Via Delong, Ezra Klein on the Disloyalty of the Clinton Staffers:
The most powerful case against Clinton's candidacy was always her political advisers. They were, and are, the sort who sign up with Fox News, and enter into business partnerships with Karen Hughes. And they do all that while they're still associated with Clinton, and when their services might still be needed in the near future.
Clinton's domestic policy instincts often seemed better than Obama's, but her political instincts, as evidenced by the folks she gathered around her, were far worse. It was hard to believe anyone who's internal compass pointed progressive would nevertheless spend millions of dollars asking Mark Penn for advice. The answer, from Clinton supporters, was always that it was about loyalty. These folks had been in the foxhole with Clinton, and she trusted them.
But there's nothing loyal about Penn's decision to partner with Hughes, or Wolfson's decision to rush to Fox — these moves hurt Clinton.
This bad taste in advisers is not news. It dates back to her White House days when she relied on Ira Magaziner to do her health plan numbers. Oddly, President Clinton on the whole had better taste in cronies. But don't get me started on his judge picks, which were all over the map.
Further support: her reliance on the (perhaps) litigation savvy, but politically dumb, advice of Bernard Nussbaum to stonewall the Travelgate investigation. I wrote about this in “Law as Rationalization,” (in the U. Tol. L. Rev.).
Just more evidence that Hillary is not half the politician that her husband was. Indeed, you can trace a lot of the scandals that troubled Bill back to Hillary.
I really do wonder sometimes what the Clinton administration would have been like, if so much of Bill’s time hadn’t been consumed running damage control on his wife’s crooked and/or politically poisonous schemes.