A few more words about Hillary Clinton and the email controversy. Whether or not you believe she broke the rules, the ongoing debate raises a variety of legitimate concerns about security, classified documents, privacy, and regulations for government employees.
But in this Women’s History Month, I’ve zeroed in on something else that concerns me. Hillary Clinton’s emails don’t just contain sensitive information about conflicts, personnel, and international negotiations; they are also a record of a woman who is a significant American figure. Her public service story is Herstory-- from her role as First Lady to New York Senator to presidential candidate and finally Secretary of State. So when she announced that she had erased emails she thought not worth preserving, well, I wondered what was forever lost to students and scholars?
Somewhere Doris Kearns Goodwin is gnashing her teeth.
After all the noted historian’s stock in trade is mining the fine details of the everyday lives of her subjects-- people like Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt, the Kennedys, Abraham Lincoln and his cabinet, and most recently, Teddy Roosevelt and Robert Taft. Like most historians she researches official documents, but she especially relies on what her subjects wrote about the chronology of their mundane activities. A chronology she says that’s key to drawing a full picture of her subjects. In her previous bestseller “Team of Rivals,” Goodwin combed through personal diaries and letters. “All of this material,” she told the National Archives, “allowed me to look over the shoulders of my subjects and hear them talk about their daily activities and feelings.” The Pulitzer Prize winning author says being able to review in the moment impressions from her subjects makes all the difference.
So when Hillary Clinton told reporters she’d erased personal emails such as notes about her mother’s funeral arrangements, I was upset. Those emails shape the larger context of her life. For example, how did this high-powered modern woman juggle personal issues while keeping a firm grip on high-level international negotiations? Did she move through the world differently from her female predecessors Madeline Albright and Condoleezza Rice?
How might those personal emails illuminate the 55 thousand pages of government related emails Clinton released to the State Department? Unless Clinton decides to turn over her personal server, we will never know how many personal emails were erased, and historians will never have access to the likely best repository of her ‘in the moment’ feelings.
Yes, some of her story has already been told, by herself, and by journalists writing the first draft of history. That’s far different from a future historian’s review. There are too many notable women whose stories have not been fully told. I’m sad that one of the most well known-- male or female-- political figures in American history will be one of them.
