Trump? Clinton? Who's Least Bad?
Today's presidential race unfortunately reminds me of the bitter 1991 gubernatorial runoff in Louisiana, a state long associated with colorful politics.
That was the runoff that pitted former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, then a Republican state legislator, against three-term governor Edwin Edwards, a Democrat who had been acquitted in two racketeering trials.
The most memorable bumper sticker from the race was "Vote For the Crook. It's Important."
That's what reminds me of the current race between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump calls Clinton "crooked Hillary." Clinton accuses Trump of "taking hate groups mainstream."
An appropriate bumper sticker for Clinton would be, "Vote for the alleged crook. It's really important."
After covering a couple of decades of crime and politics as a reporter in Chicago, a city in which those beats sometimes overlap, I'm willing to give "bad" a chance in order to avoid "worse."
Bad is how I would describe Bill and Hillary Clinton's record for avoiding the appearance of impropriety, whether actual impropriety has occurred or not.
For example, "extremely careless" was the worst that FBI director James Comey could conclude after investigating her handling of State Department business over her private email server. Yet she didn't help herself by misquoting Comey in a later televised interview as having completely exonerated her. Not even.
Yet Trump doesn't look any better with his overblown calls for a special prosecutor to probe what he calls a corrupt "pay for play" arrangement with the Clinton Foundation.
In fact, actual evidence of a quid pro quo arrangement is severely lacking a "quo." There is no evidence revealed so far that shows any favors granted to the foundation's donors that probably would not have been granted anyway if the Clinton Foundation did not exist.
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