No Scandal-Free Choices? Pick the Less Flawed
If ever there was a presidential contest that did not need an extra week, this is it.
In case you haven't heard, an unusual quirk in the calendar and election laws has resulted in America's latest election since 1988.
The nation votes on the first Tuesday after a Monday in November. Because Nov. 1 falls on a Tuesday this year, we have almost an entire extra week of what has been, according to various reports, one of the angriest and most anxiety-inducing campaigns in history.
A recent Harris Poll for the American Psychological Association, for example, found 52 percent of Americans adults reported they were stressed out by this contest -- in close to equal measures of both Republicans and Democrats.
Add to that the events of the past few days that have given many folks electoral whiplash. First there was FBI director James Comey and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's emails, and then there was yet another report of questionable tax loophole usage by Republican nominee Donald Trump.
As often has been said of Chicago weather, if you don't like the latest scandal from the nominees, just wait a few minutes.
I was as shaken as everyone else by Comey's announcement less than two weeks before Election Day that the FBI has resumed its investigation of Clinton's private email server. This was based on emails that, it turned out, he and his agents had not even read.
Immediately, Comey was attacked by lawmakers and former attorneys general from both parties for defying Department of Justice guidelines that bar public comments on ongoing investigations and for possibly using his office to exert partisan influence.
I agree with former attorney general Eric Holder that Comey's a good man who made a big mistake. He's been under pressure from Republicans, in particular, angered by his announcement in July that Clinton had been "extremely careless" in handling classified material on her personal server but not enough to be prosecuted.
After learning that FBI investigators had found a new trove of possibly related emails on a laptop belonging to former New York Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner, husband of Clinton's top aide Huma Abedin, what was he to do?
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