Why Doesn't Hillary Have a Dedicated Staffer for Tipping?

That's the question I asked myself when I heard a report this morning on NPR that described a waitress in Iowa who recently served Hillary Clinton for lunch and mentioned that she didn't get a tip. The story reported that the meal was "on the house," so I suppose there could be an argument that if one tips on the bill, 20 percent of 0 is 0. Still, even if the restaurant comped the meal, the wait staff didn't necessarily comp their service, so they still deserved to be compensated.

I was reminded of a similar story from Hillary's first senatorial campaign. She had a free breakfast in a restaurant in upstate New York and consequently left no tip. That caused a minor storm of controversy on Drudge and elsewhere, so I figured that it's a bad sign Hillary didn't learn her lesson. Just have a staffer who always carries cash to leave behind whenever the campaign stops to eat somewhere, no matter what the circumstances of the meal might be. If a server serves, leave money.

Unfortunately, it turns out that the whole situation in Iowa may not be so clear cut. I wasn't the only person to notice that line in the story, and it hit the blogs early in the morning. The Hillary campaign jumped on it, insisting that they did indeed leave a tip. What's more, according to a follow-up NPR story on the controversy their first report had triggered, the campaign also produced a $157.46 charge receipt for the meal NPR had earlier identified as free of charge. The campaign claimed to have left $100 in cash for a tip, which, of course, is impossible to trace. Further muddying up the waters is the role of the restaurant's manager, who AP reports confirms as taking some responsibility if the tips were not distributed properly, but who NPR reports as not being present that day. Even if the manager wasn't there, however, NPR tells us that he confirms a $100 tip was shared among some employees but that no money was left where Hillary and her immediate party sat.

So was there a tip? I tend to believe that there was. Surely Hillary would learn something after being pilloried for making exactly the same misstep in New York seven years ago. And the no tip claim comes from NPR, which has not to my knowledge clarified why the Clinton campaign paid $157.44 for a meal it claims was on the house. Still, if the campaign still has no dedicated staffer whose only responsibility is to make sure appropriate cash is left whenever Hillary and her entourage stop for a meal, they should definitely hire one.