If Not Crooked, Than Certainly Incompetent

Let's take the adamant, impartiality-defying insistence of federal prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg that Hillary Clinton ABSOLUTELY, POSITIVELY HAD NOTHING TO DO WHATSOEVER with the fundraising corruption OF HER OWN SENATE CAMPAIGN as a given for a moment, just for the sake of argument.

Now read the following development in the trial of said campaign's finance director, David Rosen:

An event planner who worked on a blockbuster Hollywood fund-raiser for New York Senator Hillary Clinton during her 2000 campaign for Senate testified Wednesday that Clinton's finance chairman, David Rosen, ordered that the full costs of the event be covered up.

"I was instructed by David Rosen to take certain expenses off," Gretta Nock told jurors in Rosen's trial.

The Clinton event planner said she asked Baumrucker to supply a bogus invoice for $200,000 to cover up his real fee - $605,000. Baumrucker testified that he reluctantly complied with Nock's request.

While Nock said she couldn't remember whether Rosen had instructed her to make specific cuts, she said it was clearly understood that "overall figures needed to project a lower cost."

After cooking the expense records, the event planner said she forwarded the bogus numbers to Clinton's campaign headquarters for filing with the FEC.

Here's my problem: even if you assume the preposterous implausibility that Mrs. Clinton was completely in the dark about all the roaring corruption of her own campaign, what does it say about her judgment and her management skills that she (1) appears to regularly hire such shady, unscrupulous underlings and (2) is so lax in her oversight and supervision of their duties that they can run riot to this extent? Does the Clinton machine even dimly realize that the argument they are essentially making against Hillary's obvious criminality is that she's a hopelessly incompetent yutz?

I'm sorry, but beyond a certain point, even for these people, the "mistakes were made" dodge just doesn't cut it. Either this woman is a mafia donna, or she isn't fit to manage the day shift at the waffle house, much less lead the global hegemon.

If hope GOP scouts are taking notes, because these are talking points that are going to have to be raised, loudly and incessantly, if "Clinton II" is to stand a chance of being averted.