Does Integrity Matter?

Recently there has been a great deal of news about the 2016 presidential candidacy of Hillary Clinton for the office of President of the United States. Ms. Clinton known for having previously been the First Lady while her husband was in the White House and most recently having served as the Secretary of State under the presidency of Mr. Obama. Asked by a reporter about her notable achievements during her tenure as the Secretary of State, Ms. Clinton was unable to name even one. Ms. Clinton was the Secretary of State during the attack on the United States embassy in Benghazi, Libya. Yes, this is the  2012 attack where Ms. Clinton and Mr. Obama blamed the attack on an anti-Muslim video. This is the attack where Americans in charge at the embassy had asked for help prior to the attack but no help was provided. This is the attack where, unfortunately, four Americans were brutally killed. We know now that the attack had nothing to do with any video - that Ms. Clinton and the president of the United States told a convenient lie to cover-up their ineptness as protectors of American lives on foreign soil.  In this instance, integrity didn't matter.

Since Benghazi, it has been learned that Ms. Clinton chose to by-pass government procedures concerning electronic communications including e-mail and handle such communications via private e-mail accounts rather than government email accounts. It has even been learned that she chose to store these electronic communications records on a privately owned server at her home in Chappaqua, New York. When asked about her electronic correspondence during her tenure as Secretary of State Ms. Clinton said that these communication were held on her server and belonged to her and not to the government for whom these communications were performed. When asked to turn over there communications/emails she said that she went through the and separated the personal from the official communications and turned over only the official communications. Now certainly in a perfect world where we can trust our politicians to be above board and honest this would not be a problem, but it would seem that a better approach would have been to turn over all the emails and allow, in essence, a third party to separate the  official from those that are private. Since rendering the screened emails as requested, Ms. Clinton has announced that she deleted all the other emails on the server, essentially saying that she had no plans to allow anyone to see what was still on the server. In this era of Lois Lerner and the IRS scandal where Lois Lerner's emails surprisingly, could not be located as the IRS said that they had accidentally erased them and now Ms. Clinton has conveniently erased her emails and possibly any information to the contrary. In this instance, it seems Ms. Clinton is choosing to act above the law and choosing to be a law unto herself - as one who does not have to answer to anyone. It seems that when politicians are at or near the top they see know reason to coming under the authority of anyone else. The tax-paying public must rely on the character and the integrity of the individuals, in this case Ms. Clinton - even though such integrity cannot be proved.

To many, this is probably a small thing. But small things can become big things. Those who can be trusted in small things can generally be trusted to take care of business when it comes to big things. And, those who cannot be trusted to take care of business in regards to small things cannot be trusted to take care of business when it comes to big things. With Ms. Clinton putting herself up as the democratic candidate for President, Ms. Clinton's actions in the instance described above does not give her a passing grade for her being trustworthy, acting with integrity in this small thing. Ms. Clinton is not ready for prime time as a presidential candidate as she has failed to demonstrate integrity. Yet, my greatest concern is that it seems that Ms. Clinton's integrity is not even being called into question. It seems that she is the candidate and the only criteria for her being the candidate is her gender, not her readiness, and certainly not her integrity.