Hillary Clinton is expected to hold a news conference today to address lingering questions surrounding her use of a private e-mail address for the entirety of her time as secretary of state. The outreach is an acknowledgment that, despite her team's best efforts to ignore it, the story has become increasingly problematic for her soon-to-be announced 2016 presidential campaign.
The news conference, which is expected to follow her speech at the United Nations on Tuesday afternoon, will be a radical departure in media strategy for Clinton, who has spent much of the last year delivering a combination of paid speeches and taking softball questions from friendly "moderators" in front of loving audiences.
In fact, Clinton hasn't taken any questions from reporters since last fall.
Even that appearance in Iowa doesn't approximate what she will face today in New York. There was nothing like this e-mail controversy hanging over her last September when she was greeted like a conquering hero by many Democrats in Iowa. An actual straight-forward news conference is something that Clinton hasn't tackled in years -- literally.
So, yes, Clinton is going to be rusty. But that doesn't mean she has to be terrible. In fact, Clinton could "win" the news conference pretty easily. Here's how.
Say this: "I believe deeply in transparency for our elected officials. I will release every e-mail I sent during my four years as secretary of state from my 'clintonemail' address. They will be put on a Web site that will allow anyone who would like to see them to do so. I hope to complete this by June 1."
Or, because some of the e-mails are, undoubtedly, strictly personal and others are likely to contain potentially sensitive information, appoint someone -- not affiliated with the Clintons -- to sort through the trove and decide which e-mails should be held back and which should be released.
Or, she could take this suggestion made by The Post's editorial board this morning: "If she wants to demonstrate the strength of character and judgment required to be president, Ms. Clinton should hold a news conference and answer all the unanswered questions about her e-mails."
That's the Chris Christie Bridgegate approach -- when the New Jersey governor held a marathon presser in early January 2014 in which he answered, literally, every possible question anyone could muster.
My guess? She takes none of those routes. Remember that the Clintons deeply distrust the media and believe, at their core, that the press will never, ever give Hillary a fair shake no matter what she says or does. They also believe that this story is much ado about nothing -- a media creation latched onto by Republicans desperate to slow her momentum ahead of 2016.
Then there is the fact that Hillary just isn't wired to do a "let me tell you everything I know" presser. It's like expecting Bill Belichick to offer expansive thoughts on why he called certain plays during a Patriots game or Gregg Popovich explaining his strategy with the Spurs during a between-quarters interview.
So, the most likely outcome is Clinton issuing a relatively generic statement and taking a few questions in which she largely reiterates that statement. That won't solve Clinton's problem but it might -- emphasis on might -- quiet the Democratic fretting about what this all means for her 2016 bid.
Stay tuned. It's going to be a heck of an afternoon in politics.