Editorial | Clinton the cleanest choice

The 2016 presidential race has brought our nation the worst that politics has to offer.

It has placed wholly unlikeable candidates representing the two major parties before the American voter. One of those candidates may be the worst major-party nominee this nation has ever seen, and the other is so desirous of secrecy that she was willing to put the nation’s security at risk.

We wish that both Republicans and Democrats had nominated different candidates.

Unfortunately, they didn’t.

The parties chose whom they chose and you, the voter, now must make a choice.

To be sure, Republican Donald Trump is unfit for the presidency.

He confuses childish taunts with strength and authoritarian tendencies with leadership.

His treatment of women is abhorrent.

He has criticized war heroes and their families.

His divisive words about Mexicans and Muslims have only torn at the fabric of the nation at a time when it needs to be brought together.

And his proposals, ranging from tax policy to national security, at best don't add up and at worst, exhibit a failure to grasp the basics of running the most powerful nation in the world.

According to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation, Trump’s tax plan would cut taxes for individuals and corporations but would also decrease tax revenues by up to $5.9 trillion over the next decade. The plan would lead to 0.8 percent higher incomes for taxpayers, but those who make $450,000 or more would see their after-tax earnings rise between 10.2 percent and 16 percent.

The group says that Hillary Clinton’s tax plan would raise taxes on the wealthiest individuals by $1.4 trillion but would cause a 2.6 percent decline in the nation’s gross domestic product, lower wages and produce fewer full-time jobs. That plan would mean $633 billion in new tax revenue over a decade. After-tax earnings of the top 10 percent would rise by 6.6 percent while all taxpayers would see wages rise by 0.1 percent.

Trump doesn’t understand the need for NATO and the role our allies have played in protecting the United States’ interests. He has advocated for allowing countries like Japan and South Korea and Saudi Arabia to obtain nuclear weapons.

As a businessman, Trump lauds his achievements – but his companies have filed bankruptcy six times.

He has promised to require his generals to present a plan to defeat ISIS within 30 days of taking office at which time he would “knock the hell” out of the terrorist group. If it were that easy, we suspect our brave servicemen and women would be executing it now.

Trump has called for rewriting trade deals, specifically the North American Free Trade Agreement, which former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, supported. Trump has called it a “disaster.” In fact, a 2014 report by the Wharton School of Business, Trump’s alma mater, quoted experts saying that while jobs in some sectors of the economy left the country, the deal has actually helped the country and those benefits will increase.

Trump has campaigned on fear, not hope. We can’t back his candidacy.

No major newspaper has endorsed him. That includes numerous editorial boards that have gone more than 100 years without backing a Democrat for president, including the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News and San Diego Union-Tribune.

Despite her flaws, Clinton has her experience as a U.S. senator and secretary of state to draw upon and has displayed a cooler temperament needed in the pressure zone of the Oval Office.

That said, we are troubled by her quest for secrecy, which led her to use an unauthorized email server for State Department business. FBI Director James Comey said this was “extremely careless,” but it did not warrant criminal charges against her.

The FBI can’t say for certain whether that server was hacked, exposing the nation’s classified information to enemies.

Ms. Clinton’s statements on the matter sway back and forth between careful parsing of words and flat-out lies. But she has acknowledged her mistake and we hope she has learned from it.

The Clinton Foundation, her family’s charity, does good work around the world in providing AIDS medication for people in Third World countries and helping people hit by natural disasters, but we’re uncomfortable with the fact that the foundation accepted millions of dollars from foreign governments while she was secretary of state.

Of biggest concern is evidence that donors gained access to Clinton at the State Department.

Her opponents have continually labeled Clinton as a liar who can’t be trusted. Independent fact checkers, however, have found that Trump is more likely to tell untruths on the campaign trail.

But Clinton’s words to a Wall Street group that politicians sometimes need to have public and private positions simply underscore what her foes have said about her. Her rambling explanation in a recent debate was not believable and made it even worse.

Clinton has called for refinements to the Affordable Care Act, but she hasn’t detailed what those changes would be.

She regrettably said that she would put coal miners out of business, but she has proposed a $30 billion plan to pay benefits to miners and diversify coal country economies.

We wish we had an adequate alternative. As an editorial board, we struggled to endorse anyone.

But in assessing both candidates, we determined Clinton would be the cleanest choice in a messy election year.