FIFA-Like

Hillary Clinton continues her media avoidance tour, refusing the answer salient questions about the many scandalous activities that she has engaged in. At the same time, she never misses an opportunity to offer a video clip of herself "listening" closely to a carefully vetted group of artificially diverse citizens, nodding her head sagely, and showing mock concern. Her only pronouncements are of the typical class warfare variety, with candidate Bernie Sanders trumping her lurch to the left by suggesting a 90 percent income tax rate. He's beginning to become a political character straight out of Atlas Shrugged.

Bret Stevens creates an interesting analogy. He writes:

Ubiquitous but opaque. Powerful but unaccountable. Ostensibly public spirited but relentlessly mercenary. Often shamed but unshakably shameless. Let us count the ways in which the Clinton Foundation resembles the Fédération Internationale de Football Association, better known as FIFA.

Last week we learned that FIFA had made a donation to the Foundation in the range of $50,000 to $100,000. But for the Clintons that kind of money is hardly worth mentioning, so the suggestion of some sort of unseemly financial linkage between the two organizations is doubtful. You don’t get to roll with Bill, Hill or Chelsea for less than seven figures ...

The Qatar story [in which FIFA and the Clintons accepted political gifts (a.k.a. bribes)] is suggestive of the way in which both FIFA and the Clinton Foundation work. Both organizations serve as portals through which shadowy people find their way, for a given price, into the light: the light of social respectability, the best parties, the right connections. It works in the other direction, too. How better to get lucrative uranium mining concessions in Kazakhstan or roadwork contracts in Haiti than by going through the Clinton Foundation? How better to make a tidy fortune in media and marketing rights than by greasing the right palms at FIFA—assuming, that is, that the Justice Department’s indictment is to be believed?

Also, how better to avoid close scrutiny than by doing—or purporting to do—good works in scrubby jurisdictions where laws can be usefully vague and officials are frequently pliable?

Today, polls indicate that almost 60 percent of the electorate questions Hillary's honesty. Given the history of the last eight years, I suspect that all will be forgotten and forgiven and that Clinton's vast campaign chest and a compliant media (give them time) will initiate a PR campaign that will elevate her to "great leader" status. We'll see.