“The smartest people can write the worst emails and those of less intellect can write the best.”

― Paul Babicki

Good morning. I’m putting together a 2018 survival plan for the Democratic go-around, and I thought I would run it by you this morning to see if you had any ideas to add. I focus on the infamous email debacle.

Here are the players in the infamous adult “Our Gang” bunch who were caught flat-footed: the boyish Robby Mook, hirsute Joel Benenson, “Grandpa” John Podesta, and the shadowy, glamorous Huma Abedin, who, by the way, fits the description of all the movie Mata Hari figures of decades past.

We film critics know better; Greta Garbo was the best in the 1931 “Mata Hari” spy movie with Ramon Navarro, and she had cuter outfits than Huma.

Posting important secrets, like wedding arrangements, luncheon dates etc. on email? Really? Paddy Carr and I used to pass secret notes in the fifth grade, but we were good. We didn’t put them on billboards, which is essentially what an email is.

Our invisible ink system was best. We discovered in a Saturday matinee how to use lemon juice for invisible writing, and here’s how it worked:

1. Squeeze lemons to obtain their juice or obtain bottled lemon juice.

2. Use the juice as ‘ink’ by applying it to a stick or paintbrush and writing on paper.

3. Allow the paper to dry. (I think that’s where we went wrong; we were always too anxious.)

4. When you are ready to read your invisible message, hold the paper up to sunlight, a lightbulb (recommended) or another heat source. (It really worked until Sister Theresa caught us.)

Can you imagine the KGB sending out to the market for fresh lemons?

Hillary’s kids put out an unbelievable horde of emails; 650,000 were found on Huma’s laptop, which was being used part time by her husband, Anthony Weiner. Say what? 650,000? How can anyone write 650,000 emails?

I just counted mine: 845 over a two-year period. And I might add, I delete them daily, sometimes in mid-sentence.

Did these super-smart East Coast elitists learn nothing from their grandparents’ social entertainment habits back in the 1930s and ’40s? Were they not aware that the tools of the past were there for them to succeed? I speak of the decoder badges of my childhood. Ah! You remember.

I recall that Orphan Annie’s Secret Society was sponsored by the Ovaltine Co., and I had to send in some part of the label with 25 cents — which was a big deal in the ’30s — to get my decoder badge. Secret society? Type that into Facebook today and get ready to be surveilled.

But it went something like this: The badge came with a membership pin and a handbook teaching us how to decipher and encipher messages, using numbers to substitute for letters.

“Captain Midnight” was my after-school radio thrill in the ’30s. The captain offered a decoder badge that came in just before World War II, and was very exciting. It contained what were called “Code-O-Graphs” and required new box tops and an additional 25 cents.

There was also a decoding ring. I got that too, but gave it away to Margret Willerding in exchange for a kiss. Margret got the ring and welched on the kiss; I was a born patsy for cute girls.

Not even the Russians, Steve Bannon or Edward Snowden himself could have hacked our Orphan Annie and Captain Midnight decoder badges.

As a moviegoer from age 6, I was taken as well by the lack of imagination and drama of the Democratic National Committee’s undercover work. There wasn’t a Bogart trench coat to be seen, nor dark sunglasses nor slouch hats. They all looked like weekenders from Goldman Sachs. What fun is that?

I suspect Hillary’s kids had grown up on “The Brady Bunch,” when they should have been watching Turner Classics channel. Had not one of her ambition minions ever seen the great spy films? None of the fighters in the famous underground resistance in France would — had they had access to them — ever have used emails.

The underground in my movies left messages in bottles in trash cans, notes folded into newspapers that they passed, one to the other, on trolley cars. You can’t hack a coded note written on a mirror in lipstick in a ladies’ room. If caught, they ate cyanide pills. Mrs. Clinton’s team got off easy, forced only to eat crow.

Now, 2018 is our next chance to recover our dignity. I suggest the next group be composed of older hands with better movie memories, like Bernie Sanders and me. Call my agent.

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer.