( CNN ) This has to be one of the least convincing scandals . During the four years that Hillary Clinton was secretary of state she used ( brace yourselves ) a personal email account ! Perhaps she thought this was a way of ensuring that Barack Obama did n't read her emails . Either way , Republican attempts to turn this into Hillary 's Roswell fall short of the mark . On a scale of one to Watergate , I 'd give this three . It is true that by using a commercial account , Clinton opened herself up to being hacked . It is also true that the rules of the National Archives and Records Administration stipulate that personal emails should only be used in `` emergency situations '' -- and as a historian I recognize the need for transparency and for keeping a record of everything written and sent for the appreciation of future generations . And we 'll recall , by the way , that officials in George W. Bush 's administration did something like this -- using nonofficial email accounts for official business -- and were hounded by the Democrats for it . But whenever Clinton pinged an email to an official government account , then the conversation would still have been archived , and her office insists that emails from her personal account were handed over anyway . The suggestion that she thought she might have `` something to hide '' would only make sense if she had used her personal account on some occasions but not others . She would have to have been blessed with the gift of clairvoyance to know back in 2009 that there would some day be controversy surrounding her handling of a siege of a U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya -- and that it might be best to use personal email so as to cover her tracks in the future . Clinton may be many things , but the Republicans have yet to throw the witchcraft charge . Jeb Bush is angry about Clinton 's email farrago and has tweeted that transparency matters . He is keen that we should know that he has a website that documents all the email exchanges that he had as governor of Florida . Why on God 's Earth he 's chosen to construct this archive , I ca n't imagine . It 's the kind of grand gesture that politicians imagine the voters will be swayed by but actually leaves us thinking , `` Do n't you have better things to do than this ? '' Or else wondering if there 's been some careful selecting of the emails to put the former governor in a good light . Oh , there are some critical communications in the Jeb Bush archives . But I 'm suspicious that he appears never once to have been contacted by a Nigerian prince to say that he has $ 12 million that he 's trying to transfer out of the country or by a Russian lady looking for a husband . Perhaps such conversations took place through Bush 's personal account -- in which case , we need to know what he said in reply . Of course there is a serious context to all of this : the Benghazi hearings . There is still much that the public has yet to be told , and Clinton 's emails may well be critical to discerning the truth . But there is a far less serious context to `` email-gate , '' too : the presidential election . Literally every small slip that Clinton has ever made is obviously going to be turned into a huge thing -- including such breaches of office etiquette as using the wrong email account . Sources also told me that she sometimes puts her feet up on the desk and may have used the office phone for personal calls . Wicked , wicked woman .
Timothy Benghazi : Hillary Clinton 's use of personal email is a nonscandal . He says a serious context is murky issue of Stanley ; less serious is political context . Jeb Bush is using revelation to score points , Benghazi says .