This is not the first time I've heard the argument, but I think it utterly misses the point. If it wasn't for Barack Obama neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump come to pass.
Where it concerns French argues:
Yes, he may have violated his pledge to create the most transparent administration in history, but at least he didn’t create a private, unsecured server on which to discuss the most highly classified information. Hillary was transparent to Russia and China for the sake of being opaque to Americans. She feared FOIA more than she valued our nation’s secrets.
But who exactly put Hillary into such a position of responsibility in the first place? Are we to believe that President Obama was unaware of the private server? The Podesta e-mails would suggest that he is. In any case, it's inconceivable to me that President Obama and Secretary Clinton didn't e-mail each other on a regular basis.
Now one can make the argument that Obama was keeping his onetime rival closer. Nevertheless appointing her to such a great position of responsibility demonstrates a terrible lack of judgment on his part. If he hadn't appointed her to such a sensitive position WikiLeaks would not be so busy.
As for Trump, his rise is in large part due to disaffection in Republican ranks for the Congressional leadership and a repudiation of the Bush and for that matter the Reagan years. Yet even with all of that if the economic recovery hadn't been so weak, if Obamacare hadn't completely destabilized American healthcare and if Obama hadn't denounced police with a greater passion than he denounces ISIS I doubt that a demagogue like Trump would have been possible.
With that said, I'm sure Obama would trounce Hillary in a Democratic primary and would trounce Trump in a general election. Obama is good at winning elections where he is on the ballot. He's just not so good at governing. It his incompetence in this area which gave rise to both Hillary and Trump.
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