P.M. Carpenter

Ted Cruz: strutting ignorance, and with the degrees to prove it

Ted Cruz, speaking Saturday at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition summit (of their fears):

Today’s Democratic Party has decided there is no room for Christians in today’s Democratic Party. There is a liberal fascism that is going after Christian believers. It is heartbreaking. But it is so extreme, it is waking people up…. We were founded by men and women fleeing religious persecution. We need leaders who will stand unapologetically in defense of the Judeo-Christian values upon which America was built.

I don't know if Mr. Cruz has ever read the intellectual histories of the great Perry Miller, America's finest historian of the colonial era. But if he has, he read and chose to ignore Perry's deeply researched observations, such as "Professional patriots, especially those of New England descent, are fond of celebrating the Puritans as the founders of the American tradition of rugged individualism, freedom of conscience, popular education, and democracy. The Puritans were not rugged individualists; they did indeed believe in education of a sort, but not in the 'progressive' sense; they abhorred freedom of conscience; and they did not believe at all in democracy" (from Miller's essay, "Jonathan Edwards and the Great Awakening").

I also don't know if Mr. Cruz has encountered the marvelous work of that most eminent historian of our revolutionary era, Bernard Bailyn, in whose widely revered volume, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, one will find references to "natural rights, the contractual basis of society and government" and the "uniqueness of England's liberty-preserving 'mixed' constitution" as the bases of American revolutionary thought, and only scattered, fleeting references to the Abrahamic tradition. The European Enlightenment, from which we derived our founding principles, was itself a celebration of secular thought.

Mr. Cruz would know this, if he had read anything about that on which he pontificates and demagogues. Perhaps, with his Princeton and Harvard educations, he does know this, which would make his demagoguery more egregious. But I'll cut him some slack and assume, from his own words, that he is merely a highly educated ignoramus.

 

The "obscenocracy" of American politics

The Washington Post:

The 2016 Republican presidential contest, designed to be a tidy affair, is instead shaping up to be a chaotic, drawn-out slog, thanks largely to an expanding pool of rich patrons raining money on a broad field of candidates….

"There could be as many as a dozen candidates that have a threshold amount of money in their campaigns and super PACs to compete vigorously in the early states," said Phil Cox, a Republican strategist who runs America Leads, a super PAC supporting New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie that has the backing of at least two billionaires.

Last night, Jeb Bush bragged to donors that he "has raised tens of millions of dollars for his allied super PAC." (Bush also told reporters that "you don't need to have these massive amounts of money to spend … if you run the right kind of campaign. But ...") His total, just for the first quarter, could reach $100 million. Marco Rubio has already nailed down about $20 million, half of it from one Florida billionaire. Ted Cruz's "independent" fundraising arm "pulled in $31 million in a single week" — much of it from a single hedge-funder — and Scott Walker, who has been unofficially blessed by the Koch brothers, "is close to matching that."

Again, numbers cited are merely starting-gun figures, as Sheldon Adelson toys with all the GOP candidates — and Hillary gropes toward $2.5 billion (a trifle difficult to reach in $100, Everyman contributions).

Although it is said there are no absolutes in physics or politics, one thing is for damn sure this time around: No one will emerge cleanly victorious from 2016's fundraising grotesquery. The fetid auctioning of the White House (not to mention Congress, which I'd rather not even think about) is now in plain view — so plain, candidates now actually boast about the size of their holding companies.

American politics has traveled from a Madisonian timocracy to a Jacksonian democracy and on to a plutocracy and now finally to what we might call an obscenocracy — a kind of plutocratically tempered kakistocracy, fueled by kleptocrats devoted to bamboozling the poor rubes.

That there is an underlying constant is undeniable: Money has always trumped decency. But that our system is now corroding at an exponential rate is just as undeniable.

 

An unreadable story

One can read no farther than Bloomberg's lede before the barfing commences.

In a closed-door meeting with Jewish donors on Saturday night, former President George W. Bush delivered his harshest public criticisms to date against his successor on [are you ready for this?] foreign policy….

After some considerable cleanup, I did make it this far: "You think the Middle East is chaotic now?" asked the serial chaos-inducing bungler. "Imagine what it looks like for our grandchildren."

We don't have to imagine, George. The product of your neocon-sanctified works unfolds before our horrified eyes every bloody day.

It was thought impossible, but it's true: George W. Bush is getting even dumber.

 

Schweizer, Stephanopoulos, and Hillary's woes

You get your story and you stick to it. That, of course, is a basic defense strategy, and boy has Peter Schweizer ever got his down.

Yesterday, again and again, George Stephanopoulos assailed the author of Clinton Cash with prosecutorial zeal (there's no "This Week" transcript yet, but here is both a recap and video), demanding to know where the Clinton corruption-favoritism story is in the absence of a "smoking gun." And again and again, Schweizer came back with a roundly tautological yet unshakable defense: "the smoking gun is in the pattern of behavior," which "warrants further investigation because … this is part of the broader pattern," which, as noted, is the smoking gun.

Schweizer is good. He's really good. I had no idea just how good he is until I watched him perform yesterday. He has all the glibness of a Clintonite hack — a kind of pit-bullish Sean Hannity without visible fangs — which somewhat evens the opposing forces. He's aggressive but cool, reserved but determined, unflappable.

All this came through as Stephanopoulos' prosecution lunged, creaked, and ultimately failed. Not only could the host not shake Schweizer's defense, at one point he had to surrender on the charge that some donations to the Clinton Foundation violated its White House agreement. "That is an issue for them," Stephanopoulos allowed, "but it’s nothing that would warrant a criminal investigation." In politics, when you find yourself denying criminality, you've lost; indeed, you've scooped the first chunk of dirt from your hole.

None of this is to argue that Schweizer proved his case yesterday, or that he'll be able to prove it tomorrow. He can't, and he knows it. But that's the beauty of it. What he's selling is honorable "appearances" betrayed, and there, Schweizer leaves his role as defendant and becomes the righteous prosecutor. In the public arena, he needs no smoking gun.

Well before the Watergate tapes vividly told the sordid story of Dick Nixon's obstruction of justice, appearances alone had him cornered. Although one finally arrived, Democrats needed no smoking gun to successfully portray Nixon as a devious, manipulative malefactor. His past behavior and ethical lapses had already done that for them. Prior to the tapes' release, evidence surrounded the 37th president, but it failed to condemn him. In the eyes of the body politic, however, further evidence was superfluous. Dick Nixon was a crook, and just about everyone knew it.

Working on the Watergate investigation was a young Hillary Clinton, who now (or rather again) has her own appearances problem. Metaphorically, the older Hillary took Pat Buchanan's advice: "Burn the tapes." There may have been nothing incriminating on her private server in connection to her foundation's donations, but her erasure of that server has left yet another dot in a dark constellation of questionable appearances — and yesterday, on both "This Week" and "Meet the Press," those questions were flying. Time magazine's Mark Halperin, New York Magazine's John Heilemann and the NYT's Helene Cooper all referenced Hillary's "appearances" as — you got it — a pattern of behavior which warrants further investigation. They were making Schweizer's case for him.

Their fallback position — and this is merely a fact of political life, dubious or not, like it or not — is, and shall remain, that if Nixon's appearances were enough to corner him, Hillary's are too.

 

Douthat's impossible dream

Ross Douthat asks of his party's presidential candidates what he himself is unable to do: provide a coherent alternative to Obama's foreign policies, specifically his military interventions or quasi-interventions. "In theater after theater, this administration has us in just far enough to shape events," he writes, "but without a plan to win it."

"Winning" remains undefined in Douthat's piece. It's a nostalgic, terminological 21st-century holdover from that American century in which our enemies were (usually) easily defined; advance on clearly delineated fronts, crush their forces, take their cities, occupy their villages and press them to sue for peace. Presto, the war is won. Should President Obama seriously suggest that this could be done in, say, Syria, the best he would get from informed strategic minds is, "Good night, and good luck."

That said, Douthat seems to believe The Answer Is Out There — or, at the very least, that his party's candidates should offer one. On the latter, we're in accord. But, complains Douthat:

There is no sign as yet that the president’s would-be successors have clear strategic priorities; instead, the tendency is to treat every conflict that comes into the headlines, whether it involves Libya or Iran, Syria or Ukraine, AfPak or the Islamic State, as a theater where there’s no substitute for American-led victory.

Some of this is just posturing, and if elected no G.O.P. president (well, except maybe Lindsey Graham) would actually escalate militarily on every front at once. But it isn’t exactly clear what they would do, because their critique of Obama scores points without acknowledging the real limits on American power — and the structural, and not just ideological, realities behind the decisions that he’s made.

The second paragraph is a peculiar one. Douthat's critique of Obama's policies is meant to score points without acknowledging limits on American power — immediately after which, he returns to the rhetoric of "winning":

There may be cases where America needs to fight to win, enemies that we need to actually defeat instead of managing. But there are also wars that shouldn’t be joined at all, and situations where a kind of frozen conflict really is the best out of our bad options. So the test facing this president’s would-be successors, the challenge that should be posed to them as candidates, is to tell us which kind of war is which.

I can't quite determine if Douthat knows, deep down, that Obama already has. Since he fails to explain what we'd do, for instance, with Damascus, Ar Raqqah, Aleppo and Homs, even if we could "win" them, I suspect he does.

Nonetheless I credit Douthat for his inward entreaty: that his party's candidates transcend their imprecise rants about "American-led victories" by laying out "clear strategic priorities" and telling us "exactly … what they would do." As for Douthat's pleading, all I can say is, Good night, and good luck.

 

The WHCD, bigger and uglier than ever, stalks again

Today is Washington's hour of that annual tradition, the White House Correspondents Dinner, thus time for my annual tradition — rereading The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton's gentle abomination of 19th-century New York's high society, infused, as it was, by "minute observances and exactions," by "tyrannical trifles binding one hour to the next," by "watchful servants," by "perpetually renewed stacks of cards and invitations," by a "systematized and affluent existence," by unreality, precariousness, irrelevance.

Like everything else, polarization will give birth to post-event opinions of tonight's gala: the president was either hilarious or embarrassing, depending on which letter, R or D, precedes the spectating reviewer's name, and the dinner's host was either hilarious or embarrassing, depending on same. Yet arguing either will be impossible by me, for I shall be vicariously rereading Wharton instead.

I realize, of course, that my duck-and-cover safety maneuver will provide little protection from tonight's extravaganza fallout; Sunday morning's "public affairs" shows will each dissect the incestuous orgy with an obligatory prep-school hail-fellow-well-metness, as will Monday's cable-news stars. All will underscore their indispensability to Washington society's gracious workings — and each will make me sick to my stomach.

I have bitched about the WHCD every year for a number of years now, just as others of some prominence have moaned ("There was more dignity at my daughter’s junior prom than there is [at] what I’m seeing on C-SPAN there," observed Tom Brokaw), all manner of goo-goo government types have griped, and rare proponents of journalistic distance have squealed in acute, conscientious pain. Yet no amount of offense taken has made any difference. The clubby monstrosity has just gotten uglier — as it will again next year. It has finally achieved what all such monstrosities seek: our resignation.

 

No one is praying for the ACA's survival like congressional Republicans are

Stumblebums. Absolute stumblebums.

Fearing that the Supreme Court might rule this June, on King v. Burwell, in their favor, congressional Republicans are suddenly in a frenzy as to what to do. Millions, possibly, thrown off of federal subsidies; millions losing their healthcare; millions eying congressional conservatives and saying, "Thanks for nothing, you clowns." It's resulting in a bedlamite comedy:

A new proposal put forward this week by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), who is up for reelection in 2016, would allow people to keep their ObamaCare plans and subsidies until 2017…. That approach runs counter to a plan from Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) that would help people who lose subsidies by giving them new tax credits that diminish over time….

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) supports both Sasse’s plan and Johnson’s plan.

Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) … has also signed on to multiple competing plans. He is a co-sponsor of Johnson’s bill, as well as a separate bill from Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) that focuses on repealing much of ObamaCare.

A separate group of House Republicans has also been meeting, and has outlined a plan that includes permanent tax credits to help people buy insurance…. [The group] has remained quiet on whether to offer a type of temporary financial assistance to those who lose subsidies….

The group will face new pressure next month when the conservative Republican Study Committee (RSC) also weighs in on the issue. The RSC’s leaders, Reps. Bill Flores (R-Texas) and Phil Roe (R-Tenn.), said in separate interviews Thursday that they are preparing to release a new ObamaCare alternative in mid-May…. Both say they have not yet decided whether to support an extension of ObamaCare subsidies.

All this chaos is probably for nothing. Oral arguments before the Court seemed to suggest a ruling in Obamacare's favor, rather than a decision in favor of our stewards of pandemonium. One would think, however, they even they would have pieced together some alternative — no matter how unworkable — before the eleventh hour. After all, they've had plenty of time — in fact, since January 2011 — to not only repeal, but replace, Obamacare.

Absolute stumblebums.

 

Huckabee: completely crackers before he begins

It's not often that I literally laugh out loud at a news story. But this one, concerning Mike Huckabee's paranoid ravings to the Family Research Council, evoked just that reaction. Said the imminent candidate for the presidency of the United States:

I think it’s fair to say that Christian convictions are under attack as never before. Not just in our lifetime, but ever before in the history of this great nation. We are moving rapidly toward the criminalization of Christianity.

Huckabee went on to utter some really exotic misunderstandings of America's founding concepts — which were secular to the core — judicial review and constitutionally protected religious freedom, which even a schoolboy could correct. Indeed his "insights" are so astoundingly ignorant, I suspect even some of the Family Researchers were rolling their eyes.

To believe that, you must read it.

 

Flipping a coin with Hillary

Jon Chait's fundamental assessment of the tentacled Clinton controversies:

All sorts of unproven worst-case-scenario questions float around the web of connections between Bill’s private work, Hillary Clinton’s public role as secretary of State, the Clintons’ quasi-public charity, and Hillary’s noncompliant email system. But the best-case scenario is bad enough: The Clintons have been disorganized and greedy….

The Clinton campaign is batting down the darkest and most conspiratorial interpretation of these stories, and where this all leads remains to be seen. But the most positive interpretation is not exactly good.

That gets to the heart of one's despair: Even the most optimistic embrace of another Clinton administration must be, objectively speaking, also a grim one. Whether through deliberate design or thoughtless dishevelment, Bill and Hillary seem to delight in waving red capes before all the usual suspects, who are exceedingly bullish on attack. With the near certainty of another Republican House in 2017, investigative committees will sprout like weeds. If you'll just imagine Benghazi times ten, times a hundred, times whatever godawful number you wish, then you have rightly imagined the rather immediate future of the American political system. The Obama administration has been one of the cleanest in presidential history, and yet even with that, Republicans have filled the public arena with political "narratives" of Obama's filthy malfeasance. Just imagine, if you dare, what they'll do to an administration that enters the White House with a litany of questionable practices.

Clinton loyalists insist that this is but blaming the victim. To some extent, they're right. Republicans love to hate them some Clintons. There is no changing that. On the other hand there is no denying that the Clintons are investigation magnets because they invite scrutiny. I mean, come on, charitable millions from favor-seeking "entities"? and years of flawed tax returns? and Bill's tens of private millions in speaking fees from the aforementioned, self-interested entities seeking favors from his wife's State Department? Even if no illegalities emerge, all that easily translates into the customary rap on the presidential couple: arrogance, poor judgment, preventable disorganization and an astonishing devil-may-care approach to appearances.

Chait also notes a paradox:

The Clintons’ charitable initiatives were a kind of quasi-government run by themselves, which was staffed by their own loyalists and made up the rules as it went along. Their experience running the actual government, with its formal accountability and disclosure, went reasonably well. Their experience running their own privatized mini-state has been a fiasco.

The question then becomes: Which would we get with a President Hillary Clinton? A reasonably well-run government — notwithstanding its submersion in endless Republican sleuthing and scandalmongering — or, simply, a state of fiasco? Given the wretched offerings from the other side, we'll soon know the answer to that question.

 

Rewriting Krauthammer

Charles' latest column, "Obama’s Nixon doctrine: anointing Iran," originally read, in part:

This is the new Middle East. Its strategic reality is clear to everyone: Iran rising, assisted, astonishingly, by the United States.

Obama’s initial Middle East strategy was simply withdrawal. He would enter history as the ultimate peace president, ushering in a new era in which "the tide of war is receding." The subsequent vacuum having been filled, unfortunately and predictably, by various enemies, adversaries and irredeemables, Obama lighted upon a new idea: We don’t just withdraw, we hand the baton. To Iran.

Thankfully, a renegade Washington Post editor — the one with an accurate knowledge of recent history and a wariness of endless war — decided to read Charles' column before publication. She was, as you might well imagine, appalled by his rank distortions and miserable omissions: namely, his failure to even mention George W. Bush's neoconservative contribution to Iran's regional ascent, achieved largely by W.'s elimination of its greatest foe and countervailing power — Saddam Hussein's Iraq. With blue pencil in hand, she went to work, just in the nick of time. The edited edition now reads:

This is the new Middle East. Its strategic reality is clear to everyone: Iran rising, having been assisted, astonishingly, by the Bush administration.

Bush’s initial Middle East strategy was simply invasion. He would enter history as the ultimate war president, ushering in a new era in which "the tide of strategic thought is receding." The subsequent vacuum having been created, unfortunately and predictably, by the United States, adversaries and irredeemables, Bush lighted upon a new idea: We don’t just invade, we hand the baton. To Iran.

No word yet as to how Charles' loyal, fiction-immersed readers are reacting to this cold splash of reality. One imagines an epidemic of foaming orifices, stomping little feet and enraged cancellations of Post subscriptions, but that assumes that whoever reads the column to them actually gets as far as the corrected portion.

 

Could a Trump push them over the edge?

Larry Sabato's "Crystal Ball" lists 19 candidates for the GOP presidential nomination, each ranked as first-, second-, third- or, humiliatingly, fourth-tier possibilities. Donald Trump is not among them. Said Sabato to The New Yorker's John Wolfson: "We couldn’t include Donald Trump and live with ourselves."

Alas, Sabato may perforce undergo an out-of-body experience, for "Donald Trump returns to New Hampshire with a presidential campaign-like schedule Monday," reports the Union Leader, which also "has learned he has signed a lease for an office in Manchester that will open May 1."

This could be just another headfake from the clown limo's driver, but I sure hope not. Someday, the GOP's Reince Priebuses will awake from their slap-happy slumber, look around and say to themselves: My God, we — the party of Lincoln — are running incurable lunatics like Donald Trump. Like Donald Trump! The friggin' Donald! This has got to stop; it simply has to stop, all of it, before he and yet more like him leap to the head of the pack.

Republicans' only hope is to become boring again. This lunatic populist thing — led by stampeding millionaires and Princeton debaters and jeans-sporting libertarians and unquenched pups and unstable, fulminating theocrats — just isn't working for them.

 

Super PACs' "Breaking Bad" cash problem

Someone will need to invent a new medium; television, radio and even social media can't possibly absorb the hundreds of millions of attack dollars coming our way:

In recent weeks, [Sheldon] Adelson, who spent $100 million on the 2012 campaign and could easily match that figure in 2016, has told friends that he views the Florida senator, whose hawkish defense views and unwavering support for Israel align with his own, as a fresh face who is "the future of the Republican Party." He has also said that Rubio’s Cuban heritage and youth would give the party a strong opportunity to expand its brand and win the White House.

The super PAC proxy wars will be as deafening as they will be bloody. Rubio's Adelson money will battle Walker's Koch brothers' cash which will charge against Bush's plutocratic Right to Rise Super PAC, which, by the way, is being funded illegally. But who cares? We've been foursquare in the brave new world of the wild, wild West ever since the Supremes ruled, in Billionaires United v. Simple Logic, that unleashing Himalayan heaps of private payola on the electoral system would be unproblematic for American democracy.

Turns out, there is a problem — not so much for America's political system, which was already hopelessly corrupt, however there is the fresh problem of disposal. How oh how do America's owners of our democracy disperse billions of boodle when there's only so much TV and radio time that can be sold?

 

And it's - Rubio! in the lead

As of early 2015, well, as of April 2015, well, as of the fourth Thursday of April 2015, well, as of 11:46 a.m. of the fourth Thursday of April 2015:

Clinton naturally blows away any Democratic competition and other Republicans, except 43-year-old Rubio. In a general election matchup, Clinton gets 45 percent of American voters to 43 percent for Rubio. That's better than other Republicans, including Bush whom Clinton leads 46-39.

"The youngest member of the GOP presidential posse moves to the front of the pack to challenge Hillary Clinton whose position in her own party appears rock solid," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll. "This is the kind of survey that shoots adrenalin into a campaign. Marco Rubio gets strong enough numbers and favorability ratings to look like a legit threat to Hillary Clinton."

Who's next? And what of the thundering Scott Walker boom?

 

Peter Schweizer, just a fair-minded journalist making his way in this cruel world

Bloomberg's Josh Green argues that the author of Clinton Cash, Peter Schweizer, is no right-wing hack:

[T]he Clinton team and allied liberal groups … have launched a campaign to discredit Schweizer as "disreputable" and blinded by partisan animosity. Anyone familiar with Schweizer’s work knows better: he wrote a well-regarded book about the Bush dynasty and another, detailing insider trading in Congress, that led to a new law, the bipartisan STOCK Act of 2012, which aims to curb these abuses.

It seems Schweizer is already working on another attack screed, this one about Jeb (Bush Bamboozlement?), which, says Green, is further evidence that Schweizer is no right-wing hack. This of course fails to support Green's hypothesis, since the far right positively loathes Jeb Bush.

But, whatever. Here's an abridged survey of Media Matters' review of Schweizer's career, which, assuming MM hasn't simply made stuff up, also appears to detract from Green's assessment:

In 2011 and '12, Schweizer received $106,250 from Palin's Sarah PAC for "foreign policy" advice. (I would have done it for just a thousand bucks; my advice being, "Ms. Palin, don't bother.")

Schweizer has worked for Breitbart.com as a senior editor-at-large.

Schweizer contributed to Glenn Beck's book, Broke: The Plan to Restore Our Trust, Truth and Treasure.

Schweizer's own books include:

Architects of Ruin: How Big Government Liberals Wrecked The Global Economy -- And How They Will Do It Again If No One Stops Them

Do As I Say (Not As I Do): Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy

… and the almost unbelievably titled: Makers and Takers: Why Conservatives Work Harder, Feel Happier, Have Closer Families, Take Fewer Drugs, Give More Generously, Value Honesty More, Are Less Materialistic And Envious, Whine Less … And Even Hug Their Children More Than Liberals

Yes, just an earnest journalist at work.

 

Th NYT's "Clinton Cash" story that has it all - and nothing

Although, as promised, I won't be reviewing every anti-Hillary sitcom produced by right-wing crackpots, above-the-fold spinoffs by the New York Times are another story. Valid or not, funny or not, such spinoffs are impossible to ignore; they set the mood for the televised silly season already upon us, and which is destined to drag on for 18 months. Like it or not, this is the political fare with which we're confronted. I suspect most Americans will tune out — but we, the undaunted, the plucky, the few, will persevere.

The NYT headline splashed sooner than we expected. "Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation as Russians Pressed for Control of Uranium Company." Here is the first episode of the paper's co-production of Peter Schweizer's Clinton Cash. It was just, what, two or three days ago that the NYT announced it would be mining the scandalmonger's "exposé" for juicy tidbits — which, indeed, it did with breathtaking haste.

The story's plot, in brief, involves an admixture of Tom Clancy, William Boyd and Evelyn Waugh's best efforts at skulduggery and international intrigue; we have mysterious Russians, dark Canadians, diabolical Kazakhstanians, the U.S. State Department, and, of course, the stars of our story, Bill and Hillary Clinton — all of whom conspired, it seems, to transfer precious American uranium to the steppe's Ivanesque tzar, Vladimir Putin, in exchange for contributions to the Clinton Foundation. As you read the script, try not to get too lost in the weeds. This story makes the byzantine financial complexities of Whitewater seem like straightforward transactions.

OK, enough for the rather lengthy story itself, which you can read for yourself. There's no need for me to rehash it here. Yet there was something about it that struck me as peculiar. Early on, the Times concedes this: "Whether the donations played any role in the approval of the uranium deal is unknown." In other words, "the special ethical challenges presented by the Clinton Foundation" — that's from the passage subsequent to the Times' concession — may not, in fact, have played any role in the uranium deal. Yet this would be a top story only if the donations did play a role. Otherwise, we're left with a piece that is merely suggestive — that is, one that will play into whatever partisan prejudices the reader holds.

There's more. Only toward the end of this aforementioned "lengthy" story (meaning most readers won't get there) does the Times observe:

A person with knowledge of the Clinton Foundation’s fund-raising operation, who requested anonymity to speak candidly about it, said that for many people, the hope is that money will in fact buy influence: "Why do you think they are doing it — because they love them?" But whether it actually does is another question. And in this case, there were broader geopolitical pressures that likely came into play as the United States considered whether to approve the Rosatom-Uranium One deal.

If doing business with Rosatom [Russia's nuclear energy agency] was good for those involved with the Uranium One deal, engaging with Russia was also a priority of the incoming Obama administration, which was hoping for a new era of cooperation as Mr. Putin relinquished the presidency — if only for a term — to Dmitri A. Medvedev.

That may not rise to the distasteful level of burying an essential lede, but it's close — very close, especially in a story that can only imply unmet "ethical challenges." With that implication dripping from every paragraph, readers should have been forewarned that the uranium deal may have been just one part of "broader geopolitical pressures"; that is, that the donations plot may be utterly unfounded. Who knows? I don't, but I can tell you this: You'll have no more actual knowledge of it after you read the story; you'll be left with only the implications.