Stop Digging the Hole, Secretary Clinton
Your email problem has mushroomed from a self-inflicted nuisance to a self-inflicted wound. The reason is simple: At every decision point, you and your staff have made the wrong choice about how to proceed, erring on the side of secrecy and self-righteousness.
The damage can't be entirely undone. But some of it can be mitigated by doing what doesn't come naturally to you: admitting some error and accepting that not all the criticism has been fueled by partisan attackers in league with media enablers.
The original mistake -- deciding to conduct official government business through a private email account for the sake, you say, of convenience -- can't be undone. But you ought to stop -- now! -- with the unconvincing claim that you did nothing different from your predecessors as secretary of state.
The relevant universe of predecessors during the era of email is precisely two. Condoleezza Rice rarely used email but employed a government account when she did.
The more reasonable question is: What did other Cabinet secretaries inthisadministration do? No others, to my knowledge, relied solely or even primarily on a private address.
By the way, even if relying solely on private email was not against explicit rules at the time, you still were supposed to make your correspondence available promptly for archiving and FOIA requests -- not when you turned them over, in response to an inquiry from the State Department, two years after departing.
Two subsequent mistakes -- first, deciding to delete the emails you deemed personal; second, declining, until the Justice Department asked, to make your personal server available for review -- are similarly unfixable at this point.
Yes, you would have been permitted to erase the personal messages on a government account, but you didn't use a government account. And wiping the server -- you did work on Watergate for the House Judiciary Committee, didn't you? Why not hot-potato the server over to State and let them figure out how to handle it --before the Justice Department got involved and you looked like you had something to hide.
So, my advice: Stop making light. Stop litigating. Stop the high-handed dismissing. Stop the prickliness with the media; we're not going away. Stop the non-apology apologies (you didn't do anything wrong but you wouldn't do it over again).
This problem isn't going away. The trick, right now, is simply not making it worse.
Stop Digging the Hole, Secretary Clinton
Another Article by Ruth Marcus:
Biden Can't Defeat Clinton--She Can Do That Herself
Biden Can't Defeat Clinton--She Can Do That Herself
This is a columnist from the left. She is in Clinton's corner and she knows that secrecy that Clinton aspires to is so damaging, it could cost her the race, So liberal posters, don't make light of her actions. She's in trouble as she should be for disastrous decisions. Now tell me. Is that the kind of President we want? We did once. And he resigned.
Your email problem has mushroomed from a self-inflicted nuisance to a self-inflicted wound. The reason is simple: At every decision point, you and your staff have made the wrong choice about how to proceed, erring on the side of secrecy and self-righteousness.
The damage can't be entirely undone. But some of it can be mitigated by doing what doesn't come naturally to you: admitting some error and accepting that not all the criticism has been fueled by partisan attackers in league with media enablers.
The original mistake -- deciding to conduct official government business through a private email account for the sake, you say, of convenience -- can't be undone. But you ought to stop -- now! -- with the unconvincing claim that you did nothing different from your predecessors as secretary of state.
The relevant universe of predecessors during the era of email is precisely two. Condoleezza Rice rarely used email but employed a government account when she did.
The more reasonable question is: What did other Cabinet secretaries inthisadministration do? No others, to my knowledge, relied solely or even primarily on a private address.
By the way, even if relying solely on private email was not against explicit rules at the time, you still were supposed to make your correspondence available promptly for archiving and FOIA requests -- not when you turned them over, in response to an inquiry from the State Department, two years after departing.
Two subsequent mistakes -- first, deciding to delete the emails you deemed personal; second, declining, until the Justice Department asked, to make your personal server available for review -- are similarly unfixable at this point.
Yes, you would have been permitted to erase the personal messages on a government account, but you didn't use a government account. And wiping the server -- you did work on Watergate for the House Judiciary Committee, didn't you? Why not hot-potato the server over to State and let them figure out how to handle it --before the Justice Department got involved and you looked like you had something to hide.
So, my advice: Stop making light. Stop litigating. Stop the high-handed dismissing. Stop the prickliness with the media; we're not going away. Stop the non-apology apologies (you didn't do anything wrong but you wouldn't do it over again).
This problem isn't going away. The trick, right now, is simply not making it worse.
Stop Digging the Hole, Secretary Clinton
Another Article by Ruth Marcus:
Biden Can't Defeat Clinton--She Can Do That Herself
Biden Can't Defeat Clinton--She Can Do That Herself
This is a columnist from the left. She is in Clinton's corner and she knows that secrecy that Clinton aspires to is so damaging, it could cost her the race, So liberal posters, don't make light of her actions. She's in trouble as she should be for disastrous decisions. Now tell me. Is that the kind of President we want? We did once. And he resigned.
