I watched portions of the debate between Democratic presidential candidates Tuesday night. First of all, I really wish they would stop calling these things debates. They’re not even close to debates. “Candidate forum” might be more appropriate. It was the same with the Republican “debates.” For the most part, the “moderators” don’t ask questions that are debatable. They ask questions specific to a particular candidate. They should ask, “What would you do to eliminate income equality?” And then let all the candidates answer and pick apart their opponents’ answers. Instead, they ask each candidates about something he or she said or did in the past. That’s not debatable. Aside from that, I was really struck by how much front-runner candidate Hillary Clinton played fast and loose with the facts. Thanks to Associated Press for doing a nice job of fact-checking. Here are a few examples: Clinton was asked about potentially flip-flopping on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal. She was a big fan before, but now, since unions hate it, she’s against. When asked about this Tuesday night, she said: “I did say, I hoped it would be the gold standard” of trade agreements. She also said when she looked at the final agreement last week, it didn’t meet her standards. Not true. AP reports: In a November 2012 speech in Australia, she declared the Trans-Pacific deal “sets the gold standard in trade agreements,” a sentiment she echoed in many venues. And: The final agreement dropped or changed some provisions that liberal activist groups – the wing of the party she is assiduously courting at this stage of the campaign – had strongly criticized. So if the original was the “gold standard” the final should have been even better, in her view. Clinton was asked about her email account: “I have been as transparent as I know to be. ... I said I have answered all the questions.” AP: Clinton has yet to explain how the server was set up and serviced, whether she informed the State Department about her decision to use the private system and, most important, how it was protected from hacking attempts. Russia-based hackers tried at least five times to trick her into infecting her computer system with malware in 2011, The Associated Press learned, and her server was hit by attempted cyber intrusions in 2014 from China, South Korea and Germany. Her server also was connected to the Internet in ways that made it more vulnerable to hackers. But her campaign has repeatedly declined to address these details. I suppose this is why, in a recent poll, a whopping 58 percent of voters – 31 percent of Democrats, 64 percent of Independents and 82 percent of Republicans – think she’s lying about how her emails were handled. Lying. That’s the word they used in the poll question. When asked about her Syria strategy while serving as Secretary of State, she said this: “What I said was we had to put together a coalition ... and yes, it included Arabs, people in the region, because what I worry about is what will happen with ISIS gaining more territory, having more reach, and frankly posing a threat to our friends and neighbors in the region and far beyond.” AP: Clinton is ignoring much of the context of her coalition-building effort in Syria: It was designed to push Syrian President Bashar Assad from power, not target the Islamic State or other extremist groups fighting among the opposition. The coalition was concerned primarily with helping armed opposition groups better defend themselves and directing political groups to coalesce behind a common, inclusive platform for a post-Assad Syria. At that time, the Islamic State didn’t exist. But al-Qaida and other terrorist groups did. And even as they gained a foothold and became increasingly prominent among the anti-Assad rebels, the coalition Clinton worked on didn’t come up with a military plan for combating them. Of course they didn’t, ISIS wasn’t ever on their radar. If you recall, that’s about the time President Obama was characterizing the Islamic State as “the J.V.” One of the other “debaters,” former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, accused her of flip-flopping on the Keystone Pipeline. To be fair, back in 2010 she said the administration was “inclined” to approve it because “we’re either going to be dependent on dirty oil from the Gulf or dirty oil from Canada.” She added that the analysis wasn’t complete. So she never really took a strong position, but she certainly made it sound pretty likely to be approved. In September, she came out firmly against its approval. As flip-flops go, that’s a weak one. Here’s what she said during the debate when accused of flip-flopping: “You know, we know that if you are learning, you’re going to change your position. ... I never took a position on Keystone until I took a position on Keystone.” Now, I don’t even care what that position was. Let’s just examine the logic of her statement. She basically said it’s OK to change your position on something that you’ve never taken a position on in the first place. Really? See, I just don’t get this type of behavior. Don’t these candidates know that anybody with an Internet connection can surf up their previous statements on any issue and see that they are prevaricating? It would be better just to concede that you changed your mind, or “evolved” as politicians like to say. I think most people can understand how minds can change. Everybody has changed their mind about something. People get that. Fibbing about your previous statements and positions is a different story. That shows you either can’t remember what you said before, which makes you inept, or you’re purposely misrepresenting it, which makes you a liar. That’s a lose-lose proposition. And it’s no way to campaign for president.
