As a former reporter, I retained the habit of carefully detailing in my government notebooks what was discussed and decided in meetings in the Situation Room. During this period, however, my scribbles jumped from detailing Libyan military movements to recording specific telephone instructions from a nurse about how to adjust my IVF drug regimen. It dawned on me that future researchers of the Arab Spring who dug through the White House archives would have a hard time making sense of this juxtaposition.

