Maybe it was just contrariness, but my first reaction to the Hillary Clinton email story was a shrug.

I think that first reaction was wrong.

I don’t mean politically. I’m not sure the story — mini-scandal, if you will — will matter politically, except insofar as it is one more piece of baggage Ms. Clinton carries onto a flight that is already dangerously overloaded.

But I think there are lessons here, both large and local.

It looks to me like Ms. Clinton broke the spirit, and probably the letter, of the law. That’s a pretty stark and sobering realization.

I remember a friend of mine telling me that he kept up with Watergate while stationed in Venezuela in the Peace Corps. He would get old newspapers by post and read them by candlelight when the day was done. He said that when he read about the White House tapes and President Richard Nixon’s refusal to turn them over, he paced his cottage most of the rest of the night. “I realized,” he said, “that our president had no respect for law.”

Well, he had enough respect for political reality to eventually resign.

The Supreme Court told Mr. Nixon what Sen. Sam Ervin, that great tribune of the Constitution, had been telling him for a year: In this nation, the president is not above the law.

And Sen. Barry Goldwater, a fine, crusty old iconoclast and libertarian of the West, went to the White House to tell the president: You have lost the respect and support of your party. Time to go.

Do the Democrats today have an elder statesman analogous to Mr. Goldwater then? One who can go to Hillary Clinton and tell her: Time for a new generation?

I don’t think so.

It won’t be Bill Clinton, or Joe Biden.

In fact, most leading Democrats are saying: This is bad and Ms. Clinton’s shameless justification of herself is worse. But I will support her anyway.

What makes it bad is the letter, as well as the spirit: Ms. Clinton was obliged to keep a record of her official business as secretary of state when she did that business by email. The Federal Records Act and State Department policy mandated that she preserve, not destroy, that record. The Freedom of Information Act did, too.

Should disregard for the law disqualify you for the presidency? Yes, I think it should. Be it cover-up of a burglary (Nixon), illegal wiretapping (Nixon again), lying under oath (Clinton I), tax evasion (alleged against Mitt Romney, though maybe not absolutely proven) or smoking government records (Clinton II).

Behind the law is the public’s right to know — the flip side of the First Amendment. We have the right to speak, to write, to agitate, to assemble. We also have the right to be informed before we speak, and thus to expect the government not to keep secrets from the citizens. That’s not an ancillary right; it’s a fundamental right.

One of the things that makes me proud about my newspaper is its long history of going to bat for the public’s right to be informed.

Transparency isn’t about being “media friendly.” It’s about being truthful with the public.

Even if it is uncomfortable for public officials, the people have the right to know what federal, state and local officials know.

Ms. Clinton is not a right-to-know person. She is a secrecy person. That should concern us. But worse, far worse, than that is she places her own prerogatives and desires — she places herself — above the law. That’s chilling. And, to me, disqualifying.

Keith C. Burris is a columnist for The Blade of Toledo, Ohio (kburris@theblade.com, 419-724-6266).

First Published: April 6, 2015, 4:00 a.m.