What is it with Hillary Clinton? What is it about this brilliant and accomplished woman—described by Barack Obama as possibly “more qualified” to be president than anyone in history—that makes so many people certain she is an incurable liar? More than anything else about Clinton—her occasional tin ear for politics, her seeming inability to connect with large crowds, her ultracautiousness—it is the trust issue that could yet cost her a general election she should otherwise win, given her opponent’s vulnerabilities.

Plainly put, Clinton herself has kept the issue alive over 25 years of public life, with long-winded, defensive, obfuscating answers to questions that—in politics, if not in law—cry out for a crisp yes-or-no reply.

Email-gate is only the latest step on this long, winding road. Consider just one brief, recent revelatory exchange with Charlie Rose, in which Rose noted (correctly) that FBI Director James Comey had called her “careless,” and Clinton replied with a flurry of nonresponsive words: “Well, I would hope that you like many others would also look at what he said when he testified before Congress, because when he did, he clarified much of what he had said in his press conference.”

“But he said it was sloppy,” Rose persisted.

“No,” Clinton insisted, “he did not.”

Yes, he did, too. Asked to explain what he had intended by the word "careless," Comey explained that it was a common-sense term, meant to convey “real sloppiness.” To pretend otherwise is to persist in the pattern that Clinton has followed from virtually the moment she became a national figure in her husband’s first presidential campaign. Over the past quarter-century she has all too often offered up pained and partial answers to controversies, too often seeming to hide more than she is willing to reveal, only to find that, again and again, the issue blows up in her face.

The pattern is unmistakable, from the Whitewater inquiry (when she resisted disclosing documents about a failed Arkansas land deal) to her 10,000 percent profits in commodity trades (which she explained by saying she’d read The Wall Street Journal) to the Rose Law Firm billing records (which infamously and mysteriously turned up in the White House residence after she’d said they were missing) to the Monica Lewinsky affair and the State Department emails themselves.

Twenty years after the New York Times columnist William Safire first called Clinton “a congenital liar” in print, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Preibus could still rouse his convention delegates in Cleveland with an unyielding refrain about the emails. “She lied,” Priebus cried. “And she lied over and over and over. She lied! She lied!”

Clinton’s penchant for dissembling in discussion of her personal and financial dealings is all the more puzzling because it stands in such sharp contrast to her willingness to articulate clear principles on the policy front, whether with her passionate speech on women’s rights at the Beijing Women’s Conference in 1995, her speech last year on Internet freedom, or, for that matter, her courageous, if politically unpopular, effort to pass health insurance reform two decades ago. (Her stances in this campaign on hot-button issues like trade have sometimes been more expedient.)

Moreover, dissembling is not always a bad trait in a president. Some of the greatest, most notably Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who enjoyed playing his aides off against each other by letting each think he’d sided with them on a given issue, have been masters of the art. Even Abraham Lincoln was not immune. “To develop public support or outflank opposition, he would sometimes conceal his hand or dissemble,” wrote the historian LaWanda Cox. “And he kept his options open.”

Still, Clinton has suffered for her willingness to be economical with the truth at times.

The latest New York Times/CBS News Poll found that nearly 7 in 10 voters don’t believe Clinton is honest and trustworthy (more than 6 in 10 feel the same way about Donald Trump). A like number say she did “something wrong” with her email. Her trust deficit—fewer than 3 in 10 voters say she is honest and trustworthy—may be her single greatest weakness heading into the fall campaign. And if she wins, it is a reality that would seem to presage a presidency of unusual secretiveness.

Clinton bears an even greater burden than her husband in this regard. Bill Clinton was routinely distrusted by a majority of voters during his time in office, but when he ran for reelection in 1996, polls nevertheless showed that as many as 65 percent of voters believed he cared about them—an advantage of some 20 points over his rival Bob Dole. As I once wrote in the New York Times, the president’s “job approval ratings seemed to rise with his legal bills.”

Hillary Clinton enjoys no such benefit of the doubt: This year’s polls have consistently shown majorities of voters saying she does not care about people like them (though Trump’s ratings on that question tend to be even worse).

To make matters worse, it’s not clear just what—if anything—Clinton can do about the problem, at least before November.

“I don’t think she can do much to change her trust numbers in the campaign,” says one veteran Democratic consultant who has known the Clintons since their earliest campaigns for the Arkansas governorship. “Her numbers may improve some, but only with voters who are going to vote for her, and quit responding negatively on the trust issue. Clinton voters may reconcile their support for her by moving to a positive on trust.”

“As president, HRC could change the trust numbers,” he adds, “but not in the campaign.”

To be fair, Clinton has been the subject of more than two decades of sustained—and often unhinged attacks—from quarters as high-minded as the Wall Street Journal and as vicious as the darkest corners of the Internet. Her introduction to the national media came in the unholy whirlwind of Whitewater, Gennifer Flowers and her husband’s draft record that marked the 1992 campaign, and her disdain for the press is palpable, persistent and hard-won.

But to say that she is often her own worst enemy is to understate the case.

In February, CBS News anchor Scott Pelley asked Clinton, “Have you always told the truth?”

“I’ve always tried to,” she replied. “Always. Always.”

When Pelley noted that Jimmy Carter had famously promised, “I’ll never lie to you,” Clinton plunged ahead.

“Well, but you know,” she said, “you’re asking me to say, ‘Have I ever?’ I don’t believe I ever have. I don’t believe I ever will. I’m going to do the best I can to level with the American people.”

All too often over the years, Clinton’s best has turned out not to be good enough.

It is one thing for Gov. Chris Christie to put Clinton on mock trial at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Or for delegates at Quicken Loans Arena to take up a chant of “Lock her up!” in reply. It is quite another for a former attorney general of the United States to say—as Michael Mukasey did at the GOP convention—that Clinton would become “the first president in history to take the constitutional oath of office after already having violated it,” by her handling of the email server and her shifting, inconsistent and ultimately inaccurate explanations of why she did so.

With all you say being true, the fact that there is, IMO, no viable alternative for this coming November only magnifies the nation's problem with the lack of a real choice. I feel better, every day, with my decision of not voting for Clinton or Trump. I can't see either swaying me into their column. I see it as six one way, half a dozen the other...both leading in a wrong direction. I cling to the hope that whoever wins, the nation somehow takes a positive turn. Only time will tell...and, I would love to be proven wrong .

With all you say being true, the fact that there is, IMO, no viable alternative for this coming November only magnifies the nation's problem with the lack of a real choice. I feel better, every day, with my decision of not voting for Clinton or Trump. I can't see either swaying me into their column. I see it as six one way, half a dozen the other...both leading in a wrong direction. I cling to the hope that whoever wins, the nation somehow takes a positive turn. Only time will tell...and, I would love to be proven wrong .

With all you say being true, the fact that there is, IMO, no viable alternative for this coming November only magnifies the nation's problem with the lack of a real choice. I feel better, every day, with my decision of not voting for Clinton or Trump. I can't see either swaying me into their column. I see it as six one way, half a dozen the other...both leading in a wrong direction. I cling to the hope that whoever wins, the nation somehow takes a positive turn. Only time will tell...and, I would love to be proven wrong .

What is it with Hillary Clinton? What is it about this brilliant and accomplished woman—described by Barack Obama as possibly “more qualified” to be president than anyone in history—that makes so many people certain she is an incurable liar? More than anything else about Clinton—her occasional tin ear for politics, her seeming inability to connect with large crowds, her ultracautiousness—it is the trust issue that could yet cost her a general election she should otherwise win, given her opponent’s vulnerabilities.

Plainly put, Clinton herself has kept the issue alive over 25 years of public life, with long-winded, defensive, obfuscating answers to questions that—in politics, if not in law—cry out for a crisp yes-or-no reply.

Email-gate is only the latest step on this long, winding road. Consider just one brief, recent revelatory exchange with Charlie Rose, in which Rose noted (correctly) that FBI Director James Comey had called her “careless,” and Clinton replied with a flurry of nonresponsive words: “Well, I would hope that you like many others would also look at what he said when he testified before Congress, because when he did, he clarified much of what he had said in his press conference.”

“But he said it was sloppy,” Rose persisted.

“No,” Clinton insisted, “he did not.”

Yes, he did, too. Asked to explain what he had intended by the word "careless," Comey explained that it was a common-sense term, meant to convey “real sloppiness.” To pretend otherwise is to persist in the pattern that Clinton has followed from virtually the moment she became a national figure in her husband’s first presidential campaign. Over the past quarter-century she has all too often offered up pained and partial answers to controversies, too often seeming to hide more than she is willing to reveal, only to find that, again and again, the issue blows up in her face.

The pattern is unmistakable, from the Whitewater inquiry (when she resisted disclosing documents about a failed Arkansas land deal) to her 10,000 percent profits in commodity trades (which she explained by saying she’d read The Wall Street Journal) to the Rose Law Firm billing records (which infamously and mysteriously turned up in the White House residence after she’d said they were missing) to the Monica Lewinsky affair and the State Department emails themselves.

Twenty years after the New York Times columnist William Safire first called Clinton “a congenital liar” in print, Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Preibus could still rouse his convention delegates in Cleveland with an unyielding refrain about the emails. “She lied,” Priebus cried. “And she lied over and over and over. She lied! She lied!”

Clinton’s penchant for dissembling in discussion of her personal and financial dealings is all the more puzzling because it stands in such sharp contrast to her willingness to articulate clear principles on the policy front, whether with her passionate speech on women’s rights at the Beijing Women’s Conference in 1995, her speech last year on Internet freedom, or, for that matter, her courageous, if politically unpopular, effort to pass health insurance reform two decades ago. (Her stances in this campaign on hot-button issues like trade have sometimes been more expedient.)

Moreover, dissembling is not always a bad trait in a president. Some of the greatest, most notably Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who enjoyed playing his aides off against each other by letting each think he’d sided with them on a given issue, have been masters of the art. Even Abraham Lincoln was not immune. “To develop public support or outflank opposition, he would sometimes conceal his hand or dissemble,” wrote the historian LaWanda Cox. “And he kept his options open.”

Still, Clinton has suffered for her willingness to be economical with the truth at times.

The latest New York Times/CBS News Poll found that nearly 7 in 10 voters don’t believe Clinton is honest and trustworthy (more than 6 in 10 feel the same way about Donald Trump). A like number say she did “something wrong” with her email. Her trust deficit—fewer than 3 in 10 voters say she is honest and trustworthy—may be her single greatest weakness heading into the fall campaign. And if she wins, it is a reality that would seem to presage a presidency of unusual secretiveness.

Clinton bears an even greater burden than her husband in this regard. Bill Clinton was routinely distrusted by a majority of voters during his time in office, but when he ran for reelection in 1996, polls nevertheless showed that as many as 65 percent of voters believed he cared about them—an advantage of some 20 points over his rival Bob Dole. As I once wrote in the New York Times, the president’s “job approval ratings seemed to rise with his legal bills.”

Hillary Clinton enjoys no such benefit of the doubt: This year’s polls have consistently shown majorities of voters saying she does not care about people like them (though Trump’s ratings on that question tend to be even worse).

To make matters worse, it’s not clear just what—if anything—Clinton can do about the problem, at least before November.

“I don’t think she can do much to change her trust numbers in the campaign,” says one veteran Democratic consultant who has known the Clintons since their earliest campaigns for the Arkansas governorship. “Her numbers may improve some, but only with voters who are going to vote for her, and quit responding negatively on the trust issue. Clinton voters may reconcile their support for her by moving to a positive on trust.”

“As president, HRC could change the trust numbers,” he adds, “but not in the campaign.”

To be fair, Clinton has been the subject of more than two decades of sustained—and often unhinged attacks—from quarters as high-minded as the Wall Street Journal and as vicious as the darkest corners of the Internet. Her introduction to the national media came in the unholy whirlwind of Whitewater, Gennifer Flowers and her husband’s draft record that marked the 1992 campaign, and her disdain for the press is palpable, persistent and hard-won.

But to say that she is often her own worst enemy is to understate the case.

In February, CBS News anchor Scott Pelley asked Clinton, “Have you always told the truth?”

“I’ve always tried to,” she replied. “Always. Always.”

When Pelley noted that Jimmy Carter had famously promised, “I’ll never lie to you,” Clinton plunged ahead.

“Well, but you know,” she said, “you’re asking me to say, ‘Have I ever?’ I don’t believe I ever have. I don’t believe I ever will. I’m going to do the best I can to level with the American people.”

All too often over the years, Clinton’s best has turned out not to be good enough.

It is one thing for Gov. Chris Christie to put Clinton on mock trial at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. Or for delegates at Quicken Loans Arena to take up a chant of “Lock her up!” in reply. It is quite another for a former attorney general of the United States to say—as Michael Mukasey did at the GOP convention—that Clinton would become “the first president in history to take the constitutional oath of office after already having violated it,” by her handling of the email server and her shifting, inconsistent and ultimately inaccurate explanations of why she did so.