• We predict the morally dubious figure with an awful record in public life and much-remarked-upon blond hair will lose the election — and, unhappily, win it.
• To former Bill Clinton body man Doug Band we are indebted for the term “Clinton Inc.” and for his careful explanation of just what Clinton Inc. entails. He did not mean to do us this favor: His e-mail about using the Clintons’ philanthropic organizations to personally enrich the Clintons was released via WikiLeaks. But it is illuminating and entertaining reading all the same. Band puts flesh on the bones of every uncharitable characterization of the Clinton Foundation and its work, explaining in some detail his role in making the Clintons tens of millions of dollars in speaking fees, honoraria for corporate-board sinecures, honorary chancellorships of for-profit universities, and the like. It is pretty skeevy stuff: Bill Clinton, he wrote, “is personally paid by three [Clinton Global Initiative] sponsors [and] gets many expensive gifts from them.” In exchange, donors, including corporate executives, got access to the former president and, probably more relevant, to the sitting secretary of state and future presidential candidate to whom he was married. Firms such as Dow also enjoyed the benefit of having operatives of the Clinton-linked firm Teneo lobby overseas lawmakers, contacting them “on behalf of President Clinton” to see to business important to Dow executives. For a former president, this is unseemly; for a senator and secretary of state holding office, a good deal worse. Mrs. Clinton has some accounting to do.
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