Susan Estrich is a bigtime Hillary Clinton supporter. Therefore it was no surprise that in her March 6 column she wrote off the Hillary e-mail scandal as mere silliness. However, following reader input and Hillary's disastrous press conference at the United Nations, Estrich had a bit of a change of heart. Not exactly a 180. More like a 90 chock full of extreme naivete.
Now Estrich wants Hillary to turn over her e-mail server. Not because like James Carville she thinks it will reveal something harmful to her but because she actually believes it contains only harmless material. First let us join the March 6 Estrich poo-pooing the Hillary e-mail scandal:
I thought it was a joke. This is the best the Republicans can do? Their moment in the sunshine, the focus on America's problems, local Republicans riven by fear that they could end up with Mitt Romney... But how could they resist?
... Clinton has called on the State Department to release all of the records after assuring that they don't impinge on our national security. She smartly jumped up and immediately agreed to their release (avoiding the common mistake of denials based on incomplete information).
In other words, what we have here, as of now, is not a political conspiracy or a trail of corruption, but a mistake by one or more lawyers charged with working with IT on a project that led to all of the documents being preserved and retained, but not all of them necessarily previously available for other document requests.
Ahh! That explains it all. Hillary Clinton is Miss Transparency. Oh, and the only reason some of her documents have not been made available is a mere minor technical error by her lawyers. But Hillary really, really does want you to have easy access to her e-mail documents.
I used to avoid even looking at stories like these on the grounds that you shouldn't reward bad behavior. But who can resist?
Flash forward to the day after the Hillary press conference and even Estrich can't avoid the disaster:
It's always nice to know, as I sit here writing, that somebody out there might be listening. This week, I know for sure. My last column essentially asked: What's the big deal about Hillary's emails if she's turning them over anyway? Thanks to everyone who wrote to make it clear just what a big deal this is for them.
And then, in classic Clinton damage-control mode, Hillary herself held a press conference at the U.N. on Tuesday to try to answer the critics.
In this case, however, rather than putting out the fire, I fear the Clinton machine may be fueling it.
A conversion on this matter by Susan Estrich? Well, let's just say a bit of doubt has seeped in although she remains a rather naive true believer.
No one is better at damage control than the Clintons, so you have to wonder why they haven't just handed over everything, hook, line and sinker, all at once, putting out the fire with the sheer weight of the documents.
I have no inside information, but my guess is that there's no smoking gun on any of the servers, that there is no smoking gun at all, and this is a controversy that centers on talking points for the Sunday talk shows — but some of the back and forth correspondence probably would have been better communicated by telephone. My guess is there's nothing in there about the Clinton marriage or her political ambitions that we don't already know — good and bad. So why not turn it all over?
By not handing over the server, Clinton has invited just the sort of speculation she doesn't need. Instead of putting the story to bed, as we say, she has given it new legs.
Gee! Why doesn't Hillary just hand over her e-mail server and put this story to bed? Or could it be that James Carville has the realistic view of the situation that Susan Estrich completely lacks?
Exit question: Is James Carville laughing at the naivete of Susan Estrich?
