READY FROM DAY ONE, FOR MEDIOCRITY:

[T]he communications offer insights about governance questions and ways of operating inside the modern White House.

Here are some examples:

Rationale for a Clinton Presidency: The Podesta emails, covering everything from internal campaign spats to Italian cooking tips to entreaties from climate-change warriors seeking to fund-raise off the candidate, offer insights into one of the essential challenges all presidents face: What are his or her core beliefs? Without the vision thing - which is not the same as a policy agenda - presidents throughout American history have struggled to lead and succeed.

The emails reveal how Clinton's team labored to lock in a rationale for the candidate's second bid for the White House, especially in a political environment in which her 1990s-era bona fides and her determination to stick close to President Obama cut her adrift from Americans who saw her as yesterday's choice. Bernie Sanders, on the left, and Trump, on the right, encouraged frustrated voters eager for change to view Clinton as a disappointing appendage to Bill Clinton's presidency as well as to President Obama's White House tenure.

While writing the address that launched Clinton's campaign in the spring of 2015, her speechwriting team chewed on the problem before the candidate reviewed an initial draft.

"`The Vision Thing,'" wrote lead speechwriter Dan Schwerin in an email that distributed an early text to colleagues. "This remains a challenge. As you read, does it feel like a vision for the future comes through? If not, that's a place we really need to focus." [...]

Preparation to Govern. Clinton has navigated - not always smoothly -- some of the thorniest governance challenges of the modern era, from health care reform and the shrinking middle class to the Iraq War and the rise of the Islamic State. President Obama tells voters that his former Cabinet official is the most experienced presidential candidate ever to face the voters.

The emails underscore what Clinton has argued on the stump: She would enter the White House with reams of policy positions she has internalized, accompanied by budget breakdowns, and gaggles of advocates and experts flapping over each.

Clinton is a politician who has been publicly rebuked for lacking vision while also being commended for a lifelong commitment to the good that government can do. She is a planner who favors control, and she does not relish the high wire of improvisation. Clinton is comforted by a command of the smallest details -- and the hacked emails once again showcase her dependency on a tight circle of loyalists who give her the briefings and materials to appear a mile wide on policy as well as 10-feet deep when it comes to her opponents.

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