Glenn Harlan Reynolds

My last column noted that although America is fighting something like five wars, nobody seems to be talking about it. It would be nice if that were the only important subject that’s not getting enough attention but it isn’t. Here are a few other topics that would be getting major daily attention, if our press and our candidates were better.

Corruption

In 2006, Rep. Nancy Pelosi led a campaign to take Congress back from the GOP by claiming that the Republicans had fostered a “culture of corruption,” and promising to “drain the swamp.” That catchphrase vanished after the election, but the corruption did not. And in the waning years of the Obama Administration, the corruption looks pretty bad. It even appears to have reached the FBI.

The FBI ultimately decided not to recommend prosecution of Hillary Clinton over her email scandal. That created a lot of criticism. But now it turns out that the FBI official in charge of the investigation was awfully close to the Clintons. The FBI official is deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe, whose wife, Dr. Jill McCabe, was running for state senate in Virginia. Her campaign received a donation of nearly a half million dollars from the political organization of Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, who has been close to the Clintons for decades (and has his own brushes with the law). Then, a bit later, Andrew McCabe was put in charge of the investigation into Clinton's emails, an investigation that — to the dismay of many longtime Bureau insiders — recommended no charges. Now McCabe is facing calls for his resignation.

As Stephen Green points out, McAuliffe encouraged Jill McCabe to run just days after the Clinton email scandal broke. I’m sure he knew who her husband was when he did so. The FBI claims there’s no connection, but this is very bad for the already-tarnished image of the FBI.

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Meanwhile, we have Clinton's pay-for-play deal with the King of Morocco. To the consternation of her advisers, she agreed to speak in Morocco in exchange for a promised $12 million donation to the Clinton Foundation. As the Huffington Post noted, "It is generally frowned upon for presidential candidates to be pumping foreign leaders for money.” At least her staff recognized that and eventually replaced Hillary with Bill and Chelsea.

But this sort of thing seems to have been par for the course at the Clinton Foundation, which, as ABC News reported, gave special treatment to “Friends of Bill.” As Bob Woodward commented, “But the mixing of speech fees, the Clinton Foundation, and actions by the State Department, which she ran, are all intertwined and it's corrupt. . . . But the election isn't going to be decided on that.” Not if Clinton can help it.

ObamaCare’s Implosion

The Affordable Care Act, better known as “ObamaCare,” was passed via a procedural trick called “reconciliation” and without a single Republican vote. Now that it is falling apart, and the Obama Administration — and the press — are blaming . . . Republicans for not fixing it. ObamaCare is imploding because the original concept was unworkable, as many critics argued at the time it was adopted. Now, several years later, insurers are abandoning the project and Americans’ premiums are facing double-digit increases.

Given that this was President Obama’s signature legislative achievement, and given that Clinton is running, essentially, on the promise of a third Obama term, you’d think this would be a top story in the news, getting the full-bore coverage every day that, say, a groping allegation against Donald Trump receives. But you’d be wrong. As Twitter humorist Jim Treacher says, "Modern journalism is all about deciding which facts the public shouldn't know because they might reflect badly on Democrats.”

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The Debt

Clinton has repeatedly claimed that she won’t "add a penny” to the national debt. On the one hand, that would be good, since the debt has roughly doubled during Obama’s time in office. On the other hand, she’s largely been allowed to slide on this implausible promise, and the increase in the debt under Obama has received surprisingly little attention, despite the burdens it will impose on millennials in terms of taxes and lost opportunities. The debt will still be there after the election, but the Clinton campaign, and the press, don’t want you thinking about it — and Hillary’s role in it — until then.

Corruption, unaffordable healthcare, a burgeoning national debt: These are all things that will have serious consequences for Americans for decades, to come. In a healthier society, our election would turn on these issues. But we do not live in such a society. And that suits politicians, and their supporters in the press, just fine.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds, a University of Tennessee law professor and the author of The New School: How the Information Age Will Save American Education from Itself, is a member of USA TODAY's Board of Contributors.

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