Incredibly important that we have this record as a democracy
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.
Here is a case against Obama for instance https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/tran...
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.
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.
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.
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'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.
Because you quantified that the benefit of its presence is zero.
That aside, setting aside presidential documents of particularly historical times is a useful exercise.
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.