For many years we Dems have been saying that the Clintons are unfairly hunted by the Right that we have failed to question whether either of them is very regularly wise in their personal dealings or handling of public scrutiny. I know Mr. Clinton is not, and I have come to conclude Mrs. Clinton is not either-which is especially worrying considering that she and her husband employ a massive team of handlers whose very job it is

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Hillary's Hidden Transcripts

My guest today is Seth Abramson, Assistant Professor of English at University of New Hampshire.

Joan Brunwasser: Welcome back to OpEdNews, Seth. You and I did an interview not long ago entitled: Abramson Claims: "Sanders is Winning;" Could He Be Right? [3.27.16] with an interesting, new perspective on the Democratic primary race. Most recently, you wrote an article Release of Clinton's Wall Street Speeches Could End Her Candidacy for President which was headlined when it appeared this week on OpEdNews's front page. You're given to sweeping statements which draw the reader in to learn more. Are you serious or is this mostly wishful thinking?

Seth Abramson: Secretary Clinton's penchant for secrecy is not only very real but has been the subject of media scrutiny for years. As recently as two weeks ago, the largest paper in the State of Wisconsin attempted to sway the outcome of the Democratic primary there by publishing--in an essay undersigned by the entire Editorial Board--a lengthy retrospective on Mrs. Clinton's aversion to transparency in government. Arguably, the ongoing investigation into her private email server is a byproduct of her own discomfort with letting voters have access to the government records over which she holds sway; certainly, one of her own primary-campaign surrogates, former Senator Kerrey of Nebraska, has leveled this very accusation at her.

More broadly, I think we should keep in mind that both Democrats and Republicans are particularly wary of secrecy in federal government after one of the longest--and most unnecessary--wars in American history, a blunder many feel was the product of unaccountable backroom machinations. That Mrs. Clinton voted for this blunder further tarnishes, I feel, her reputation in all matters touching on accountability and transparency.

But as for the speech transcripts themselves, I think the only honest answer any of Secretary Clinton's critics can give to the question of how damaging their content may be is that we do not yet know--which is, of course, the point of our concern in the first instance. I take little comfort from the idea that Mrs. Clinton is willing to lose a large bloc of votes in order to preserve the secrecy of these transcripts; she is more than intelligent enough to realize that it only behooves her to do so if she would lose many more votes should the transcripts be revealed. A loss of support of that magnitude could only be justified by some seriously damaging--up to "scandalizing"--material.

Right now this is, according to RealClearPolitics, a 1.2% race--with Secretary Clinton ahead of Senator Sanders by just a hair--so it's by no means unreasonable, or the product of some paranoid mania, to think that whatever is hidden in those transcripts could shift the national polling to (at a minimum) a slight edge in Senator Sanders' favor. Likewise, many of the upcoming states will be decided by just a few percentage points; I think Mrs. Clinton believes that what's in those transcripts she's hiding so assiduously could lose her one or more of the upcoming primaries--simply as a matter of simple math. Given that I personally don't think Mrs. Clinton has much room for error in these final twenty primaries and caucuses, lest she appear to super-delegates to be so wounded a front-runner as to be non-viable, yes, I think the release of these transcripts could seriously endanger her campaign.

Again, I say so largely from reading the tea leaves Mrs. Clinton has herself strewn in our path. And I say so mindful of the fact that, no matter her pledged-delegate lead, her poor favorability ratings and even worse performance in polling against the remaining Republican candidates makes any additional damage to her reputation and electoral standing--as she would suffer, for instance, were she to permanently slip behind Senator Sanders in national polls--something the Secretary must do everything within her power to avoid.

JB: Regarding those mystery-shrouded Wall Street speeches, the Clinton campaign has put voters in the terrible bind of being asked to trust her while not providing them with any actual evidence to do so. I read numerous places that the condition for giving the speeches was that she would have sole ownership of any transcript. Is that commonly done? It sounds so paranoid.

SA: I think the arrangement she reached, with respect to ownership of the texts, is probably not such an unusual one for someone in her position, who might be expected to want to publish any prepared speeches at a later date, or excerpt them as part of a future book. I think public figures are often guarded about their intellectual property, as it does usually have some value on the open market.

All of which makes Mrs. Clinton's behavior in this instance so strange. She knew herself to be a public figure, indeed one of the most well-known people alive anywhere on Earth; moreover, she knew full well that she was likely to re-enter politics at some time in the near future; and yet, nevertheless, she gave speeches that clearly she believed at the time, and believes still, could not only significantly damage her political ambitions but also suggest that she exercises little care about speaking in a public manner in private spaces--that is, to be self-possessed enough not to speak off the cuff during speeches she clearly must have prepared extensively for.

All of this is why I must agree with Senator Sanders that in this instance, as in many others, her judgment should be called into question. At this point, the fault in her judgment is threefold: one, she should not have taken such a sum as she did from Goldman Sachs, particularly to speak to such a group at a time when she was aware that politics might again be in her future; second, having taken that sum to speak to that audience, she ought to have prepared a speech that could as easily have been delivered publicly as privately; third, having wrongly chosen to speak to that group for that sum at that time, and having wrongly chosen to speak in a manner that could publicly embarrass her later on, she then set about doing what she's still doing now: failing to provide American voters with an adequate explanation--or even a semblance that she cares to provide an adequate explanation--for being unwilling to release the transcripts. In short, she's bungled this entire affair so badly that it's reminiscent of...well, her conduct in numerous other instances.

And that's the thing, or rather the sort of thing, that I think so many of us are afraid to say: Mrs. Clinton, while as intelligent a person as any of us could ever hope to be, was not, in fact, a suitable candidate for the Senate when she ran in 2000. I say this mindful of the sort of qualifications that anyone without the surname Clinton would have needed to have to run for the post: for instance, time in the House, or at the highest levels of state government, or (at the outside) as the CEO or COO of a multinational corporation. She had none of those experiences under her belt in 2000.

While she performed admirably enough in the Senate during her very brief tenure there, I don't have any sense that she distinguished herself--merely that she was without question adequate to the task. Her appointment as Secretary of State came because she lost a presidential election, not because, in 2008, she had significantly more foreign policy experience than Senator Sanders, say, does now (travelling abroad as First Lady, and acting as an emissary, is simply not the same thing as working abroad in federal service as a functionary). Instead, she was given the position because President Obama needed to unify the Democratic Party and it was obvious that Mrs. Clinton wouldn't have accepted or been a good fit for the Vice Presidency. Her tenure as Secretary of State was above-average, as I understand it, but certainly not without blemish.

My point in saying the above is that Mrs. Clinton is not just intelligent but relatively competent, and--at least now--more than experienced enough to be President. But the question of her judgment has been raised before, for instance by President Obama when he ran against her in 2008, and indeed it was raised successfully (inasmuch as she lost that election). I think that's no coincidence. In other words, Mrs. Clinton has routinely shown bad judgment even if she has not, as her many risible detractors on the Right claim, acted contrary to the law. Whatever one thinks of the several scandals that engulfed the Clintons in Arkansas and later in the White House, I think there should be a general consensus that in a number of them, both she and her husband exercised poor judgment.

I think, moreover, that it was poor judgment--up to gall--to be an Illinois native and longstanding resident of Arkansas who somehow felt, just months after moving there, that she had a right, as an obvious carpetbagger, to be a Senator from New York. I think she exercised poor judgment throughout the 2008 presidential election, as did her husband. I think her decision to use a private email server in the fashion she did--that is, with minimal transparency about doing so--was a lapse in judgment, as was her advice to President Obama with respect to Libya. I think she did the best she could do with respect to the whole Benghazi affair, but declaring her blameless of any malfeasance, which I certainly do, is not the same as saying her judgment was above reproach in that instance either.

So her lack of judgment in earning millions of dollars speaking to the very worst actors in our economy at a time when that economy was being run into the ground by the very people she was speaking to was not just noteworthy but, in fact, part of a decades-long trend.

Mrs. Clinton, I mean to say, is not just intelligent, largely competent, and certainly experienced enough to be President, she is also someone prone to shocking lapses in judgment and, worse, an inability to see those lapses in retrospect. As a voter, that makes me uncomfortable, and it would make me uncomfortable even if it turned out (despite Mrs. Clinton's own actions suggesting otherwise) that there was nothing objectionable in those speeches. What would remain objectionable to me would be her judgment in giving them when she did, to whom she did, and for the sums she did, and then attempting to hide them from the public thereafter.

I think for so many years we Democrats have been saying--quite correctly--that the Clintons are unfairly hunted by the Right that we have failed to question whether either of them, for all their smarts, is very regularly wise in their personal dealings or handling of public scrutiny. I know Mr. Clinton is not, and I have come to conclude Mrs. Clinton is not either--which is especially worrying considering that she and her husband employ a massive team of handlers whose very job it is to steer them straight.

So, with respect to the Goldman Sachs speeches, either Mrs. Clinton's hiring all the wrong people--which, given the Mooks and Brocks that now surround her, I suspect is true; for some reason, she does seem to be surrounded by nasty, brutish, cynical people--or she's not listening to the advice her advisers are giving her, which, given her recalcitrance as to the email and Goldman Sachs issues, may be equally correct.

Neither of those possibilities reflects well on her as a presidential candidate.

JB: You cite a number of anonymous sources who were present at the Goldman-Sachs talk Hillary gave. What can you tell us about these sources and are any of them likely to come forward and own their statements? And does that matter?

SA: While we know from Buzzfeed, Politico, and The Wall Street Journal that Mrs. Clinton owns the right to her speeches, we don't know the terms on which she secured those rights. So perhaps these Goldman Sachs employees speaking to the foregoing media outlets are doing so under cover of anonymity because they fear legal liability for revealing what Mrs. Clinton said to them in private. In other words, perhaps they are, in fact, violating express agreements they voluntarily signed.

But I doubt that.

I doubt it because Bob Kerrey, whose words are the most damning ones contained in my article, is a Clinton surrogate who does not claim to have been at the speeches--which would cover him under any non-disclosure agreement reached with respect thereto--but rather someone who simply knows the content of what was said by other means.

So it's worth noting that, in fact, the most damning source I cite in my article is not an anonymous one.

As for the anonymous sources, it seems to me that none of them speak as though they're violating a trust or a contract. What's most odious about their accounts, actually, is that they seem to think that they're helping or at a minimum complimenting Mrs. Clinton by revealing that she is fantastically "gushy" toward the financial services sector. That their institution's likely criminal behavior drove the nation to the brink of a Depression seems to shame neither them nor Mrs. Clinton. So in fact I'd almost feel more comfortable if they were being sheepish or canny in reporting back what Clinton said to them behind closed doors; rather, it seems that their cluelessness about how outrageously inappropriate Clinton's words were is matched only by Mrs. Clinton's own obliviousness on the matter.

What we know is that these sources spoke to--as I note (and link to) in my article--some of the most revered media organizations in the nation. We have no reason whatsoever to doubt their stories, only to continue to be amazed at both their shamelessness and Mrs. Clinton's audacity. And as I indicated in the article, the audacity I speak of here is not merely for having given the speeches and then tried to keep them from voters, but for having done so little as a Senator to protect the nation from these Wall Street predators and also for pretending, now, that her views on greed-driven free-market predation are in any sense in step with the base of the Democratic Party.

JB: Thanks for talking with me again, Seth. You've given us a lot to think about, especially right before the New York primary on Tuesday.

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my previous interview with Seth: Abramson Claims: "Sanders is Winning;" Could He Be Right?

Authors Website: http://www.opednews.com/author/author79.html

Authors Bio:

Joan Brunwasser is a co-founder of Citizens for Election Reform (CER) which since 2005 existed for the sole purpose of raising the public awareness of the critical need for election reform. Our goal: to restore fair, accurate, transparent, secure elections where votes are cast in private and counted in public. Because the problems with electronic (computerized) voting systems include a lack of transparency and the ability to accurately check and authenticate the vote cast, these systems can alter election results and therefore are simply antithetical to democratic principles and functioning.



Since the pivotal 2004 Presidential election, Joan has come to see the connection between a broken election system, a dysfunctional, corporate media and a total lack of campaign finance reform. This has led her to enlarge the parameters of her writing to include interviews with whistle-blowers and articulate others who give a view quite different from that presented by the mainstream media. She also turns the spotlight on activists and ordinary folks who are striving to make a difference, to clean up and improve their corner of the world. By focusing on these intrepid individuals, she gives hope and inspiration to those who might otherwise be turned off and alienated. She also interviews people in the arts in all their variations - authors, journalists, filmmakers, actors, playwrights, and artists. Why? The bottom line: without art and inspiration, we lose one of the best parts of ourselves. And we're all in this together. If Joan can keep even one of her fellow citizens going another day, she considers her job well done.


When Joan hit one million page views, OEN Managing Editor, Meryl Ann Butler interviewed her, turning interviewer briefly into interviewee. Read the interview here.

While the news is often quite depressing, Joan nevertheless strives to maintain her mantra: "Grab life now in an exuberant embrace!"


Joan has been Election Integrity Editor for OpEdNews since December, 2005. Her articles also appear at Huffington Post, RepublicMedia.TV and Scoop.co.nz.