Lessons from Hillary Clinton's email saga

Rallying Democrats will likely get Clinton through this storm, even if her responses will not satisfy those who will always wonder which emails she deleted and whether her use of a private server was not only about convenience but also a way of shielding her electronic correspondence from Freedom of Information Act and congressional requests.

But those who say the episode is about Clinton's alleged sense of entitlement have it wrong. This speaks to her hard-earned paranoia about what her opponents are willing to do to destroy her. Her mistrust may be understandable, but it is counterproductive.
It would be naive to suggest that being more open with the media always works in favor of the transparent politician. Clinton can highlight the fact that her much-praised answer-every-question news conference on Whitewater in 1994 failed to shut down the story. She also turned out to be right that no good would come the Clintons' way from naming a special prosecutor to investigate the matter.
On the other hand, she was wrong to resist the earlier advice of then-adviser David Gergen that she and Bill Clinton dump all of the Whitewater documents and let the journalists judge. Gergen has argued that, had this happened, "there would have been no Ken Starr, no special prosecutor, no Monica, and history would have been very different."
Although alternative histories can't be confirmed, Clinton needs to ponder this lesson. To survive the next 20 months until Election Day, she will have to find her way toward a less antagonistic view of media scrutiny that distinguishes between partisan muggings and the sorts of questions all presidential candidates confront.