It’s one thing to come clean once you’ve been caught doing something wrong, like pouring yourself the last cup of coffee and leaving the pot empty for the next person. Or taking the last donut from the box, your second one of the morning, when others in the office still haven’t had their first.
But when you’re caught sending debate questions to your favorite candidate before the debate when you’re working for a news network televising that debate, well, one might think that you would express a bit more contrition. You would also probably begin looking for a new career outside of the news business.
But when veteran Democratic operative Donna Brazile finally admitted that she used her position as a CNN commentator to send Hillary Clinton debate questions before the primary debates against Bernie Sanders, it sounded more like she was simply excusing herself for spending the entire day in her pajamas. The defiance and arrogance of someone convinced they don’t have to apologize for having lied to the country for several months comes through loud and clear in her admission which she included in an essay she wrote for Time:
“[I]n October, a subsequent release of emails revealed that among the many things I did in my role as a Democratic operative and [Democratic National Committee] Vice Chair prior to assuming the interim D.N.C. Chair position was to share potential town hall topics with the Clinton campaign,” she said.
“My job was to make all our Democratic candidates look good, and I worked closely with both campaigns to make that happen,” she said. “But sending those emails was a mistake I will forever regret.”
No hint of something much more serious or unethical. No apology for having lied to her employer or to the country for months. No contrition, only regret.
Helping one candidate cheat over another during the debates—when you work for the network organizing the debates– would normally destroy your career and require a full apology, complete with tears and pleas for forgiveness.
The revelation that Brazile was sharing the debate questions with Clinton before the debates came to light with one of the WikiLeaks releases of leaked DNC emails. For months following the release of the embarassing emails, Brazile denied the authenticity of the emails, claiming that merely asking her about them amounted to “persecution.” Her attitude was “how dare you even ask me about those fake WikiLeaks emails!” And, for the most part, the press complied.
Meanwhile, during months of denials, Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri appeared to avoid any hard questions on whether or not she could confirm having recevied the questions from Brazile. What should have been a cheating scandal rivaling the drama of the Twenty One quiz show scandals of the 1950s, which inspired the Robert Redford film Quiz Show, the mainstream media was more embarrassed by the story than angered by it. Here was one of their own secretly handing out debate questions to one of her friends, rigging the debate, handicapping the other candidate in the process, and unlike other cheating scandals uncovered in game shows or in the sports arena, the drama of this scandal was downplayed or virtually ignored.
Even after Brazile’s admission, following months of claiming she was being unfairly questioned on the “alleged” emails , there was never a moment when anyone involved in the scandal seemed to feel a degree of shame or embarrassment. The story lacked the dramatic conclusion that you would have expected in any other cheating scandal.
Perhaps sharing questions with one contestant before a game show in the 1950s, as portrayed in Quiz Show, or an athlete taking steroids so he can hit a baseball farther, might be more attractive for our news media to cover. But having a representative of one of the most well-known news organizations in the world, CNN, get caught helping one of our presidential candidates cheat during a series of debates is a story worthy of much more attention than it received. The stakes were certainly much higher here than which contestant won a television quiz show back in the 1950s or which baseball player would end up being the all-time leader in homeruns.
Despite the fact that her friends at CNN and in the DNC were simply hoping this scandal would fade away from public view without many paying attention, to many it will be remembered as the Quiz Show of their generation. And given the results of last year’s election and the current state of Donna Brazile’s career projectory, it’s still safe to say that cheaters never prosper.
