Podcast: Hillary's Worst Disability isn't Medical

Transcript:
Hello and welcome to the Citizen Economist podcast for Wednesday, September 14, 2016 at www.CitizenEcon.com. I'm Howard Hyde.

Hillary Clinton's inability ever to be straight, or even to relate in a normal manner, to the American people, is catching up with her campaign to be elected as the next President of the United States of America. On Sunday, at the 15-year anniversary 9/11 memorial at Ground Zero in New York City, she took ill and had to be assisted into her campaign van by aides and secret service agents. 90 minutes later, she showed up outside her daughter Chelsea's apartment for a photo-op, demonstrating how healthy she is and how great she feels on a beautiful day in New York. But by this time the video of her being shoveled into the Scooby van, neck rigid, legs stiff, knees buckling, feet dragging, shoes coming off, went viral, and the campaign decided to "come clean" (quote-unquote) a few hours later and "admit" (quote-unquote) that the former Secretary of State has been suffering from pneumonia since last Friday, and will take a few days off from her busy campaign schedule to rest and recuperate.

The thing most damaging to Mrs. Clinton's ambitions to become president are not her coughing fits, her fainting spells, her concussion, her need for help climbing a few stairs or even her deep-vein thrombosis, bad as these are. Rather, the worst is that her congenital dishonesty and deceptiveness, only conceding truth when forced to and many times not even then, has now been institutionalized into her campaign's standard operating communications procedures, as well as into the lapdog media's reflexive cover fire on her behalf.
If the video of her being loaded into the ambulance had not surfaced, it's doubtful that the campaign ever would have "admitted" (quote-unquote) anything. As it is, the latest story of pneumonia seems no more credible than the story of minutes earlier that "I feel great!" If she feels great, then why admit to pneumonia, a debilitating disease requiring immediate bed rest? If she has a communicable disease, why is she kissing babies in public? If she has a debilitating disease, then what did they give her to pep her up so for that photo-op? Why wasn't she taken to a hospital after such a dramatic crash?
The rumors about her health would indeed be non-stories by reporters who need to "get a life," in the words of one campaign spokesman, except that the behavior of the campaign is itself the source of the ever-wilder speculation, due to the inconsistencies and ever-changing narratives.
Hillary may not have thought twice about exposing her germs to that little girl because she in fact knows that she is not contagious, because although she does have pneumonia, maybe it is aspiration pneumonia, secondary to Parkinson's disease, the primary driver of her dehydration, because Parkinson's makes it difficult to swallow liquids and to maintain separation of function between the trachea and the esophagus. All speculation, of course, but backed up by a growing number of medical professional opinions.

Corporate CEOs who preside over disasters, whether financial or physical, are expected to own up early and often to their responsibilities for whatever happens or has happened. Those that do are respected, forgiven and even lauded. Those that don't are swiftly told to pack their bags, if not an orange jumpsuit.
But Hillary Clinton has never taken full responsibility for anything in her life. She has spent her career manipulating power behind the scenes and accumulating frequent flyer miles. In the moment of most intensively being held to account for the disaster in Benghazi of 9/11/2012, her reaction was rather to lash out, angrily and exasperatedly, "What difference does it make"?


Anyone can make a mistake. Anyone can have a catastrophe happen under their watch. Anyone can get sick. What separates true leaders from charlatans is how honestly and forthrightly they deal with it. Is Hillary inspiring you right now?

You're listening to the Citizen Economist podcast at www.CitizenEcon.com. I'm Howard Hyde. Thanks for listening.