Trump? Clinton? Who's Least Bad?
Yet, for all the great work the charity has done to fight AIDS and other global problems, it also kept the Clintons connected to rich and famous folks who potentially could help her presidential aspirations.
Bill Clinton now says he will leave the foundation if his wife wins and that it no longer will take foreign or corporate money. Yet daughter Chelsea Clinton could take the reins and suspicions about wealthy favor seekers would continue.
The best solution I have heard would be for the Clintons to turn the foundation over to another presidential family or two so its good works could continue under a new name. The "Kennedy-Reagan Foundation" sounds nice, if both families go along with it.
For now, Trump's erratic, shoot-from-the-lip campaign style has given the Clintons little reason to do anything drastic. For example, he now has softened his hardline position on immigration, his signature issue.
After more than a year of promising to round up and deport 11 million undocumented immigrants, Trump promised a different policy in a town hall hosted by Fox News' Sean Hannity: Round up the "bad ones" and as for the rest, "we work with them."
It apparently only occurred to Trump after "some really great, great people" came up to him and pleaded how "it's so tough" to consider ousting people who have "been here for 15 or 20 years and throw them and their family out."
Oh, so now you think about that?
Now Trump's policy sounds very much like the bipartisan reform bill passed by the Senate three years ago before hardliners killed it in the House, calling it an "amnesty bill." Watch out, folks. The non-politician is sounding increasingly like a politician.
Trump also went on the offensive, repeatedly calling Hillary Clinton "a bigot" without bothering to offer any evidence to back that up. Clinton, by contrast, offered a speech and video to link Trump to the alt-right, a largely web-based white nationalist movement that finds the conservatives on Fox News, for example, to be too moderate.
Trump's new campaign CEO, Stephen K. Bannon, was chairman of Breitbart News, a go-to hive of alt-right activity. That's another bad sign for those who hoped Trump would move away from the far-right.
No, Hillary Clinton is hardly the only candidate who invites suspicions, warranted or not. Thanks to Trump's misfires, her bumper sticker might well be: "We could do worse."
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)
(c) 2016 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
