Clinton and her team are aware that her tactics will only hold out for so long and that she’ll eventually have to answer questions about her e-mail practices, but she and her advisers are aiming to delay that moment, ideally until she formally announces she’s running for president. At that point, they hope, the controversy will have subsided to the point where her campaign launch will be a much bigger headline than her response to a month-old scandal. An added benefit to the approach: the potential for Republicans to overreach and overreact while Clinton stays silent.
Her Rose Garden tactics, time-tested as they are, pose substantial risk. The era is different than when last they were deployed. With Congressional committees probing and the constant stoking of Twitter, the furor may not be fully extinguished by simply sitting on it. Especially with new revelations—on her emails, the Clinton Foundation or something else—there’s a danger she will be faced with questions so pressing they demand immediate answers or risk derailing her presidential.
The hope of Clinton’s inner circle is that she’ll be able to address the e-mail controversy as a minor element of her expected announcement. Agreeing to an interview now or at any time before she’s ready to launch her campaign would be potentially detrimental, signaling that she’s shifted into damage control mode and drawing attention to an issue about which many voters are still unaware, said a former Clinton campaign aide who has knowledge of the current team’s thinking. It would also appear to challenge her aides’ assertions that she did nothing wrong.
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