The Clinton email
controversy isn’t about what you think it is about or what the media says it is
about. I’ll give you the real story
later in this post.
Let me begin with a good
article by Jason
Linkins at the Huffington Post which begins to shed some light on what’s
going on and why it is something Clinton can’t easily solve. Linkins makes a good point that the whole
Hilary Clinton email flap is probably unsolvable. Essentially, says Linkins, there is nothing
she can do to satisfy everyone, particularly not the Republicans or the
media. Had she handled her email
differently, says Linkins, things might have been—well—different .
Obviously, the simplest thing for Clinton to have done would have been
to open and maintain some sort of "state. gov " email account and
conduct State Department business in that domain. Had she done so, there
wouldn't be an issue. In fact, had she done so and simultaneously had a
personal email account on the side, this still wouldn't be an issue, because
most people would find the notion that Hillary Clinton is not allowed to have a
private email account to be insane. But by commingling the two -- government
and personal -- Clinton opened the door to this criticism, because we can't be
sure by what rules Clinton follows to guide her decisions to archive or delete
emails. Does she follow State Department guidelines, or her own whims?
Sounds good at first read. If Clinton had just used a government email
account for work and a personal email account for personal stuff, then there
wouldn’t be any email controversy. But,
is that true?
First, the email
controversy revolves, so we are told, around questioning Clinton’s control over
which of her emails were work-related and which were not. Clinton has said that her attorneys followed
a systematic three-step process in determining which emails were work-related
and should be turned over to the State Department—(1) they searched for emails
sent to a “. gov ” address, (2) they searched for emails containing the first and
last names of 100 State Department and/or U.S. officials , and (3) they did a
key word search for emails mentioning words like “Benghazi”, “Libya” and so on. See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/10/hillary-clinton-private-email_n_6843562.html
Clinton critics say they aren’t
satisfied. They question not only the
search criteria but whether it was followed.
For them, Clinton just had too much control of deciding which emails
were work-related and which weren’t. It’s
a bogus criticism intended to camouflage what the story is REALLY all about.
Here is why the Clinton
control controversy is bogus. Clinton would have had just as much control if she
had used two email accounts, one government and one personal. Why?
Because SHE would have been the one who decided which account to use when
sending an email, regardless of the actual content of the email. If she didn’t want some work-related email to
be archived, all she had to do is just call it “personal” and send it using her
personal account. That’s not much
different than making the work/personal call after the fact. As Clinton noted, government officials who
have both government and personal email accounts, and most do, make these calls
every day.
Of course, it would have
been different if Clinton had used a government email account exclusively for
both work-related and personal email. Of
course, then she would have been criticized I imagine for conducting personal
business using government servers.
What is the Clinton Email Story really all about?
So, if the whole flap
about the use of government accounts vs personal email accounts is bogus, what
is this email controversy really all about?
Linkins thinks it is just politics and sleaze-hunting. I agree.
Linkins writes:
I promise you, nobody in the wide world is interested in reading emails
pertaining to Clinton's rote, day-to-day State Department work, and the number
of political reporters in Washington who are genuinely concerned with State
Department transparency is too small to be of statistical significance.
What people want to find is evidence of some buzzy internecine feud or
conflict with the White House, some career-crippling statement of policy or
opinion, some private message in which Clinton says something intemperate about
a political opponent, or some tawdry act of State Department-Clinton Global
Initiative synergy…
Failing that, evidence of some embarrassing family problem, health
issue, or lifestyle choice would be what the press would seek to uncover in a Clinton
email cache.
Bottom Line There are only
two kinds of people who give a damn about this entire Clinton email flap. First, Republicans and other assorted
Clinton-haters are looking for some dirt they might be able to use to prevent
her from getting the Democratic Party nomination. They are terrified that she just might win
and four or eight years of another Clinton in the White House is something they
could not endure. Second, the media and
pundits are just interested in getting hold of some Clinton miscue that they
can turn into a real sleazy soap opera to attract readers and viewers during
the slow spring and summer season. They
just need a good story.
Prediction. This email story will have no impact on the
2016 election or Clinton’s possible candidacy.
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