While sitting down with her former speechwriter Lissa Muscatine, Hillary Clinton said she was “totally done with being really careful about what to say” and claimed it was ” liberating” to speak her mind. Yet the “liberated” Hillary seems a lot like the old cautious Hillary. The Week calls it her authenticity problem. Time notes that “Hard Choices” actually avoided many hard choices.
Here are 3 controversial issues that she has refused to give an opinion on during her disastrous book roll-out; all have come after her claim to be “done being really careful about what to say.”
1. Estate Tax: Bloomberg reported that the Clintons use financial management strategies to avoid paying “hundreds of thousands of dollars in estate taxes.” When asked about her position on estate taxes, Clinton’s spokesperson “didn’t answer additional questions about their finances or her current views on the estate tax.”
2. Keystone Pipeline: While promoting her book in Canada, Clinton avoided the question of whether she would support the Keystone XL Pipeline three times: On Canadian TV, at Toronto’s Chamber of Commerce and in an interview with The Globe and Mail. Apparently Clinton can talk about events a world away that pose a “hard choice” to Secretary of State John Kerry but can’t discuss an oil pipeline that will create thousands of jobs and help the United States become energy independent. As The Washington Post points out, Clinton “would risk alienating herself” from billionaires like Tom Steyer.
3. Federal Right to Gay Marriage: Clinton avoided answering a question about her support for gay marriage despite being asked about it TEN times in a single interview. MSNBC tried to clarify Clinton’s stance on state gay marriage laws and even after “repeated requests” a Clinton spokesman “would not give a direct yes or no answer to whether Clinton believes states have the authority to ban same-sex marriage.” MSNBC notes that her statement on gay marriage “doesn’t directly speak to the issue.”
What a straight shooter!