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Clinton redefines transparency her way

The people who love Hillary Clinton will view the controversy over her emails as much ado about nothing.

The people who hate Hillary Clinton will view the controversy over her emails as evidence of further wrongdoing that will be largely ignored by the liberal media.

Hillary Clinton said her decision to use a personal account for all email communications when she was secretary of state was only about convenience. Can anyone really, honestly suggest Clinton’s actions weren’t designed to sidestep the public nature of government record-keeping?

I view it all as a prime example of how Hillary Clinton sets herself apart, rationalizes her actions and, like her husband, is convinced she can outmaneuver anyone who challenges her ascendancy. To paraphrase the prolific political philosopher Billy Joel, she may be wrong or she may be right.

What we know is the former secretary of state, knowing her duty to preserve written communications involving government affairs, chose to grant herself special treatment. Rather than allowing her communications to flow through government servers designed specifically for the purpose, she opted to use a personal server set up at the Clinton family’s home in Chappaqua, N.Y., to handle her emails as secretary of state. It was a calculated decision designed to give her, not some government bureaucracy, the ultimate control of her communications. It wasn’t some slip-up.

Now, with it revealed, she says it would have perhaps been smarter to have used the government account, but that’s only because it would have avoided today’s controversy, not because it was what the former secretary of state should have done from the beginning.

One of her defenders on CNN Tuesday ridiculed those clamoring about the email controversy. Hillary Clinton is a smart woman, she posited. Do critics think she was dumb enough to write an email that contained some sort of revelation or smoking gun, this pundit asked. I assume she was suggesting Clinton would have never typed “Benghazi was all my fault,” for example.

Clinton probably would have never done that, demonstrating how nothing she does is immune from the political calculations that got her where she is. But let’s take a slightly different angle: If using a private server wasn’t about preserving Clinton’s ability to control any future revelations arising from her emails, why in the world would she go to all the trouble, effectively inviting the kind of scrutiny she’s now getting?

Why not just handle it the way it doesn’t raise eyebrows? Why not behave as a government official, not a private citizen, in safeguarding transparency that was supposed to be a hallmark of the Obama administration?

Should our secretary of state use government systems that anticipate security as an issue? In one statement that suggests Clinton isn’t the best person for evaluating server security, she said the server was in a location guarded by the Secret Service. This isn’t Watergate. There wasn’t a concern a couple of burglars would try to make off with the physical server that hosted her email account. North Korea didn’t climb through Sony’s window.

Clinton knew she had to answer questions about this flare-up, so she managed 21 minutes in front of a pesky bunch of reporters she may have thought could be swatted away easily. As the questions kept coming, she seemed uncomfortable with the fact her answers weren’t being taken as full and acceptable explanation of her decision-making and the deletion of 30,000 emails.

The New York Times noted “It had taken eight days for Mrs. Clinton to make herself available for questions. And long before the questions ran out, she began packing up her binder.”

In her mind, why wouldn’t “trust me” be enough to satisfy everyone?

I kept waiting for Hillary Clinton to pound the lectern in Tuesday’s press conference, emphatically saying “I did not have textual relations with that country.”

Perhaps most galling to those who believe Clinton should show some remorse for her actions is her assertion now that she’s demonstrating transparency above and beyond the call of duty. By turning over 30,490 emails, she proudly suggested the public will get “unprecedented insight into a high government official’s daily communications.” And, oh yeah, she destroyed 32,000 others that, in her judgment, were nobody’s business.

Hillary Clinton has demonstrated what the nation can expect from her and her administration if she’s ever elected president. Whatever she wants will be justified. Critics will be motivated by conspiracies and hatred. The ends will justify the means. She knows best.

Does she?

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Greg Harton is editorial page editor of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected] .

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