Nobody has talked about AOL this much since “You’ve Got Mail,” that 1998 romantic-comedy where Tom Hanks used email to steal the heart of Meg Ryan and win over all of America. But thanks to Vice President Mike Pence, the email domain is suddenly back in the news because of his digital ineptitude.
In what’s been billed as a bombshell, The Indianapolis Star reported that Pence used the AOL email service for state business while governor. But it doesn’t make him a high-tech villain. If anything, the news demonstrates the exact opposite, namely that Pence is a complete Luddite.
Like the Pony Express or the first telegraph, AOL was once on the cutting edge. Back in the 1990s when computers were big and bulky, America Online helped introduce the world to dial-up internet and this new phenomenon called “electronic mail.” At the company’s peak, 35 million subscribers were checking their email with AOL. But soon the company’s tech bubble burst.
As the world moved into the 21st century, the Internet moved away from AOL and toward faster and more efficient email services like Gmail. In fact, two years ago internet archeologists at Dice found that less than 630,000 users are still active on AOL.
Apparently that included Pence.
Why would a head of a state use such an outdated service? Some like BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith have argued that an AOL email is a status symbol for the early adopters of the Internet who now populate the upper echelons of media and politics. But more likely it shows someone who just hasn’t kept up with the times, like your mother who insists on burning mix-CDs before every family vacation.
Sending and receiving email on AOL for political purpose is akin to using stone knives and bearskins for statecraft. It reflects an elder statesman stuck in their ways, not a shrewd politician prepared to game the system. Coincidently, that’s what the record reveals.
The Left has latched onto news of Pence’s AOL account, forwarding it to all their friends as evidence of some sort of vast conspiracy to skirt transparency. Pence is a hypocrite, they argue, because he called out former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail for her secret email correspondence on a private server.
By all legal and technical accounts, that’s an absurd comparison. Pence sent something like 29 pages of emails on topics which, the IndyStar reports, ranged from the security gate at the governor’s mansion to how the Midwestern state would respond to global terror attacks. He didn’t break state law.
If Pence had something to hide, the governor would have followed Clinton’s example. She didn’t use a free email service, instead the Democrat nominee set up a private address online and a secret server in the bathroom of her home in Chappaqua, N.Y. In an apparent violation of the Espionage Act, Clinton used the setup to decide what the public saw and later what history would ever see.
Altogether, Clinton sent almost 45,000 work-related emails this way, including hundreds of messages that included confidential, secret, and top-secret information. And she nearly got away with it.
Like Pence, the private email eventually came to light. While Clinton feigned technological ignorance, like that time she joked about wiping the servers with a cloth, Pence seems generally digitally-inept. As more emails come to light, we’ll learn more. But for now, it’s clear that Pence is only guilty of being stuck in 1990s with an ancient email account.
Philip Wegmann is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
