Stop Digging the Hole, Secretary Clinton

By the way, even if relying solely on private email was not against explicit rules at the time, you still were supposed to make your correspondence available promptly for archiving and FOIA requests -- not when you turned them over, in response to an inquiry from the State Department, two years after departing.

Two subsequent mistakes -- first, deciding to delete the emails you deemed personal; second, declining, until the Justice Department asked, to make your personal server available for review -- are similarly unfixable at this point. And, "That '90s Show" again, how predictable was it that this would backfire?

Yes, you would have been permitted to erase the personal messages on a government account, but you didn't use a government account. And wiping the server -- you did work on Watergate for the House Judiciary Committee, didn't you? Why not hot-potato the server over to State and let them figure out how to handle it -- before the Justice Department got involved and you looked like you had something to hide.

As to Justice and the mess over whether classified information was at risk -- I'm with you here: This would be a problem whether the material were on an unclassified government system or on your own server. But, again, that's a lawyer's argument, not one that's going to sit well with voters seeking assurance from a would-be commander in chief that you take this stuff seriously.

And, as you know better than anyone, having Justice involved can lead down treacherous paths, and certainly lengthy ones. This cloud is going to be hanging over your campaign for months.

So, my advice: Stop making light. Stop litigating. Stop the high-handed dismissing. Stop the prickliness with the media; we're not going away. Stop the non-apology apologies (you didn't do anything wrong but you wouldn't do it over again).

You don't need to grovel or confess to grievous errors. Just dial down the combativeness -- as hard as this is for you -- and ramp up the reasonableness: You understand people have questions. If classified information was not adequately protected, you'd like to know that and figure out what lessons can be learned.

This problem isn't going away. The trick, right now, is simply not making it worse.

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Ruth Marcus' email address is ruthmarcus@washpost.com.