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The stream of hacked WikiLeaks emails — the latest trove dumped Thursday — from inside Hillary Clinton’s campaign opens up a troubling prospect far beyond their revelations about the differing public and private faces of the Democratic presidential nominee.

The leaks show that the Russian government might be trying to interfere with the U.S. presidential race, aiming cyberattacks at the very heart of American democracy: its fair and open elections. If an FBI investigation proves that to be the case, the hacked emails represent an electronic version of Watergate, the 1972 burglary of Democratic national headquarters that ultimately forced Richard Nixon from the White House. Only this time, the threat comes from a foreign adversary rather than a presidential administration.

For now, though, most of the public attention is on the content of the emails themselves, which make clear why Clinton balked at releasing transcripts of the high-dollar speeches she delivered to audiences on Wall Street and elsewhere in 2013 and 2014.

Assuming the WikiLeaks emails are accurate, Clinton portrayed herself to bankers as more supportive of free trade, and more flexible on industry regulation, than she has been during her drive for the presidency.

Sounding like an ardent free-trader in a 2013 speech, Clinton told one group of bankers: “My dream is a hemispheric common market with open trade.” This was consistent with her stance as secretary of State in 2012, when she praised the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) as “the gold standard” of free trade agreements.

Focus on Russia, not the emails: Another view

By 2016, however, Clinton faced populist challenges first from Bernie Sanders and then from Donald Trump. She now opposes the TPP and has few good things to say about free trade.

These days, she also proclaims her disdain for income inequality and Wall Street, having asserted in February that “Wall Street can never be allowed to once again threaten Main Street, and I will fight to rein in Wall Street.”

That was not her tone three years ago, when she told New York’s Goldman Sachs that the industry needs to be a part of fashioning industry regulation, and commiserated with the investment bankers over “the bias against people who have led successful and/or complicated lives.”

True, many politicians change positions — none more so than Trump — and some say things in private they never want the public to hear. But they pay a price for duplicity when they fail to come clean, and the comments ultimately do become public.

Clinton had two ways to inoculate herself against any damaging leaks from her Wall Street speeches. One is that she could have released the transcripts months ago, inconvenient as that might have been. The other is that she could have turned down the speaking engagements in the first place.

As the purported champion of the middle class, Clinton might have thought twice before taking $225,000 — what it takes a typical American household four years to earn — for an hour or so of work from an industry that helped push the economy to near-collapse and forced millions of Americans into foreclosure.

Now, amid the steady drip of embarrassing private emails, the speeches have come back to bite her. The wounds would have gone deeper if disclosures of Trump’s lewd sexual comments and alleged assaults had not overshadowed them.

For Clinton and other politicians, the lesson is if you fear something will become public, don’t do it. Or at the very least, disclose it yourself rather than let others control the story.

For American voters, the lesson is to beware of foreign governments seeking to damage democracy. That harm, if confirmed, will last far longer than memories about the content of particular emails hacked from Clinton’s campaign manager.

USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff. Most editorials are coupled with an opposing view — a unique USA TODAY feature.

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