Why Should They?

Clinton supporters—meaning just about every talking head in the main stream media, most editorial writers, and most Democrats—are wondering aloud why Hillary's polls are dropping, why the public doesn't like her, why she seems beset with scandals, manufactured, of course, by those who hate her. They suggest that it's a lack of charisma and partisan politics. Charisma may have something to do with it, but how on earth could partisan politics manufacture such a long string of scandals dating back to 1993?

Way back then, Hillary and Bill moved into the Whitehouse after an impressive election victory. Within months, the entire White House travel office staff—competent civil servants who served many presidents—were fired. Peggy Noonan revisits the the events that followed and provides with a ground-hog day look at Hillary Rodham Clinton:

Under criticism [for the firings] the White House changed its story. They said that they were just trying to cut unneeded staff and save money. Then they said they were trying to impose a competitive bidding process. They tried a new explanation—the travel office shake-up was connected to Vice President Al Gore’s National Performance Review. (Almost immediately Mr. Gore said that was not true.) The White House then said it was connected to a campaign pledge to cut the White House staff by 25%. Finally they claimed the workers hadn’t been fired at all but placed on indefinite “administrative leave.”

Why so many stories? Because the real one wasn’t pretty.

It emerged in contemporaneous notes of a high White House staffer that the travel-office workers were removed because Mrs. Clinton wanted to give their jobs—their “slots,” as she put it, according to the notes of director of administration David Watkins—to political operatives who’d worked for Mr. Clinton’s campaign. And she wanted to give the travel office business itself to loyalists. There was a travel company based in Arkansas with long ties to the Clintons. There was a charter travel company founded by Harry Thomason, a longtime friend and fundraiser, which had provided services in the 1992 campaign. If the travel office were privatized and put to bid, he could get the business. On top of that, a staffer named Catherine Cornelius, said to be the new president’s cousin, also wanted to run the travel office. In his book “Blood Sport,” the reporter James B. Stewart described her as “dazzled by her proximity to power, full of a sense of her own importance.” Soon rumors from her office, and others, were floating through the White House: The travel office staff were disloyal crooks.

The White House pressed the FBI to investigate, FBI agents balked—on what evidence?—but ultimately there was an investigation, and an audit.

All along Mrs. Clinton publicly insisted she had no knowledge of the firings. Then it became barely any knowledge, then barely any involvement. When the story blew up she said under oath that she had “no role in the decision to terminate the employees.” She did not “direct that any action be taken by anyone.” In a deposition she denied having had a role in the firings, and said she was unable to remember conversations with various staffers with any specificity.

The Hillary Clinton's approach to wrong-doing and the scandal that followed has a familiar ring to it. Lie, Deflect. Obfuscate. Apportion blame elsewhere. Finally, accuse the victim of wrongdoing.

With relatively small variations, this is the approach that Hillary has used in more recent years—for Benghazi, for her broad-based e-mail scandal, for the Clinton Foundation, for her health questions. In the end, it always works because Democrats refuse to police their own and thereby give her political cover (spend a little time listening to Elijah Cummings and you'll get the picture). But an unethical stench follows Clinton. Her dishonesty isn't an opinion. It is a fact that can be demonstrated by events that began in 1993 and continue to this day. That's why 'no one likes her.' Why should they?