Hillary's Past a 'Carcass' We Relentlessly Pick Clean

Columnists discuss the issue of Clinton's past
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 18, 2014 12:20 PM CST
Hillary's Past a 'Carcass' We Relentlessly Pick Clean
In this Jan. 27, 2014 file photo, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks in New Orleans.   (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

Now that the journals of Hillary Clinton's late best friend, Diane Blair, have come to light, is there anything about the former secretary of state we don't know? That's the question on Frank Bruni's mind. He's not saying the Washington Free Beacon shouldn't have printed the information it found in the journals. But, he writes in the New York Times, he wonders: "How many decent, gifted people who contemplate public office look at what someone like Hillary endures and step away? And the people who aren’t scared off: How cold and hard are they, or how cold and hard do they become?"

Bruni likens Clinton to "a carcass" that "with a tireless zest, we pick ... clean." But in the Washington Examiner, Byron York says all of this is fair game. If Clinton runs for president in 2016, some voters will be people who weren't even born when Bill Clinton took his first oath of office. They need to be educated about Hillary Clinton's past, just as voters learned about Mitt Romney's 1980s business deals, John Kerry's Vietnam war record, or George W. Bush's military service controversy from the 1960s. Clinton's actions from the 1970s onward reveal "something about who Clinton was and still is," and examining those actions "will help define Mrs. Clinton for millions of voters who weren't around or weren't paying attention in the 1990s." His full column here, Bruni's here. (More Hillary Clinton stories.)

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