Whatever might be said of the two mainstream candidates vying for the US presidency, both are lightning rods for trouble and strife. Hillary Clinton has largely avoided the controversies that have befallen Donald Trump in this extraordinary campaign, but she was catapulted into the hot seat last Friday when FBI director James Comey announced the bureau was reopening its investigation into her handling of classified material.
Only four months ago, Mr Comey declared the bureau was satisfied Mrs Clinton had not intentionally mishandled classified information while secretary of state, and charges would not be filed against her. The FBI's renewed interest in the emails so close to election day has been condemned by Mrs Clinton and her supporters as an unprecedented "violation" of the US Justice Department's policy of not publicising sensitive information regarding investigations pending within 60 days of an election – the FBI being a branch of the department.
Mr Comey, a Republican Party member until he took up his FBI post, has been criticised by a former US attorney-general, Eric Holder, for "a serious error with potentially severe implications" and for negatively affecting public trust. That assessment would, on the face of it, seem accurate.
Mrs Clinton's once comfortable lead over Mr Trump in the opinion polls has evaporated, so much so that Mr Trump's campaign team is reportedly hopeful of being able to win Pennsylvania, a state which has voted Democrat in every presidential election since 1988. And many people are bemoaning, not without justification, that this episode will further entrench the vicious partisanship that has marked what now passes for government in Washington.
The charge that Mr Comey acted irresponsibly seems borne out by the fact that his letter to Congress last Friday contained little detail. Why raise it at all, particularly after July's exoneration? In fact, Mr Comey's letter referred to emails discovered on a computer that came to the FBI's attention only after it concluded the investigation into Mrs Clinton's use of a private email server had been completed. That laptop belonged to the estranged husband of one of Mrs Clinton's top advisers, Huma Abedin. It was never passed to the FBI, despite Ms Abedin having sworn under oath that all the devices in her possession containing Clinton emails had been handed over.
Mr Comey could conceivably have kept quiet about the new cache of emails until after November 8, though doing so would have left him exposed to future accusations that he'd influenced the election outcome by withholding knowledge of them. It may be that the laptop contains nothing the FBI hasn't seen already, but its discovery meant the Clinton investigation was incomplete, and Mr Comey had little choice but to reopen it.
The timing is disastrous for Mrs Clinton, but had she not made a high-handed decision while secretary of state to use a private server (defying departmental advice) she would not be in the precarious position she now finds herself.