Hillary's emails

The media seem more excited about Hillary Clinton's emails than about the borderline treasonous letter that freshman Sen. Tom Cotton got 46 other senators to sign onto.

So, let me have my say about the emails.    Yes, Hillary created a perception of hiding something by using only a personal Blackberry email account for both her personal and her government work while she was Secretary of State.  But I understand why she would want to keep control of them, given that people will comb through them with a microscope looking for anything to blow up into a scandal.   

The hue and cry is about whether she can be trusted to have turned over all relevant government-related emails in those 55,000 pages she has revealed.    She and her staff had the opportunity to delete any that they didn't want to come to light.   And she can't prove that they didn't do that.     She can't prove her innocence to those who want to find her guilty.

But, before we jump to the conclusion that this is so different, stop a minute to think about the set-up for officials who do use a separate government email account, which is automatically preserved, and a personal email account, which can remain private.

Let's say current Secretary of State John Kerry does use the requisite two accounts.   At any moment that he decides to send an email, he has to decide which account to use.   If he wants to keep it private, even if it is government-related, all he has to do is send it on his personal account.    It still comes down to having to trust the official.

How is that really different from Hillary in retrospect deciding which emails on her one account need to be submitted to the State Department for reviewed and archived?

I guess the difference is that it allows hindsight to determine the choice, whereas if the choice is made up front, there is a greater possibility of some slip-up revealing something for the scandal-mongers.

Ralph

PS:   My main concern in all of this is how Hillary's news conference response sounds like the 2008 campaigner.   I'm told that she is very warm and relaxed in person but that, when the microphones appear, she tightens up, gets formal, looks out above the crowd, and speaks in tones too measured, too legalistic, lacking the warmth she is capable of.   And she gets defensive when attacked.   Not a good sign.    She needs some of what Elizabeth Warren has.  Or, dare I say it?   Bill Clinton.