We must forgive Mark Twain for his error when he declared that “history never repeats itself but it often rhymes.” After all, he’d never met the Clintons.

If Twain were alive now, he would be astonished at how the headlines over the e-mail scandal roiling the presidential race are virtual repeats of the family’s 1990s saga in power.

The headlines are also an omen. A restoration of the Clinton presidency would be a restoration of the national and moral chaos they invariably create.

They can’t help themselves. They are corrupt and corrupters, the ­Typhoid Mary of politics.

Whether by nature or nurture, they are programmed to ruin. Friends, allies, institutions — all are stained by their touch.

And always, the Clintons blame somebody else. Now it’s FBI Director James Comey’s turn to embody their all-purpose bogeyman, the vast right-wing conspiracy. Somebody, sometimes everybody, is out to get them, unfairly of course.

The victim card is a Clinton family heirloom, but there are major problems playing it over Comey’s sudden reopening of the e-mail probe.

To continue reading Michael Goodwin's column in the New York Post, click here.