Democratic political strategist James Carville drew parallels with Hillary Clinton’s handling of her email scandal on Monday to how the 1992 Bill Clinton campaign dealt with the bombshell Gennifer Flowers story.
Carville, who was the lead strategist on President Clinton’s successful 1992 bid for the White House, appeared on NBC’s Today and was asked about the latest turn in Hillary Clinton’s email saga: Former Secretary of State Colin Powell telling People that Clinton was trying to "pin" her email woes on him.
Clinton told the FBI it was Powell who advised her to use a private email, but Powell only used a personal account for unclassified information and did not have a home-brewed server like Clinton’s.
"Do you think that they’ve handled this issue well?" host Savannah Guthrie asked.
"Look, you can go back on anything in politics and say, ‘Well, you could have done this better at this time, you could have done that,’" Carville said. "Right now, they’re up in the polls and they’re ahead ... Anything that you do in politics, you could say that we handled the Gennifer Flowers story well or that we handled this well. There’s always something ... Would’ve, should’ve, could’ve."
Flowers emerged during the 1992 campaign and said she had a 12-year affair with then-Gov. Bill Clinton. The Clintons appeared on 60 Minutes to address the allegations and the state of their marriage, a televised appearance that was widely seen as improving the governor’s battered image. Clinton denied the affair, although he later testified he had a sexual encounter with Flowers.