"The Hillary Paradox"

 The Hillary Paradox consists of two perceptions that are irreconcilable. The first is that Hillary Clinton is a person of uncommon decency, compassionate and deeply committed to justice. The second is that many of her actions over many years are the work of a person who couldn’t possibly be uncommonly decent. How could someone with a wonderful reputation so often behave disreputably?

Read of the Day: The Hillary Paradox
"Andrew Ferguson, the witty and insightful senior editor of the Weekly Standard, has done one of those jobs Americans don’t want to do: he has re-read a shelf’s worth of admiring biographies of Hillary Clinton. The result is a wonderful and revealing article titled, “The Hillary Paradox,” a phenomenon that puzzles only her admirers.

The Hillary Paradox;  Pity the woman’s admirers  Excerpt below:

Donkey Hotey

. . ."And what had to be done? Gerth and Van Natta found a private memo written by Palladino to the campaign in 1992. In it he explained his goal in dealing with Gennifer Flowers: “to impeach her character and veracity until she is destroyed beyond all recognition.” That worked too. Flowers became a national joke. It was later reported that a former roommate who had confirmed Flowers’s account to reporters received a visit from Palladino. “Do you think Gennifer is the sort of person who would commit suicide?” he asked her. 

Palladino reported his progress to Betsey Wright, who passed the word to Hillary. And the other women on Wright’s list kept quiet. 

Some of the methods have been gentler, if no subtler. In 1994, an Arkansas state employee named Paula Corbin Jones insisted on pursuing her lawsuit against President Clinton, who she said had exposed himself to her in a hotel room when he was governor. Soon, nude photos of Jones taken by an estranged boyfriend mysteriously fell into the hands of the editors of Penthouse magazine, which rushed them into print. As anyone who saw the pictures knows, the intent was embarrassment, not prurience. 

Another woman, Kathleen Willey, accused the president of making a similar “pass,” this time in the Oval Office. “With Hillary’s go-ahead,” Gerth and Van Natta write, “the White House then released nine fawning letters that Willey had sent to Bill after the alleged incident.” The letters disproved Willey’s story, reporters concluded. 

Mrs. Clinton’s theory here, successful as it was, seems particularly old fashioned: If the survivor of a sexual assault speaks kind or forgiving words about her assailant, then either (1) the assault didn’t occur or (2) the victim agreed to it. The phrase “had it coming” may be too old-fashioned even for Hillary’s team. 

We’ve known about all this for a long time—about Hillary Clinton’s blistering campaign to discredit the women who wanted to tell the truth about her husband." . . .