RUTHFULLY YOURS

A week ago Hillary Clinton’s allies accused the State Department Inspector General’s office of belonging to the vast right-wing conspiracy. So you have to admire her chutzpah this week in trying to spin a memo from that same office to exonerate her use of a renegade private email server. All the more so because the new memo strengthens the case that she mishandled national secrets.

In Thursday’s Democratic debate, Mrs. Clinton hailed a new document from State IG Steve Linick that summarizes his view of the email practices of five prior Secretaries of State. The memo says he found a few instances of “sensitive material” sent to the private email accounts of Republicans Colin Powell and staffers to Condoleezza Rice.

“Now you have these people in the government who are doing the same thing [to Powell and Rice’s aides] they’ve been doing to me,” claimed Mrs. Clinton—that is, “retroactively classifying” documents. “I agree with Secretary Powell, who said today this is an absurdity.”
Ah, yes, the old everybody-does-it defense. Mrs. Clinton wants Americans to believe it was common practice for top diplomats to use private email, and that they are all now subject to overzealous interagency squabbling over classification. By Friday Democrats were spinning that Mrs. Clinton is a political victim for having been singled out. Her media phalanx is buying this line, though the Powell and Rice details prove the opposite—and how reckless Mrs. Clinton was by comparison.

Laconia, N.H.

Lake Winnipesaukee has a monsoon season, apparently, but sheets of rain did not prevent voters from packing the former mill where Marco Rubio spoke Wednesday. The fire marshals closed the doors, as they did the night before in Exeter and would later that evening in Dover. Fresh off his surge in Iowa to a stronger-than-anticipated third, the senator is drawing crowds beyond the merely curious that feature some ineffable, heightened quality—something approaching genuine enthusiasm.

Mr. Rubio’s message is the same as it always was, with a well-rehearsed rap that matches Ted Cruz’s. But his political bet is that some New Hampshire voters want their anger tempered by optimism and a cheerful note or two.

The Florida senator’s combination of optimism and despair can nonetheless be contradictory. America is the greatest nation in the history of the world, he says, but it’s at risk of decline amid extraordinary challenges, and by the way if the present is terrible, look forward to the glorious “new American century” of the future.

Mr. Rubio can be as acid as Mr. Cruz or Donald Trump about the failures of President Obama and the diminished potential of American life, and he says the election is no less than “a referendum on our identity as a nation and a people” (as he says at every stop).