USA TODAY International Edition
Hack shows why Clinton kept Wall Street speeches secret
The stream of hacked Wiki- Leaks emails — the latest trove dumped Thursday — from inside Hillary Clinton’s campaign opens up a troubling prospect far beyond their revelations about the differing public and private faces of the Democratic nominee.
The leaks show that the Russian government might be trying to interfere with the U. S. presidential race, aiming cyberattacks at the heart of American democracy: its fair and open elections. If an FBI investigation proves that, the hacked emails represent an electronic version of Watergate, the 1972 burglary of Democratic national headquarters that ultimately forced Richard Nixon from the White House. Only this time, the threat comes from a foreign adversary rather than a presidential administration.
For now, most of the attention is on the content of the emails, which make clear why Clinton balked at releasing transcripts of the high- dollar speeches she delivered to Wall Street audiences and others in 2013 and 2014.
Assuming that the WikiLeaks emails are accurate, Clinton portrayed herself to bankers as more supportive of free trade, and more flexible on industry regulation, than she has been during her drive for the presidency.
Sounding like an ardent freetrader in 2013, Clinton told one group of bankers: “My dream is a hemispheric common market with open trade.” This was consistent with her stance as secretary of State in 2012, when she praised the proposed Trans- Pacific Partnership ( TPP) as “the gold standard” of free trade pacts.
By 2016, however, Clinton faced populist challenges first from Bernie Sanders and then from Donald Trump. She now opposes the TPP and has few good things to say about free trade. These days, she also proclaims her disdain for income inequality and has vowed “to rein in Wall Street.”
That was not her tone three years ago, when she told New York’s Goldman Sachs that the industry needs to be a part of fashioning industry regulation, and commiserated with the invest- ment bankers over “the bias against people who have led successful and/ or complicated lives.”
True, many politicians change positions — none more so than Trump — and some say things in private they never want the public to hear. But they pay a price for duplicity when the comments ultimately do become public.
Clinton could have inoculated herself against damaging leaks from her Wall Street speeches by releasing the transcripts months ago. Or she could have turned down the speaking engagements in the first place.
As the purported champion of the middle class, Clinton might have thought twice before taking $ 225,000 — what it takes a typical American household four years to earn — from an industry that helped force millions of Americans into foreclosure.
Now, amid the steady drip of embarrassing private emails, the speeches have come back to bite her. For Clinton and other politicians, the lesson is if you fear something will become public, don’t do it. Or at the very least, disclose it yourself.
For American voters, the lesson is: Beware of foreign governments seeking to damage democracy. That harm, if confirmed, will last far longer than memories about the content of particular emails hacked from Clinton’s campaign manager.