March 10--There were a couple of important things that Americans learned about Bill and Hillary Clinton during their White House years: First, they are unusually smart and driven people with a rare knack for overcoming adversity. Second, a lot of their adversity is self-inflicted, the result of thinking they are clever enough to get away with things that other politicians are too prudent to risk.
Hillary Clinton, who might have hoped for an uneventful parade to the Oval Office, has now hit a roadblock she built with her own hands. In one stroke, she has managed to revive the worst memories of the Clinton White House, given Republicans a club with which to pound her, and raised questions about her judgment and trustworthiness.
It turns out that during her four years as secretary of state, she conducted her email correspondence not on a government account, as is customary among high-level officials, but on a private one. Although use of a government account was not legally mandatory, the White House says that every agency was told that "employees of the Obama administration should use their official email accounts when conducting official government business."
In addition, instructions to all State Department personnel to "avoid conducting official Department business from your personal e-mail" were sent out -- from Clinton herself.
The regulations mandate that such emails be preserved as official records, regardless of the account. She did turn over 55,000 emails to the department. But it's not clear if that trove represents all the emails that involved government business.
One thing that is clear is that by setting a private server in her Chappaqua, N.Y., home, she retained the option of being able to permanently eliminate correspondence at her whim. Another, experts attest, is that her account was less secure from hackers -- some of whom work for hostile foreign governments that would be keenly interested in the confidential deliberations of the United States' top diplomat.
So her practice may have deprived the public of useful information -- while possibly exposing that information to our enemies.
Clinton indicated all her messages will be reviewed "for release as soon as possible." But Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., who is in charge of an investigation of the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, says "there are gaps of months and months and months" in the emails his committee has received, including that day.
Nongovernmental groups say they also have been unable to get relevant records that they have sought with Freedom of Information Act requests. As Gowdy says, "It's not up to Secretary Clinton to decide what's public record and what's not."
Her successor at State, John Kerry, uses a government email account. So does President Barack Obama. If it's good enough for them, it should have been good enough for her.
But as the public and Congress await for a full accounting of what she did and why, Clinton has refused to answer questions about the matter. By disregarding the rules, Clinton has put secrecy ahead of transparency and accountability. By stonewalling after the discovery, she has heightened interest in what she sought to keep out of the government chain of information.
Even some Democrats say she has to deal with this, and soon. If there is bad news in or about the emails, better get it out now. With each day, suspicions grow.
That's one thing about self-inflicted damage: It usually has to be self-repaired.
