The 44th president will almost certainly kick off his term by quitting email cold turkey, Jamie Sneider writes in the Weekly Standard. With executive-branch communication subject to public-disclosure law, President Bush hasn't send a single message, the former White House aide says—a coping mechanism that "fails to strike the right balance."
"While broadcasts of the State of the Union capture many ill-mannered congressmen thumbing through emails on their Blackberries, President Bush and Vice President Cheney have been effectively denied this staple of modern political communications," Sneider tut-tuts at legislators who face no such e-scrutiny. Perhaps, he notes, a peek at Rep. William Jefferson's email could have helped explain the $90,000 in his freezer. (More email stories.)