The Clintons — both Hillary and Bill — are very smart, but also quite reckless. They play too close to the edge and sometimes go over. They parse words to parry attacks. They possess a sort of preternatural political ability, but also a political paranoia.

Anyone who has followed the Clintons over the years already knows this. So hearing the stinging rebuke by the F.B.I. director, James Comey, of Hillary Clinton over her email usage in some ways made no waves, at least not for me. As obviously qualified as Clinton is — at a Charlotte, N.C., campaign rally, President Obama said, “There has never been any man or woman more qualified for this office than Hillary Clinton, ever, and that’s the truth” — and as clearly superior to the puffed-up presumptive Republican nominee as she is, there is something about Clinton, and indeed the Clintons, that makes me uneasy.

But Comey refused to bring charges against Clinton, which seems to be the right call, and also seems in line with the Clinton history.

I know that Republicans have attacked the Clintons for decades. Many of those attacks were baseless, by opponents driven mad by the Clintons’ seeming imperviousness, an endless search for a presumed fire beneath a fog they perceive as smoke. But some of those attacks come because of the Clintons’ own carelessness, as it did in this case. Sometimes there actually is a fire, however large or small, that the Clintons themselves have set.