Clinton’s top priority? Fighting her own worst instincts.
But she has also repeatedly displayed tendencies, overlapping and toxically reinforcing, that could undermine all those positive attributes:
To believe — correctly, in my view — that she is the victim of an implacable political opposition, and to respond by hunkering down and lashing out.
To believe — again, correctly — that she is being held to different, higher standards than others, and, rather than accepting this unpleasant reality and adjusting her behavior accordingly
.. To believe that her own good works are so extensive, and her goodwill so evident, that questions about her behavior can stem only from the malicious intent of political enemies, or the ravenous appetites of a hostile media.
.. Finally, to surround herself with a closed circle of advisers inclined more to enable than to prevent, and to reinforce Clinton’s us-against-the-world mentality rather than to challenge it.
.. These self-destructive instincts were on display at the outset of the email mess. Clinton wanted to keep emails on one device; her staff complied and accommodated when it should have pushed back — hard.
.. Thinking like a lawyer advised by other lawyers, Clinton chose to delete emails that she deemed personal. She had the legal right to do so, and it wouldn’t have been a big deal, before she left office, to expunge personal emails written from a government account.
But the mass deletion of emails that Clinton’s team alone deemed personal, conducted after the State Department asked for its official archives back, was guaranteed to create a firestorm when it became public.
.. Tanden, again, nailed it: “Apologies are like her Achilles’ heel.”