One of the most frustrating and often misreported stories during my time at the White House dealt with the archiving of official email messages in accordance with the Presidential Records Act.
Washington is a breeding ground for misnamed interest groups like the liberal, GOP-targeting, professional litigation group CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, gosh… who could be opposed to that?) and the National Security Archive (sounds very official, but it is an independent group dedicated to publishing government papers of all types).
These two groups filed lawsuits against the White House regarding how email messages were being archived. When liberal groups, in an effort to gain attention to themselves, sue the White House about deeply technical issues (which is all this amounts to) and whisper conspiracy theories (Karl Rove must be hiding the real reason for the Iraq war!) to political reporters who’d much rather be writing stories about the next Watergate than the next version of Microsoft Exchange Server, the conditions are right for breathless political hyperbole and misleading or inaccurate reporting. And that, my friends, is what I’ve seen on this story for years. Without a doubt, this issue could serve as a case study for a public relations class or book on communications.
Reporting on today’s action was all over the map and appeared in mainstream news, trade publications (government, legal, technology) and was fodder for many liberal, Bush-hating blogs. If you are suffering from insomnia, you can compare some of the different approaches at these links – Washington Post, AP, CNN, POLITICO, Fox News, Dallas Morning News and NPR.
But you understand where the interest comes from. Every sitting president is subjected to suspicion of misdeeds, secret agendas and missing substantive documents by the opposing party faithful. Republicans acted similarly with Clinton and will do the same for Obama. On a number of occasions in this post you attribute this behavior (seemingly)solely to liberals when conservatives are equally as likely to indulge themselves in “breathless political hyperbole and misleading or inaccurate reporting.” Why there’s a whole cable channel devoted to it.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
D.
In this case, I do attribute this behavior solely to the liberal groups CREW and National Security Archive. I wouldn’t argue that both sides don’t take partisan shots, but this one is on another plane for me. With no evidence, conspiracy theorists on the left believe this technical issue is part of some grand cover up. Like people who think 9/11 was an inside job or the birther movement, this kind of reflexive desire by some to believe the worst is corrosive and unproductive. We have big issues to be concerned about in this country and this is certainly not one of them.
Merry Christmas to you, David. Thanks for visiting my blog.