When This Blows Over

unholy mess, fraught with tangled lines of authority . . . distorted
priorities, and no sense of greater purpose.” “Hillary didn’t have a
vision to articulate. And no one else could give one to her.” “Hillary
had been running for president for almost a decade and still didn’t
really have a rationale.”
What is true is that throughout her career Mrs. Clinton has shown
herself to be largely incapable of honest self-reflection, of pointing
the finger, for even a moment, at herself. She is not capable of what in
Middle English was called “agenbite of inwit”—remorse of
conscience, the self-indictment and implicit growth, that come of
taking a serious personal inventory. People are always doing bad
things to her; she never does bad things to them. They operate in bad
faith, she only in good. They lie and exaggerate, she doesn’t. They
are low and partisan, not her. There’s no vast left-wing conspiracy
only a right-wing one.
People can see this. It’s part of why she lost.
It is one thing to say, “I take responsibility,” and follow that up with a
list of things you believe you got wrong. It’s another thing to say, “I
take responsibility,” and then immediately pivot to arguments as to
why other people are to blame. “I take responsibility for everything I
got wrong, but that’s not why I lost,” is literally what she said
Wednesday.