On March 10th, after eight days of anticipation, media and political uproar, the world fell privy to Hillary Clinton “breaking her silence” (aside from the stray tweet beforehand) regarding her decision to conduct government business from her personal clintonmail.com email address while Secretary of State – for ‘convenience’ purposes.
There are basically two opinion camps that have formed around email-gate. They break down, as these things too often do, across partisan lines. The GOP camp professes, absent any self-reflection of say, the 22 million lost-then-found emails deleted from a non-government domain during the George W. Bush administration, that this is another example of the Clintonian belief that laws and words are mere obstacles subject to manipulation.
The second, largely progressive Democrat camp believes that Hillary Clinton is being harpooned unfairly over this oh-so-minor issue in the scheme of matters of much greater gravitas. Hey, what is ‘is’ anyway? And what’s wrong with convenience – after all, two phones are so heavy and cumbersome?
But the historical record has an opinion, too. The capture of history is predicated on the preservation of information, preferably as much information as possible. Regarding American Presidential records, sometimes that information remains classified for “national security” or other reasons, or only released after decades of dormancy once said threat is deemed gone.