Hillary Clinton’s campaign against Donald Trump has been going well. What isn’t going so well is her attempt to convince Americans that they have reasons to want her in the White House beyond Trump’s odiousness and unsuitability for office.

Her terrible ratings on trustworthiness have persisted. I have written before that she is fundamentally honest and does not deserve such high disapproval ratings. Every so-called scandal that has enveloped her has been wildly overblown. The recent FBI report on her emails ratified my original judgment. Still, it’s clear that most voters, including some loyal Democrats, don’t share my assessment. At a time when she should be pulling way ahead of Trump, she is leading, but not comfortably.

The drag on her momentum is Clinton’s insistence on holding things close in order to maintain a zone of privacy. This feeds the unfair but persistent belief among a sizable chunk of the electorate that she has something serious to hide. The events of Sunday were a case in point: the candidate appeared to stumble after leaving the 9/11 memorial in New York. The zone of privacy closed around her – press were largely kept in the dark, apart from a short statement and a shout of “I’m feeling great”. Clinton then retreated to Chappaqua with her inner circle.

The time has come to do something daring to try to restore trust. It goes against every fibre of her nature, but Clinton should now become radically transparent.



She should release the transcripts of her Wall Street speeches. She should release a comprehensive list of all of her paid speeches. She should release any records or correspondence that help clarify her role at the Clinton Foundation. She should announce that no member of the Clinton family, including her daughter, Chelsea, will be involved in the foundation while she is president. She should release detailed health records, including the treatments she received following her concussion several years ago. And, now, the full details of her abrupt departure from the 9/11 ceremony. The campaign should never go dark when something happens, even if it’s not serious.

If she has personal calendars from her time as secretary of state and New York senator, she should release those. She should release any remaining emails in her possession that are even mildly work-related. She should once again release her tax returns, putting renewed pressure on Trump to release his. Even if she has already released some of this material, put it out again. Let it all go.

Hillary Clinton’s ‘Pretty in Pink’ Whitewater press conference in 1994.

She will resist doing this because she resents being held to a higher standard of transparency than Trump or other male politicians. She resents being scrutinised more heavily than men, which she is. That unfairness was on display once again last week on the presidential forum televised by NBC, when the host, Matt Lauer, grilled Clinton over and over again about her emails while letting Trump skate by with outright lies.

In calling for Hillary Clinton to embrace radical transparency, I am holding her accountable to her own standard. In her two campaigns for president, she has claimed she is more transparent than anyone else. During a speech in Philadelphia in 2008, she said: “I think I’m probably the most transparent person in public life” – adding that “I feel you know a lot more about me than you know about anyone else. Much of it untrue, but nevertheless, it’s all out there.” Last March she told CNBC’s John Harwood: “I’ve been the most transparent public official in modern times as far as I know.” If she wants to be president, she should prove this to the doubters.

Of course, she’s right that the media will never be satisfied, no matter what or how much she releases. There will be more and more questions. The tortuous, 72-minute press conference that she gave as first lady in 1994, intended to answer questions about Whitewater and her commodities trading, only cemented her conviction that journalists are out to get her. I covered this press conference, which was dubbed “Pretty in Pink” for the sweater she wore, when I worked for the Wall Street Journal, which went overboard on Whitewater. However much Clinton hated the experience, however sexist she thought it was for reporters to dwell on her clothes, she actually did herself some good by confronting her questioners.

Enduring more questions about the thorny personal issues she hates talking about will help her

I also thought she did a fine job answering the barrage of questions from Lauer last week. She is always the prepared lawyer and gave cogent and truthful answers. Trump, in a speech to religious conservatives in Washington DC last Friday, ripped Clinton for offering different explanations about her private email server at different times. The government’s classification system is byzantine. Explaining why she didn’t see or understand a tiny “c” (for classified) on three emails doesn’t lend itself to pithy answers.

While she knows every jot and tittle of policy, Clinton will benefit from more practice answering questions about her ethics, her speeches, the Clinton Foundation, her health and her emails. This is essential before the upcoming debates with Trump. Radical transparency will help her. Enduring more questions about the thorny personal issues she hates talking about will help her. She made a good start by meeting with reporters last week and answering their questions, but it’s only a start. We can all bet that she’ll be brilliantly prepared for the debates and ready for any policy question. On the personal, ethical issues, which Trump will relentlessly pound, it’s harder to predict.

Of course, this could all backfire. I’m old enough to remember watching the first woman nominee for vice-president, the Democrat Geraldine Ferraro, withering visibly as journalists hounded her about her husband’s business dealings and their taxes. There’s a long list of other politicians who thought they were attempting to “come clean” but paid a political price anyway.

But in Clinton’s case, the price of not being demonstrably more transparent could be even higher – not only for her, but for the world.