Post-Modern Political Honesty: Part III--Plausible Deniability... Everybody's Doing It!

Plausible deniability is a term coined by the CIA in the early 1960's and popularized by President Bill Clinton in the 1990's.

Clinton popularized the phrase by using the technique so much, though he never uttered it publicly. Instead, his playbook was incrementally publicized through the interviews and written offerings of his strategists and advisers, once they were untethered by his reelection. So, it was about twenty years ago that we learned that, as a rule, Clinton calculatedly quashed blowback by applying the concept of plausible deniability to explanations of his questionable political moves and conflicting remarks made under oath. I give you Bill's iconic semantic defense, enshrined in the many definitions of the phrase sexual relations and the word is, as THE seminal example.

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have certainly adopted this tactic.

Consider how Trump responds each time he's confronted about his crass commentary. Three episodes, occurring early in the primary season, will amply prove the point. Take a look at how he explained his remarks about Carley Fiorina's face, Megyn Kelly bleeding, and Mitt Romney being on his knees. His reference to Fiorina's face was metaphoric, he said. And he was referring, he claimed, only to those orifices that are north of Kelly's neck. While Romney being on his knees was, Trump said, an allusion to begging. Each of these explanations is just plausible enough that the Donald can deny that he meant what he clearly implied.

Hillary, on the other hand, incrementally reshapes her message in response to political and media pressure, in hopes that enough people will have a that's reasonable reaction to the latest tweak that disinterest will prevail. Witness her ever-morphing talking points about her handling of classified information on her personal server and network.

1. There was no classified information on my device.
2. "I did not send or receive any classified information on my email."
3. "I did not send or receive any  information marked classified on my email."
4. "I did not send or receive any  information marked classified at the time it was sent or received."

As each one proved to be false, she proceeded to the next. But, at each turn her delivery remained unchanged, blurring the lines between the iterations and giving the impression that she'd been saying the same thing all along. When FBI Director Comey's recent Senate testimony on point demonstrated that version 4 was false, Hillary made a crass and cynical decision to implicate her staff. The (paraphrased) message evolution looked like this:

1. My staff would not send me any information marked classified at the time it was sent.
2. My staff would not knowingly send me any information marked classified at the time it was sent.
3. The members of my staff are professionals; And I resent the implication that any of them would knowingly send me any information marked classified at the time it was sent. (In the mind of John Q. Public, defining and sticking up for her staff acts to separate her from them, and amplifies the staffs' supposed culpability.)

While Hillary and Trump have different methods of proffering plausible denials, their general approach is the same. That is, to control people by controlling information; this creates power. Foucault would be proud.

But wait. There's more! Donald and Hillary have sprung from Plausible Deniability to Surreal Denial...