RUTHFULLY YOURS

The new year brings many a revisiting of the Hillary Clinton email server case, including one at the hands of the Justice Department inspector general (that’s where all those FBI text messages are coming from), though his inquiry likely defines the matter too narrowly to get at the really important issues.

We should also stress that some kind of a revisiting would bedevil a Clinton administration now if Hillary Clinton had been elected instead of Donald Trump.

Way back in 2014, had Mrs. Clinton returned her “personal” emails and devices to the State Department instead of destroying them, it would have closed matters for most Americans.

After all, the Obama administration knew of and condoned her private server, amounting to an implicit endorsement of her unorthodox handling of classified materials.

But she didn’t, and the administration was not about to prosecute its heir apparent, especially after she became the sole alternative to Bernie Sanders and then Donald Trump.

President Obama’s public statements on the case could not have been clearer. He essentially directed his Justice Department that Mrs. Clinton did nothing wrong, as arguably a president is entitled to do.

The part that never made sense was why FBI Director James Comey intervened to do the president’s bidding so the Justice Department wouldn’t have to.

It was unnecessary and improper. Whatever its wisdom, no serious person of either party believes the outcome was anything but predetermined. Mr. Comey simply intruded himself as a more plausible vehicle to carry out the administration’s will on the “matter” than Attorney General Loretta Lynch would have been. That much is clear by applying even the minimalist interpretation to the text messages of his lead investigator on the case, Peter Strozk, as well as other evidence surfaced by the Justice Department’s inspector general.

Mr. Comey gave different reasons in public and private for his action. In closed congressional session, he pointed to intercepted Russian intelligence that he said could be used to discredit the Justice Department. That is, he relied on information from one or more U.S. intelligence agencies. It doesn’t tax the imagination to suppose Mr. Comey and fellow intelligence officials were operating on a shared premise that a Clinton presidency was inevitable and needed to be protected from email-related risks.

Since then, Obama intelligence officials have leaked intelligence and planted scurrilous innuendo about Mr. Trump, apparently aimed at giving credibility to the “collusion” narrative and discrediting his victory. But what Mr. Comey did was worse. Again, I’m not saying it was realistic or desirable that Mrs. Clinton be prosecuted, but the choice not to prosecute was a political decision that the Obama administration and Obama Justice Department had a duty to make and to own. CONTINUE AT SITE

The “secular stagnation” thesis is having a bad year. Readers will recall that this idea, popularized by former Obama White House economist Larry Summers, held that America is fated to endure slow economic growth. This conveniently justified the Obama era’s historic slow growth as an inevitable deus ex machina, and Mr. Summers’s policy advice was for government to borrow more money to spend on public works.

A year after the Obama economists left town, stagnation may be following them back to Harvard. The Commerce Department announced Friday that the U.S. economy grew 2.6% in the fourth quarter of 2017, below what most economists expected but the third straight quarter of solid growth.

The details of the GDP report were stronger than the top line that was reduced by the volatile categories of trade and inventories. A fall in inventories accounted for most of the decline in growth from the third quarter, but inventories ebb and flow and the measure will rebound in future quarters. Exports rose more slowly (6.9%) than imports (13.9%), which reduced the trade contribution to GDP.

Consumer spending rose a healthy 3.8% in the quarter, while business nonresidential investment climbed 6.8%. The latter continues the trend during 2017 of rising capital spending, which underperformed across the Obama years. It’s not too much to say that capital was on strike as CEOs and small-business owners tried to avoid becoming a target of new taxes or Obama regulators.

The three-day government shutdown last Saturday has sharpened the debate about which party has the advantage going into the midterm elections in November, and which will profit from another possible shut-down if the February 8 deadline for coming up with a solution for the expiring DACA program isn’t met. More interesting than these analyses and prognostications is what they say about the pundits’ estimation of the American people’s ability to sort out the style “sizzle” from the policy-success “steak” come November.

The Democrat instigators of the current shutdown are for now paying a political price for bluffing and then caving to the Republicans, even though Republicans usually are blamed by the media and voters who have tarred them as the mean and greedy party of small government that always wants to starve the big-government Leviathan. Before the shutdown this received wisdom got support from A Washington Post poll that reported 48% of those polled would blame Republicans, 20 points more than those who’d blame the Dems. In fact, a later poll put 58% of voters blaming the Democrats.

Despite this seeming victory for Republicans, however, many still see the outlook for November as dim. Trump’s approval ratings, which are around 40%, 15 points behind his disapproval numbers, are at a historical low. The generic ballot poll asking people which party they prefer in November has the Dems ahead by 8 points. Democrats have been winning special elections lately, including a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama that had been Republican for 30 years, and most recently a the 10th State Senate district in Wisconsin, one held by Republicans for 17 years. The general consensus of Trumpophobes (e.g. here) from both parties is that the president’s abrasive and vulgar Tweets and comments, and his callous, if not racist, dismissal of immigrants during negotiations with Democrats in Congress, are undermining the party and threatening its success in November.