By Rich Galen
Friday, May 10, 2013
Politics or policy? Policy or politics?
Those were the questions posed to me by MSNBC's Chris
Jansing Wednesday morning an hour before the curtain was due to go up on the
hearings before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee chaired by
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA).
I said that it is always a combination of both.
Are Republicans in the U.S. House looking for an edge in
the on-going battle with the Democrat-controlled Senate across the Capitol
Building and the Democratic Administration down Pennsylvania Avenue?
Of course they are.
Does that mean the House hearings were frivolous? No.
On the other hand did anyone at the State Department,
CIA, DoD, White House or MIB ever say "We've go to protect the boss on
this" when the response to the raid on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya
was being prepared?
Of course they did.
Does that mean the White House and Executive Branch
worker bees responsible for trying to come up with a rational answer as to how
a sitting Ambassador and three other Americans were killed in the raid were
deaf, dumb, and blind to the facts? Also no.
What we do know is that by the time President Obama - and
we have to assume he had been briefed by then - had approved sending U.N.
Ambassador Susan Rice out on all five major Sunday talk shows to claim the
raids were the result of the "Arab street" rioting over some movie
trailer claiming to spoof the Prophet Mohammed, the Administration at least
suspected the raid had been a planned attack, not random mob violence.
As to MIB's role? I don't know and you don't want to know
either.
I was on MSNBC with former reporter and former
spokesperson for the Department of Transportation Jill Zuckman.
Prior to going into our respective studios for our 4½
minutes of television fame and glory, we were discussing what an executive
(like the President or a Cabinet Secretary) can reasonably be expected to know.
I made the point that there was no way for President
Obama to know that it is estimated there were 26,000 cases of sexual abuse in
the U.S. military in 2012. Maybe the SecDef couldn't have known that either.
Maybe the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs couldn't have known. But SOMEbody should
have known and passed the information up the line.
The "buck" only stops on the President's desk -
any President's desk - when he knows there's a dollar bill in circulation
looking for a home.
That covers Obama on the night of the attack, but it
doesn't let him off the hook for the way his Administration responded to it.
Going back to Secretary Hillary Clinton's testimony on
the attack, I believe it is now legit to view her anger and frustration not at
the questioners - but borne of her knowledge that her Department had lied - or
had orchestrated the lies of Susan Rice - to the American people.
Why? To protect the Obama campaign narrative that he had
Al-Qaeda on the run and national security was not nearly as important an issue
as whether or not Mitt Romney's dog liked riding on the top of the family car.
I have no idea where this will end up. It does not appear
that it - in spite of many of your fondest wishes - rises to the level of
impeachment of the President, but it may put an indelible stain on the
reputation of Hillary Clinton.
Chris Jansing tried to press me (going back to the
politics or policy question) as to whether House Republicans were on a witch
hunt (my ironic phrase not hers) because Mrs. Clinton is such a
"formidable candidate" for 2016.
I said that was exactly what people said about her in
2007 and "how did that turn out?"
There will be a couple of tip-offs as to whether this
will have political (and policy) legs.
First, if Democrats begin to peel away from defending the
Administration generally, and/or Hillary Clinton in particular about the way
this was handled.
Second, if the press corps begins referring to it as:
Benghzai-gate.
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