Eugene Robinson on Hillary emails

[MBS]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/apologizing-for-the-e-mail-mess/2015/08/17/d8853068-4514-11e5-8e7d-9c033e6745d8_story.html?hpid=z5

Hillary Clinton is her own worst enemy
This isn’t about whether Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, which is likely. It isn’t even about whether she becomes our next president, which she has a better chance of doing than anyone else. It’s about basic respect — for us and for the truth.Why, when she took office as secretary of state, did she decide to route official e-mails through a server in her suburban New York mansion? There is just one plausible explanation: She wanted control.

Clinton was no stranger to the rules of the federal government. She had to know that if she used a State Department account, her 60,000-plus e-mails would become part of the official record. She certainly knew, without any doubt, that her political opponents would delight in rummaging through her communications. Let’s be honest: Hillary and Bill Clinton do have enemies, lots of them, who show no compunction about launching unfair and vicious attacks. She must have wanted to make sure they never got the chance.

But all of that is beside the point. If you accept the job of secretary of state, you inevitably surrender some of your privacy. Any public official’s work-related e-mails are the modern equivalent of the letters, memos and diaries that fill the National Archives. They tell our nation’s history and belong to all of us. Even if your name is Clinton, you have no right to unilaterally decide what is included and what is not.

. . .

If Clinton now has political problems because of the e-mails — or, potentially, even legal trouble — it’s her own doing. . . . If Clinton makes it to the general election . . she has needlessly handed her Republican opponent a weapon. Her trustworthiness, as measured by polls, was always a relative weakness. Even if Democrats accept that the e-mail flap is a partisan witch hunt, the GOP nominee will try to persuade independents otherwise. . .

[AtomicKitten]

1. The shitstorm manifesting as drip-drip-drip

... is self-imposed and illustrates yet again poor judgment on her part. Both she and her husband are reckless in their behavior and invite controversy. It's the Bill and Hillary Clinton Show and it never, ever ends.

[840high]

2. I am so tired of her and her baggage.

[AtomicKitten]

3. It's exhausting, really.

[AtomicKitten]

7. or Chris Christie

Bombastic assclowns one and all.

[jeff47]

8. You'd think after having this volume of scandals and "scandals"

that the Clintons would have learned by now how to handle them.

Instead, they keep setting up drip-drip-drip that keeps reminding people of the scandal/"scandal" over and over and over and over and over.

Media: "OMG! She had her own server!"
Clinton: "OK, I turned the server over to the State department. They can dig through it all they want."

Instead we got "It was just personal"..."OK, it had some work emails"..."OK, I'll turn over the work emails - on paper"...."No, nothing is classified"....."My lawyer has a copy, but it's OK because he has a clearance and safe"....."...that aren't good enough for TS/SCI"..."There's only 4"...."OK, now there's hundreds"

[DURHAM D]

4. Eugene is usually on point.

This time he is off by a mile as he seems to think she should have stayed home and made cookies.

[doxyluv13]

11. Uh, no, nothing about cookies at all!

Makes the important point that all this trouble comes from HC "cleverly" trying to keep her State Department e-mails from Freedom of Information Act requests.
And that's wrong, in itself.

[MBS]

16. No, she should have used the government email account

for all of her official State Department business, as formal, explicit Obama White House policy for executive branch employees, Political Strategy 101, and just plain common sense dictated.

[jalan48]

5. I really don't understand why Hillary wants to be President.

If she wins, and I agree with the writer that she has the best chance, she will face 4 or 8 years of these kinds of attacks.

[Skittles]

9. she has faced these kind of attacks for a long, long time

[JDPriestly]

14. And do you think that is a good thing???

I don't. I think that the attacks have been very successful in alienating a lot of people from her, fair or not.

I also think that the e-mails reveal facts about what she did as Secretary of State that will harm her candidacy.

That is especially true on environmental issues.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017286974

That is, I believe, a link to a RealNews interview on Hillary Clinton's e-mails that deal with issues related to the privatization of the Mexican oil company PEMEX.

The second part of the interview will not please environmentalists at all.

[Skittles]

15. who the fuck said it was a good thing?

[PDittie]

19. Not you, apparently.

[jalan48]

24. But what is driving her to be President?

[SunSeeker]

10. No, Eugene, she is not her own worst enemy.

Did you say the same about Colin Powell and Condi Rice, who did the same thing? Instead of buying into GOP talking points, how about you point out GOP hypocrisy? The GOP is always going to carp about Dems. Always. The stronger the Dem, the stronger the carping.

[BlueMTexpat]

21. Exactly ... it sounds as if

Eugene has been at the Kool-Aid.

Hope that he recovers soon. He's usually much better than this.

[SunSeeker]

22. Yup. He offers no evidence for his position either. The article is hardly a "Good Read."

It's more an unsubstantiated hit piece, rather short and bereft of facts. Way below Eugene's normal standards. Maybe his talking head work is drying up at MSNBC and he's looking for a gig at Fox.

[frylock]

23. Have Powell or Rice announced their intent to run for President?

And is it now acceptable to you that both Powell and Rice used private email to conduct business, although neither of them used personal email EXCLUSIVELY like Clinton had?

[BeyondGeography]

26. It's not the same thing

In your article "Hillary Clinton is her own worst enemy" you state "None of her predecessors, after all, went to the trouble and expense of a private email server". . . . both Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell have admittedly both used private emails during their tenure as Secretary of State, and this seems to be okay by the Republicans. . .
A: Eugene Robinson
Private e-mail accounts, not private servers which they then wiped clean. There's a big difference. Also, if you became SecState in 2009, you were already well into the Age of E-mail and knew that was how you would do much if not most of your work. Private e-mail accounts, not private servers which they then wiped clean. There's a big difference. Also, if you became SecState in 2009, you were already well into the Age of E-mail and knew that was how you would do much if not most of your work.

[Blue_In_AK]

12. Exactly.

Even if she did nothing wrong, the optics are really bad.

(Disclaimer) That said, I (as a staunch Bernie supporter) will most definitely vote for her in 2016, even if I don't 100 % trust her. Just putting that out there for those who think all of us Bernie supporters will vote for Trump or something, write in Ralph Nader, whatever. LOL.

[JDPriestly]

13. K&R.

[Wilms]

17. .

[mmonk]

18. We all knew this would be an issue.

Bad enough to derail her campaign? Doubtful. This is due to other past administration problems in this regard. But it has potential in a year when voters are angry.

[WillyT]

20. K & R !!!

[MBS]

25. online chat with Eugene Robinson about his column

Last edited Wed Aug 19, 2015, 06:32 AM - Edit history (2)

http://live.washingtonpost.com/opinion-focus-with-eugene-robinson-20150818.html

Hourlong chat-1-2 pm ET August 18

Here are a few excerpts . . .much more at the link

Q: Great column today
Thank you for saying what I have been trying to say for weeks. I trust Hillary's governing intentions, passions, or beliefs, but . .She and Bill seem to have learned nothing, or the wrong lessons, from Bill's investigations. Do you agree?
A: Eugene Robinson
The thing is, I understand the Clintons' paranoia. As the old saying goes, even paranoids have enemies. But unilaterally deciding to run all her State Department e-mail from a private server was a terrible idea and this whole thing springs from that one bad decision.
. . .
Q: Clinton emails
In your article "Hillary Clinton is her own worst enemy" you state "None of her predecessors, after all, went to the trouble and expense of a private email server". . . . both Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell have admittedly both used private emails during their tenure as Secretary of State, and this seems to be okay by the Republicans. . .
A: Eugene Robinson
Private e-mail accounts, not private servers which they then wiped clean. There's a big difference. Also, if you became SecState in 2009, you were already well into the Age of E-mail and knew that was how you would do much if not most of your work.
. ..
Q: Clinton emails
. . . If I start working for a company, I don't choose to not have an email, the decision is done for me. So why are you and your colleagues not wondering who and why the decision was made and allowed in the first place.
A: Eugene Robinson
She made the decision. No need to wonder. She has acknowledged as much.

[BlueStateLib]

27. I just don't get it. Any correspondence to and from state.gov

would be treated the same if it came from state.gov or clinton.com, just ask gawker and their state department FOIA suit over emails they sent to Philippe Reines (who was Senior Advisor to Hillary Clinton, and he was later promoted to the position of Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, by the way state department just found 18k Philippe Reines emails).

Hillary server was vpn connect through fortinet box set up and maintained by professional IT engineer Bryan Pagliano who has a specialty in security also worked at state department as strategic advisor and special projects manager to the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) / Deputy Chief Information Officer (DCIO) overseeing the operations of the Information Resource Management (IRM) bureau serving a geographically diverse customer base of over 50,000 users around the world.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/2016-elections/here-are-the-3-000-pages-of-hillary-clinton-s-emails-just-released-by-the-state-department-20150630

[Darb]

28. Who gives a shit which computer she used.

Hillary is not Condoleeza Rice. Every goddamned molecule of her being and life will be used by the Repubes to bring her down. Nobody has as much scrutiny, and it is not a legitimate form of scrutiny, it is the exact same people who do things like the Planned Parenthood thing, scumbags and frauds and ratfucks. She was protecting her privacy and she has the right to do it so if you are beating this drum you can jump up my arse and squirm around.

There isn't a Hillary voter out there who will change their mind about her based on this total crock.

[MBS]

29. it matters, especially for the Secretary of State

First, the Obama white House issued a clear directive that all staff members of the executive branch use government email only for government business.

To me, this policy is appropriate, and important, for two reasons:
1) national security issues. Since this is the current topic du jour in the current media frenzy, there is no need to belabor this point any further. But I will note that this issue is particularly important for the State Department, which daily handles many sensitive issues -- even non-classified issues can be sensitive enough to raise difficulties if confidentiality is breached.
AND
2) clear separation of personal interests from government interests. This is a principle reiterated almost weekly to federal employees, even those in non-sensitive positions, and is a matter both of ethics and common sense for those in sensitive positions. This seems to me particularly important for Hillary as Sec of State, since the work of the Clinton Foundation, and the Clintons' vast network of friends and business acquaintances, overlapped at many points with the interests of the State Department. Given the fact that the line between the personal and political/governmental business is often a blurry one among the Clintons, Hillary should have done everything in her power to keep that line as clear and rigid as possible while she was Sec of State. A minimum step in this direction would be to use one's government email account for government business, while conducting personal business (only) through her private server . Using the same server for government and personal business is the worst possible "solution".

The thing that continues to boggle my mind is why she chose to do this in the first place, in contradiction to policy, when she continued to harbor presidential ambitions. Instead of reminding the public of her intelligence and long experience, and introducing the substance of her agenda to the public, she's now having to divert her time and energy to answer these endless questions about email, discussions which bring back to the voters old bad memories of the ways that the Clintons tend to push the envelope on the rules, and their paranoia about privacy, secrecy, and more. Especially with her long experience with Republicans and the press, couldn't she or her advisors have seen what an incredibly stupid move this was politically to insist on using a private email server exclusively to conduct Dept of State business? Even ethics aside, couldn't they see how damaging this would be to her presidential ambitions? Does she have a political death wish? Does she not want to be president? To me, insistence on conducting government business, especially sensitive government business, from a private server is so obviously a bad idea -- I continue to be shaken by the poor political judgment displayed by all concerned.

Yes, the Republicans and the media are milking this for all it's worth. But it's her fault, too. They would have not had the ammunition, and she could have stood firmly on higher ground, had she conducted her State Dept. email correspondence properly, from a government account.

FYI, I'm undecided in the Democratic primaries, but firmly committed to voting for HRC if she is the Democratic nominee. But I'm very angry how her incredibly stupid decision (to use a private email server) could possibly jeopardize her/our chances of keeping the White House. Because we really need to win in 2016. Just the thought of any of those Republican candidates as president makes me shudder.