“From her mother’s own childhood – in which she was abandoned by her parents – to her work going door-to-door for the Children’s Defense Fund to her battling to create the Children’s Health Insurance Program, she’s fought children and families all her career.”
That doesn’t mean they don’t matter, however…
That was the startling news in Hillary Clinton’s long-awaited presidential candidacy announcement: that Hillary has fought families and children all her career. As an ethicist, I find the candor laudable, but I am surprised that Mrs. Clinton is making such a strong bid for the anti-family and child-hating voting bloc.
OK, it’s a typo. The Clinton campaign website fixed it, and her spokespeople reassured the news media “that the former secretary of state has not been secretly fighting children all these years.”
I almost passed on this story, being seldom able to post a typo-free 800 words myself despite reading the damn things repeatedly, but that would have been cowardly. This is not necessarily trivial. This bears some watching. I know that the large Hillary Zombie Squad, which appears to care only about the former First Lady’s chromosomes and nothing else, won’t give a second’s thought to this if her destruction of e-mail evidence and willful skirting of her own agency’s transparency and security policies don’t trouble them, but it is not insignificant.Hillary knows it, too, or did once. She was, after all, a lawyer. She knows, or knew, that when important documents are involved, typos are disastrous and can cause expensive litigation, malpractice lawsuits and millions of dollars in damages. All a typo in a blog post does is make the writer look careless and stupid. That’s not good, but it is nothing compared to a typo in a letter of agreement, a contract, a will, a trust agreement, or a settlement offer. Or, Madam Secretary, a treaty, like, say, a nuclear arms treaty. I cannot believe that Hillary Clinton did not regard her announcement of her intention to be President of the United States as less important than any of those documents.
What, then, might the typo tell us? It might tell us that Hillary Clinton’s staff isn’t any better than the clown act President Obama has been calling a staff for seven years. That would in turn suggest that like her predecessor, she values blind loyalty over the ability to do a job. It might tell us that she isn’t competently managing the organization under her, which would be troubling, since management (and leadership) incompetence and has been the defining characteristic of the Obama Administration.
In fact, one or both conclusions are fair. How many people, do you think, is it reasonable to have check a Presidential candidate’s first official announcement? What would a competent candidate decree? One? That’s per se incompetent and foolish. Two? A handful or readers and the candidate herself (“My name is Hillary Clinton, and I approve this message”)? Would a competent, trustworthy candidate employ a professional proofreader? She can certainly afford it with all those hopeful foreign contributions to the Clinton Foundation.
The most important question, however, is this: was someone fired for that typo? We know nobody would be fired under similar circumstances at the White House: the roll-out of the Healthcare.gov website was one massive typo, and nobody’s head rolled. Does Hillary believe in accountability? Does she understand that “Ooopsie!” is no way to run a national government? Will she send a message to everyone working for her now and in the future that she expects care, diligence and professionalism, and if a staffer can’t be trusted to deliver it, they can go work for Ted Cruz?
The answer to that question is vital, because that’s what effective, competent, trustworthy leaders do (among other things that we already know Clinton does not do, like tell the truth). Does Hillary Clinton, unlike President Obama, believe in accountability?
The fate of the individual who was responsible for the typo matters.
[Incidentally, it is not too early to observe which news organizations are already covering for the Democratic candidate. No mainstream media organization believes that the typo is newsworthy. It is, if nothing else, funny, and these same organizations will waste useful news space on silly videos and gaffes by local politicians. Anyone running for President should be held to the highest standard in every respect, and sloppiness and incompetence matters, especially with a candidate like Clinton, whose verbal gaffes are too common as well.]
Ethics Alarms 
“What does it really matter?” is the self-made retort. The next year and a half are going to be one potshot after another.
“She knows, or knew, that when important documents are involved, typos are disastrous and can cause expensive litigation, malpractice lawsuits and millions of dollars in damages. ”
And yet, ignoring typo’s, even in these important documents seems to be the current trend. I have recently been told, by a homeowners association lawyer, that a typo in a ballot to modify the by-laws of the association was “Just a typo. It’s unimportant”. Except that it changed the date the election was held, and, therefore, made it illegal, IMHO.
My state had a ballot initiative that modified the state constitution to abolish a state agency. The ballot initiative passed. The state claimed that the initiative didn’t mean to eliminate the agency, it just meant fire the current director. How much power does this ‘assumption of typos’ take away from the governed? Isn’t this a dangerous precedent, just like allowing a president to enforce a federal law arbitrarily in some states, but not in others or to arbitrarily create classes of people exempt from the law?
I should run for president. My platform will be that I will exempt every state that votes for me from personal income tax. I will order the IRS to change the tax tables or eliminate enough exemptions from classes of people I will create to get the money the nation needs from the remaining states. Hey, if we are just buying votes now (like with the current immigration fiasco), let’s just buy votes.
STRETCHING to trash Clinton, this game has been played for years. Just as useless as Day 1.
What “game”? Incoherent comment. Incompetence? Avoiding accountability? Poor staff work? Incompetent delegation? So what if it’s common or has been around since “day 1”?
I’d put $50 that if George Bush had done something similar, good ole darly314 would be the first to excoriate him as a crude ignorant white trash bumpkin…
What difference, at this point, does it make?
Thank you, Dan! Ran out of coffee this morning and this was just what I needed to get over surly.
Queen’s Pass.
She earned this!
BTW, Jack, has the announcement led you to change your belief that Hilary won’t be elected? All maneuvering aside, it looks like no Democrat challengers will emerge at all, and so far the GOP hasn’t put anyone up who can give her a serious run.
Of course not. She’s deranged. The people who support her do so as an abstract principle; those who don’t, including many Democrats, really distrust her. It’s a disaster in the making for Democrats, and they know it—the question is whether they are willing to be massacred or will panic early enough to find an alternative. About half the final GOP field, maybe more, will be able to clean her clock by the time everyone has a chance to remember why they got sick of her.
Except that even if Democrats don’t want Hillary, they’ll want a Republican EVEN LESS…
I don’t know about that. National Review, who are certainly not Hilary’s cheerleaders, just published an article that gives five reasons why Hilary will win. Two of them are nonsense, but two others, the gender issue and the fact that 240 electoral votes are reliably blue right out of the gate, are compelling. I am not saying that every girl who just turned 18 and every little old lady will turn out to vote the first female president in, but many will. Many more people of all stripes will just hear the slogan “it’s time” and won’t think beyond that. It doesn’t matter if the GOP nominee is Christie, Rubio, Walker or Christie from the believable candidates, or one of the fringe ones like Paul or Cruz, NY, NJ, CA, IL, MA, CT, and so on will. not. vote. for that person. They are done with the GOP, and done is DONE. The Dems could put up a cardboard cutout and still win those states.
Hilary might be of declining mental acuity, but the press is already running interference, saying (check out the article in Time) that she is “biologically primed” to be President, as opposed to John McCain or Ronald Reagan being too old. Calling her deranged is something no one in the mainstream will ever believe and a GOP “massacre” or “cleaning her clock” is unthinkable at this point when most folks are saying the GOP hopefuls are essentially fighting for the dubious privilege of coming in second to Hilary.
I know you are anything but far right, Jack, but how do you counter the allegation of “just not getting it” in light of the above factors?
There are situations where I could see some of those states voting for a republican. For all his flaws, Paul has one of the better track records on civil rights compared to most potential candidates in either party, and a few more media firestorms over cops behaving badly at the right time could make him a lot more appealing for instance.
NJ last went GOP in 1988, as Bush the elder won on the heels of Reagan against weenie Dukakis. It hasn’t moved since, although in 2004 it was close to flipping, in fact close enough they sent John Edwards to campaign in October. All of the others I have mentioned were blue in 1988 and last went red in 1984 when Reagan almost swept all 50 states. That’s not going to happen his time out. I won’t say once blue always blue, that simply isn’t true, but I don’t see anything moving any of those places off where they have rested comfortably for over 25 years.
Let’s face it. Anything that Hillary or her handlers say- whether it be a point of foreign policy or whether she belched on a burrito at Chipotle- has to be fact checked first. No one who knows more than her name should trust a single unsupported statement.