For the first time since pre­par­ing her pres­id­en­tial cam­paign, Hil­lary Clin­ton finds her­self un­der siege. In the last week, she’s been tak­ing heat for con­ceal­ing per­son­al cor­res­pond­ence by us­ing a private e-mail when serving as sec­ret­ary of State, and over for­eign dona­tions that the Clin­ton Found­a­tion re­ceived at the same time she was the na­tion’s top dip­lo­mat.

The twin con­tro­ver­sies are prompt­ing cer­tain Clin­ton al­lies to lament that if she had only an­nounced her pres­id­en­tial cam­paign earli­er, her op­er­a­tion would be able to do a bet­ter job at dam­age con­trol. “We’ve had our head up our ass,” one an­onym­ous Clin­ton ad­viser told Politico.

But in real­ity, her de­cision to wait un­til April to launch a cam­paign has been an over­all boon to her pro­spects — al­low­ing her to avoid weigh­ing in on nu­mer­ous con­tro­ver­sial is­sues that are di­vid­ing her party. In­deed, Clin­ton’s stalling tac­tics are a sign that she un­der­stands the polit­ic­al en­vir­on­ment bet­ter than the crit­ics real­ize.

If any­thing, the latest rev­el­a­tion that Clin­ton hid many of her of­fi­cial emails as sec­ret­ary of State un­der­scores how im­port­ant avoid­ing scru­tiny is to her emer­ging cam­paign. Far from be­ing un­able to re­spond to the cri­ti­cism, as a non­can­did­ate she boasts an en­tire or­gan­iz­a­tion — Cor­rect the Re­cord, an arm of the Demo­crat­ic op­pos­i­tion re­search firm Amer­ic­an Bridge — that’s de­voted to push­ing back against her un­fa­vor­able cov­er­age. This week, she’s par­ti­cip­at­ing in care­fully staged events, de­liv­er­ing the key­note ad­dress at EMILY’s List on Tues­day and at­tend­ing the Clin­ton Found­a­tion gala on Wed­nes­day. If she was a can­did­ate, she’d be con­stantly grilled on the cam­paign trail over her con­duct. She’s hop­ing that, when she an­nounces in the spring, the fur­or over these con­tro­ver­sies will have died down.

(RE­LATED: Maybe Hil­lary Clin­ton Should Re­tire Her White House Dreams)

By con­trast, pro­spect­ive Re­pub­lic­an pres­id­en­tial can­did­ates have been grilled over Obama’s Chris­tian­ity, sup­port over a DHS fund­ing deal, or in­con­sist­en­cies over Com­mon Core, even as Clin­ton has faced min­im­al scru­tiny of her policy po­s­i­tions dur­ing the same peri­od. She has been giv­ing in­ter­na­tion­al paid speeches where she has avoided re­act­ing to the lead­ing is­sues of the day. Even on the one re­cent oc­ca­sion Clin­ton agreed to an in­ter­view with a journ­al­ist, the ques­tions were not­ably soft. Her sit-down with Re/Code‘s Kara Swish­er promp­ted the ex­ec­ut­ive ed­it­or to gush on­stage: “I in­ter­viewed Pres­id­ent Obama last week, and I’m eager to in­ter­view an­oth­er pres­id­ent.” (Swish­er also took a selfie with the former sec­ret­ary of State, which she pos­ted to her Twit­ter ac­count.)

Mean­while, Clin­ton has been able to dodge ques­tions over her po­s­i­tions on is­sues at a time when there are grow­ing di­vides with­in her party. She headed the State De­part­ment dur­ing its Key­stone XL re­view, but has di­li­gently avoided com­ment­ing on the mer­its of the pipeline’s con­struc­tion. She hasn’t been pressed to take sides on lib­er­al icon Eliza­beth War­ren’s pet ini­ti­at­ives — high­er taxes on the wealthy, tight­er bank­ing reg­u­la­tions on Wall Street, and op­pos­i­tion to glob­al trade deals.

Most sig­ni­fic­antly, she’s been mer­cur­i­al about her po­s­i­tion on an emer­ging nuc­le­ar deal with Ir­an that many of her party’s rank-and-file mem­bers are strug­gling to sup­port. She hasn’t yet re­spon­ded to Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Net­an­yahu’s speech be­fore Con­gress, which warned of the dangers of the pres­id­ent’s dip­lomacy. She’ll even­tu­ally have to take sides, but she has the lux­ury of time in de­vis­ing her po­s­i­tion.

“Most likely, she’ll be muted. She’ll wait and see what hap­pens with the ne­go­ti­ations. I don’t think you’ll hear her say something sub­stant­ive for now, one way or an­oth­er,” said one pro-Is­rael of­fi­cial with ties to Clin­ton.

For a sign of how dif­fi­cult the is­sue is for Clin­ton, just look at the con­tra­dict­ory re­sponses she gave when asked about the Amer­ic­an re­sponse to Ir­an’s nuc­le­ar pro­gram. In an Au­gust 2014 in­ter­view with The At­lantic‘s Jef­frey Gold­berg, Clin­ton said, “I’ve al­ways been in the camp that held that they did not have a right to en­rich­ment.” But, as Gold­berg wrote this week, the re­por­ted pro­pos­al be­ing dis­cussed is one that would “le­git­im­ate Ir­an’s right to en­rich urani­um” as a prin­ciple. After Obama pitched the be­ne­fits of his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s Ir­a­ni­an dip­lomacy in his State of the Uni­on, Clin­ton an­nounced her sup­port to the pres­id­ent’s ap­proach in Canada: “Why do we want to be the cata­lyst for the col­lapse of ne­go­ti­ations?” One month earli­er, she told one of her top donors, Haim Saban, at the Brook­ings In­sti­tu­tion that “no deal is bet­ter than a bad deal.” What gives?

To be clear, con­trary to many of Clin­ton’s GOP crit­ics, the lack of scru­tiny isn’t from lack of try­ing by the polit­ic­al press. The New York Times scooped amaz­ing de­tails about her lack of trans­par­ency at the State De­part­ment. The Wash­ing­ton Post broke the bomb­shell that the Clin­ton Found­a­tion re­ceived mil­lions of dol­lars from for­eign gov­ern­ments dur­ing her ten­ure. My col­league Ron Fourni­er wrote a power­ful column ques­tion­ing her fit­ness for the pres­id­ency on Tues­day. If the tough, skep­tic­al cov­er­age she re­ceived as a can­did­ate in 2008 is any in­dic­a­tion, Clin­ton will be sure to face the same chal­lenges in this elec­tion. And that’s why her de­cision to delay an of­fi­cial can­did­acy has been so polit­ic­ally help­ful; she hasn’t been forced to an­swer these con­tro­ver­sial ques­tions on the re­cord or on cam­era.

On Ir­an, she’s hin­ted at so many dif­fer­ent po­s­i­tions, it makes your head spin faster than a cent­ri­fuge, but she’s es­caped the polit­ic­al blow­back — at least for now. Her de­cision not to com­ment on the Key­stone XL pipeline — in Canada, no less! — didn’t draw the wall-to-wall cov­er­age that Scott Walk­er’s sim­il­ar dodge on evol­u­tion drew. Re­port­ers aren’t able to press her for spe­cif­ics, giv­en that she’s not an of­fi­cial can­did­ate. That could cost her in the long term, but it’s pro­tect­ing her from un­fa­vor­able cov­er­age now.

The polling backs her strategy up. Janu­ary’s NBC/Wall Street Journ­al poll showed her with the strongest fa­vor­ab­il­ity of all the politi­cians tested: 45 per­cent of re­spond­ents viewed her fa­vor­ably, with 37 per­cent view­ing her un­fa­vor­ably. That was not­ably bet­ter than Pres­id­ent Obama’s own net -2 job ap­prov­al rat­ing. In the key swing states of Iowa and New Hamp­shire, NBC/Mar­ist‘s sur­veys found Clin­ton lead­ing Jeb Bush and Walk­er, win­ning at least 48 per­cent of the vote in all the match­ups.

“There’s no ques­tion she’s bet­ter off not be­ing a can­did­ate now. To me, that goes without say­ing,” said Demo­crat­ic poll­ster Mark Mell­man. “As soon as she’s a can­did­ate, she’ll find people who used to like her who don’t.”