Hillary Clinton: The Ultimate Empty Pantsuit?

I have spent some time looking through the latest State Department dump of Hillary Clinton’s home server emails. I don’t do this in hopes of finding anything explosive; these are, after all, the emails that Hillary didn’t delete. But they should convey some sense of how Hillary operated as Secretary of State; of who her close associates were, and how she managed them; of how she viewed current events generally.

The funny thing is how little one learns about any of these things from Mrs. Clinton’s email traffic. Hardly any of the communications are substantive–Sid Blumenthal’s are, in fact, almost the only ones. Hillary’s aides mainly send her news clippings and information about scheduling. And Hillary herself rarely writes anything other than “please print.” In short, the woman appears to be a cipher.

One might think that this judgment is unfair. Maybe Hillary delivered her incisive analyses in person or on paper. Maybe she really is as able as her sycophants claim, but just didn’t show it in emails. That’s possible.

But then we encounter this email from Hillary to Richard Verma, who at that time was Assistant Secretary of State for Legislative Affairs. It is dated April 24, 2010. Hillary says that she needs to call Harry Reid on account of his recent letter to her:

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The text of Reid’s letter, dated the day before, April 23, is here. Reid’s letter begins:

I am writing to ask you to work with Congress to quickly complete action on the Iran sanctions legislation and to encourage you to support direct negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians. I am deeply concerned about the continuing threat from Iran’s nuclear weapons program which is why I have taken action in the Senate to get new US sanctions in place. While I support the Administration’s decision to pursue sanctions at the United Nations, I think congressional action can further our mutual goal to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons activities.

The letter continues in the same utterly conventional vein. So here is the point: Hillary needed to call Harry Reid to talk about Israel and Iran. So what did she do? She asked an assistant secretary to “provide suggested points for Iran and Israel.” Astonishingly, America’s Secretary of State was not comfortable talking privately with a friendly senator about some of the most prominent foreign policy issues of the time, without being given talking points by an aide!

Maybe the brilliant, omnicompetent Hillary Clinton of myth never existed. Maybe she is nothing but an empty pantsuit who rode her husband’s coattails to an utterly unmerited position of power. Certainly there is nothing in her official email traffic to suggest the contrary.

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