Hillary Clinton Reminds Me of the Guy Who Killed Cecil the Lion
One year ago this week, a dentist decided to kill a magnificent creature on the African plains—not in self-defense or to protect an endangered village, but just for bragging rights and an impressive trophy to mount on his wall. For purely selfish reasons, the dentist set his sights on a particularly spectacular lion, the beloved national symbol of Zimbabwe, studied by scientists, photographed by tourists, and celebrated by schoolchildren.
One year ago this week, Cecil the Lion was murdered.
But this dentist didn’t just march into Hwange National Park, track the GPS-equipped and extensively-documented lion to its exact location, and shoot him through the heart. That would have been illegal. It also would have been illegal for the dentist himself to place a goat carcass just outside the park and knowingly lure Cecil from his protected home.
Instead, the dentist hired two local “guides” to “arrange” a hunt. Then he chilled in his luxury hotel room until the guides “discovered” a lion just outside the wildlife refuge, where “somebody” must have “accidentally” dropped a goat carcass. And what “luck” that this “wild lion” happened to have the same size, markings, and coloration as Cecil!
Despite the moral outrage and condemnation of pretty much the entire world, the dentist could not be charged with a crime, and not for a lack of effort among multiple law enforcement agencies. There were hearings, interviews, and investigations but in the end it turned out that the dentist had not broken any laws. He has since returned to the most hated dental practice on Earth.
After this case, and likely because of this case, laws have been changed. Lions now receive greater protection, transportation of hunting trophies into the United States has been curtailed, and anyone trying that particular stunt today would be far more likely to go directly to jail.
I’ve been thinking of Cecil whenever Hillary Clinton insists that her use of a private email server did not break any laws. Because that’s a lousy standard on which to judge what she did. The lion-killing dentist also didn’t break any laws, but Cecil the lion is still dead by his hands in the most outrageous way, proof that great harm can be done within the law by someone who knows how to weave through the loopholes.
In the case of Secretary Clinton’s email server, a gang of conspiracy theorists, sadly including members of Congress, have been whipping themselves into a froth while searching for the smoking-gun email in which they imagine that Clinton sold out our national security to the Chinese. Or maybe the Russians. I don’t understand half of the fantasies they’re spinning, nor do I want to, and I want to make it clear that I’m not with them. I’ve been with her against them from Whitewater through Benghazi.
Except that this scandal seems different from the string of fake pseudo-scandals that have followed the Clintons from Arkansas to DC. Despite the laughable play it’s getting in the right-wing echo chamber, despite the fact that Bernie Sanders didn’t care to bring it up in the primaries, despite the fact that it’s ripe fruit shaken from the rotten Benghazi tree, I find the implications of this scandal genuinely disturbing.
Conventional wisdom is that it wasn’t the break-in that did Richard Nixon in, it was the cover-up. Clinton’s email server is not a crime or a cover-up, but rather an entirely unnecessary device under her exclusive control with no third-party oversight that could only have been set up to enable a cover-up if she’d ever had any reason to do so.
Nixon could have only dreamed of having an automated cover-up machine in the White House basement! With the 1970s equivalent of a private email server, he could have served out his second term in uneventful peace.
While it’s not necessarily a crime to have an automated cover-up machine in place and ready to go with the press of a button, the kind of person who would actually do so is not the kind of person I’d want in the Oval Office. Similarly, the kind of person who would arrange to kill Cecil the Lion is not the kind of person I’d go to for a root canal.
And just like the lion-slaying dentist got away with something so crazy wrong that laws were later changed to keep anyone else from doing it, the laws of government email use have been “clarified” after Clinton’s tenure so that no future government officials will be able to do what she did either.
If Clinton had a legitimate reason for establishing and using her server for government business, I’ve not yet heard it. For her convenience? So she wouldn’t have to maintain two email addresses? So she wouldn’t have to carry two mobile devices? For someone who is supposed to be in public service, these excuses are as selfish as the ones employed by the lion-slaying dentist who just wanted to impress his friends.
Millions of Americans are able to successfully juggle separate email accounts for work and personal life. Try again, Mrs. Clinton.
Recently, Clinton has at least admitted to making a mistake. She’s stated that if she could turn back time and do things differently, she would. But do you know who also wishes that a time machine could undo past mistakes? The lion-slaying dentist for starters, along with anyone who’s ever had to deal with negative consequences of selfish and/or harmful acts. It’s as much of a non-apology as, “I’m sorry you didn’t duck when I punched you in the face.”
But Clinton then qualified her mistake comment with a but. As in, “I made a mistake, but…” As she said it, I leaned in to the TV, wanting desperately to hear something like, “I made a mistake, but the lessons I learned will make me a better president and here are five reasons how.”
Except that what she actually said was, “I made a mistake, but who hasn’t?”
No. No, no, no. NO!
Let me tell you, I also have a personal email account and a business email account provided by my employer. My employer has a policy that all business-related emails go through the business email account so they can be saved as business records and produced if they are ever requested in a legal proceeding. Compliance with this policy is part of my employment contract.
Sometimes I mess up and accidentally send a business email from my personal account or a personal email from my business account. I make mistakes, but who doesn’t? And I can say that because that’s exactly the kind of mistake that everybody else makes.
I have never used the wrong account intentionally, to keep emails out of my employer’s records. If I did, that wouldn’t just be just another mistake. At best, that would be an error in judgment and a violation of my employer’s trust. Afterward, I wouldn’t be able to ask for a promotion and a corner office—in fact, I’d be lucky enough to not be fired on the spot.
I hold Mrs. Clinton to the same standard I hold myself, and view what she did as Secretary of State to have been an error in judgement and a violation of the public trust with each business email deliberately sent through her private server. That’s multiple errors in judgment and violations of the public trust on every day of her four-year term. That’s tens of thousands of errors in judgement and violations of the public trust while serving in one of the most responsible positions in our government.
No matter who you are, what policies you support, which party you belong to, or what else you have done with your career, there should never be a path to the White House for anyone who has made so many errors in judgement, committed so many violations of the public trust, or has shown so much contempt for the American people.
But hey, everyone makes mistakes, right? At least she didn’t have to carry two mobile devices.
Needless to say, I will not be voting for Hillary Clinton. I just can’t bring myself to trust her, due entirely to her own actions and not anything that the vast right-wing conspiracy has said or done against her.
At this point, I’d rather vote for the lion-slaying dentist.