(NEW YORK POST)
By Michael Walsh
Among the many telling kernels of truth dappling the spoor of the Hillary Clinton campaign’s internal e-mails released by WikiLeaks this past week, this one immediately leaped out:
“Politics is like sausage being made. It is unsavory, and it always has been that way, but we usually end up where we need to be. But if everybody’s watching . . . then people get a little nervous, to say the least. So, you need both a public and a private position.”
The sausage maker was Mrs. Clinton, giving one of her $225,000 speeches that she’s so long sought to conceal from the public, in this instance to the National Multi-Housing Council in April 2013. It came at a time when the just-retired secretary of state was coyly gearing up for a White House run, little tin cup at the ready, raking in nearly a million dollars that month alone.
When her ode to pragmatic two-facedness was called out by Donald Trump at last week’s debate, she lamely blamed it on Abe Lincoln, as portrayed in Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film. Never mind that a high-priced collection plate and the passage of the 13th Amendment have little in common. It’s all in a day’s work for a woman who claims to be for the Little Guy but spends most of her time frolicking with the political and financial elites.
Then again, Hillary has long believed that “the personal is political,” especially when political power can benefit her personally. Indeed, as the emails show, her public career has been based on showing one face to her gullible supporters and another, more ruthless one to allies and adversaries behind closed doors.
Let’s review the evidence. Thirteen years after she and Bill left the White House in 2001 “dead broke,” Hillary regaled the well-fed bankers and financial managers at Goldman Sachs and BlackRock, Inc., with tales of her humble lifestyle before she and Bubba learned how to spin the dross of “public service” into the finest gold access and protection money can buy: “I do think there is a growing sense of anxiety and even anger in the country over the feeling that the game is rigged. And I never had that feeling when I was growing up. I mean, were there really rich people, of course . . . but we had a solid middle class upbringing. And now, obviously, I’m kind of far removed because the life I’ve lived and the economic, you know, fortunes that my husband and I now enjoy, but I haven’t forgotten it.”
Forget that those “fortunes” came from the very rigging she was supposedly decrying; as secretary of state, Hillary had to deal with lots of unsavory characters — but sometimes their natures were made sweeter by their touching thoughtfulness toward the Clintons.
