfire.
Politics is always about character. The story of the Clintons will remain what it has been since Bill Left office: one of extraordinary talents and will largely wasted by dissolute personalities.
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