Hillary Clinton's bubble

There is a reason why highly successful people are highly successful: Extraordinary talent and hard work enable them to fly at a much higher altitude than the rest us. Hillary Clinton, for example, did not become a U.S. senator, an almost-nominee for president in 2008, and secretary of state simply by marrying the future governor of Arkansas and president of the United States.

So it is puzzling to see her making such self-detonating blunders in dealing with a surprisingly bad decision more than six years ago to run all her email as secretary of state through a private computer server in her private home using a private email address. These emails obviously included records of the nation’s official business that the Federal Records Act requires the State Department to preserve, including correspondence with foreign governments. The emails would also obviously include classified communications to which only people with suitable security clearance may have access and to which bad people with advanced hacking skills would surely like to have access.

A home server with a private email address is clearly incompatible with the level of security required for sensitive government business. So how was Secretary Clinton capable of making such a decision that should at least deny her the nomination of her party for president in 2016 and at worst land her in federal prison? And how can she be so dismissive of public concern over it?

Clinton brushes off questions as an inside-the-press-corps concern. The adoring crowds who constantly surround her never mention the matter. And at this point it is only the campaign trail that matters. She is high in the polls and the feds wouldn’t have the anti-democratic audacity to send the nominee of a major party up the river.

Presidents—like high level, powerful people of all sorts—become confined within tight hedgerows of bias-sharing advisers and favor-seeking courtiers and cut off from popular sentiments and other important realities, causing them to crash into political disaster, often in their second terms. But some presidents who become aware of this problem have made sure to include rival views on their Cabinets to break that bubble.

Hillary Clinton is not president, but she has been in and out of power for so long that even as a presidential candidate she is already in that self-affirming echo chamber. She’s acting like a second-term president, except her elections are ahead of her, not behind her. That does not bode well for her having a good night on Nov. 8, 2016, if she makes it that far.

People of great ability in any position of power are tempted to view themselves proudly as something like a god instead of as God’s humble servants. Rehoboam thought his security in power matched his inflated view of himself as successor to Solomon, so he believed his foolish and flattering young counselors (1 Kings 12). Herod imagined his glory outshining the sun with divine brilliance (Acts 12). God humiliated both of them.

If you seek the highest office to govern this great people, think of yourself humbly and God greatly and have someone in your circle with the freedom to say, “Remember thou are mortal,” or even, “You’re behaving like a fool.” And that has to start during the campaign.