God damn it, Clintons, put the Clinton Foundation on the back burner for the next four (or, please God, eight) years. Doing good via your foundation is not as important as the good you can do as President.
Hillary, get some advisers into your inner circle who can let you know how important it is to avoid the appearance of corruption even though we know (we do) that you are not personally corruptible. We know you mean well. We really do. And you’ve done some amazing shit, as first lady, as Senator (although I have some quibbles), as SoS. I know once you get to the kind of apex of power that you have inhabited, and have experienced the unending fountain of money that accompanies that kind of power and of fame, that you wouldn’t sell out for 250k. I am abosultely, 100%, personally convinced that any dollar you wrung out of Goldman Sachs, you wrung out for the express purpose, in your head, of doing a little bit of good.
We know that is your aim. We get the money from Goldman. You thought taking it was OK because you knew that the money was a) peanuts and, b) you’d leverage it to do more good than you could without it, and c) you couldn’t be bought for 250k. It’s laughable, in fact (remember how incensed Rick Perry was in that debate when it was suggested that he could be bought for 5k...at the time his price was more like 13k, so the 5k was a real insult). But in your case, the people who have thought this through realize that you have all the money you could possibly want, and your hearts are pure. But here’s the thing. To a lot of people, 250k is a lot of money. They can’t understand how taking that much money would not make you impure. So you need to find somebody who can communicate this to you, and you need to listen to that person. What’s the line “Caesar’s wife, beyond reproach, etc” right?
You need to have somebody who can suss out what it might look like to a person on the outside, and who can communcate this to you, and you need to pay attention to, and follow the advice of this person. I’m sure you’re still irked at Obama, but the man did an amazing job of running the squeakiest cleanest Presidency in the history of Presidencies.
DO THAT THING. COPY OBAMA.
Don’t give anybody any more grist for the freaking mill. Just chill out, don’t take money, don’t let Bill take money, don’t let Chelsea take money, and close the freaking Clinton Foundation down for as long as it takes. People in Africa will be in much better shape if you get 8 years of making incremental progress against global warming as President than they will with the Clinton Foundation providing an anti-malaria tent, some HIV drugs, in the face of a continent-wide drought that would come with GOP policies.
I don’t care what the hell you do after 8 years. Just, for the next 8 years, please, please talk to somebody who isn’t the same person that said the email server was OK, who said the talks to Goldman were OK, who said that whatever the hell was going on with the Clinton Foundation was OK.
Please, for the love of god.