Archive Safe
The fine details escape me and most Americans, but Bill Clinton does have a point when he denounces press and rival campaign accusations that he and the Mrs. are withholding papers.
As he says, and is true, he has released more and faster than his predecessors . And the mechanics of this are convoluted even if all parties pulled as one.
For example, Judicial Watch has gotten endless press over it’s requests for Clinton papers and dark mutterings that the Clinton fix is in. Turns out the Associated Press discovered that the Archives hasn’t even processed Judicial Watch’s request yet. Clinton’s minions have yet to touch it.
The fine details of Clinton’s Archives letter matter, and I doubt he wants to help his enemies, but on the broader front he is correct and his critics ignore the history of the law and past Presidential Libraries.
Say he let it rip as the Washington Post recently proposed, releasing everything without review. And in this mythical world President Bush quickly signed off on everything, and the National Archives had staff to shovel it all through. Let’s write the headlines:
“Let’s Do Lani Guinier’s Taxes!”
“Publicly Close, Clinton wrote Infrequently to Mother”
“They Believed In Bill, Now Failed Clinton Nominees Privacy Exposed”
It’s an issue, and a headache for Candidate Clinton, but the pretense that there is a snappy solution to this is getting tiresome.
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