One of the things that makes a democracy (rule of the people) a democracy is that the executive is a servant rather than a king. A servant who doesn't need to hide anything, because all they're doing is what we want... right? Every President before the current one seemed to understand this principle pretty well... except for that Nixon guy.
The real problem of democracy nowadays is, who is "we"? Trump seems to think of "we" like the royal "we", not even "we, my Republicans" and definitely not "we, the 300+ million living in the US" as a President would in a perfect world.
You frame that link as a case against Obama, insinuating that his administration was trying to hide presidential records. What part of the linked article supports that exactly?
> The Obama administration already has had several opportunities to indicate its approach in this area, and initial indicators are good—with room for improvement.
> One of President Obama's "Day One" executive orders revised the implementation of the Presidential Records Act (PRA), revoking a Bush executive order that unduly restricted access to presidential records and reinstating the pre-Bush regime for implementing the Act.
My point was only that every President deals with litigation about the records placed in the Presidential Records Act. Obama was more progressive on this point (but was notably not progressive on FOIA requests). It’s effectively SOP for public records watchdog groups to sue Presidents at the end of their terms to ensure the Act is followed because its largely toothless without that action.
Why? I'm not trying to be facile, but I imagine most of the documents will never be read, and the most popular ones will either be self-serving or foolish.
FDR made a point of leaving as little documentation as he possibly could, during a pivotal time in history, and it doesn't seem to have done any damage.
Most of the documents may never be read, but the only way to preserve the valuable documents is to preserve all the documents, lest you lose the valuable ones during your hasty initial evaluation of document worth.
Furthermore the worth of some documents may only become apparent in contexts that are not presently known or considered. Sometimes the worth of a document only becomes apparent many years later.
I am an avid reader of history, but I don't find the detailed facts especially valuable.
Can you come up with some examples of what real value (aside from entertainment/ammunition) these sorts of documents have? Having read about a number of previous presidents, I cannot think of any specific example made a difference; you might argue that the 'weight of evidence' makes a difference, but I'd be skeptical of that too.
I don't think the Trump administration is going around destroying census data and prison records.
I'm also highly skeptical of the idea that any of the Nuremberg defendants would have gone free without 'private office' documents. As an example, Karl Doenitz was convicted on (somewhat dubious) charges that had nothing to do with Concentration Camps or PoW treatment.
Correspondance between officials can be relevant when determining which officials knew what, and when. This is obvious common sense stuff; it shouldn't require explaination and your resistance to it smells like motivated reasoning.
There's no way to know a priori what history will end up considering important.
There were some documents on terrorist activity compiled during the Clinton administration that, at the time, were of little significance... Until it turned out their information was accurate and that terror cell crashed four planes.
One biography of FDR (I cannot recall which one), described a conversation with an aide (Harry Hopkins I believe), where FDR chuckled to himself at how little historians would find in the library, as he'd gotten rid of so much.
The real problem of democracy nowadays is, who is "we"? Trump seems to think of "we" like the royal "we", not even "we, my Republicans" and definitely not "we, the 300+ million living in the US" as a President would in a perfect world.