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Seriously sick people
Without fail, the release of secret Clinton documents serves as irresistible catnip for the press and the Clintons' political opponents.


Comment: Nothing like the appearance of transparency to keep the sheeple occupied.


Every page holds out the possibility of a salacious, even scandalous revelation that could dash the political ambitions of Hillary Clinton - or at least render her a mere mortal in discussions of possible 2016 presidential candidates, ending her reign as a kind of superhuman figure who dwarfs other potential White House contenders.


Comment: Yeah. That's about as likely as Bill getting reimbursed for the dry cleaning bill.


No such ground-shaking disclosure emerged in the batch of 4,000 pages the Clinton Presidential Library made public on Friday. However, there are many, many more pages to come. And even the first set served as a reminder of how any future Hillary Clinton campaign will involve reliving and re-litigating history - at least to a degree.

Here are POLITICO's top takeways from the previously-secret Clinton records which went public Friday:

Dysfunction: past or prologue?

The newly disclosed Clinton papers provide fresh reminders and ample evidence of the chaos, infighting and dysfunction that plagued the Clinton administration in its early days. While this first batch of papers doesn't provide much to link Hillary Clinton to those problems, critics are sure to draw parallels with similar rivalries and quarreling that beset her 2008 presidential bid.


Comment: We wonder why? Because she is being groomed. We don't think the average reader realizes how much effort has gone into her. Even Bill cheating smacks of grooming.


"Our external communications failures are grounded in dysfunctional internal communications in the Executive Office of the President. Simply put: people don't talk to each other," top health care communications adviser Bob Boorstin bluntly wrote in a June 1993 memo to Communications Director Mark Gearan. "Meetings don't include relevant parties. People don't show up at meetings, and then countermand decisions. Decisions are made, remade and then reversed.....The result is confusion, both in message and policy."

Even if all those records emerge in the next month or two, history is likely to chase the Clintons for years. Only about 4 percent of the roughly 78 million pages of paper records and 20 million emails in the Little Rock presidential library have become public so far, according to an Archives spokeswoman.

Most of those pages haven't been seen by human eyes since they were locked away at the end of the Clinton presidency, so even the Clintons' current aides don't have a good idea of what lurks there. Of course, the mountain of paper is so huge and the legally-mandated review process so painstaking that Clinton supporters and opponents can be fairly sure that most of the records will still be under wraps through any Clinton campaign in 2016 and well beyond.