I watched some of Clinton’s testimony yesterday, but at a fairly early point I decided to stop.
The reason? My gut feeling was that nothing would come of it. Note I don’t write that “there was nothing worthwhile that was said or revealed.” There was plenty, and it should have been meaningful. But all of it was just an underlining, with more proof based on emails, of things we already knew—things the right cares about and the left doesn’t.
I think it’s really just as simple as that. And what’s even simpler was predicting what the MSM would say about it. Sure enough, on the Yahoo page that comes up when I go to check my email, the featured story was advertised with a photo of Hillary Clinton and a headline and blurb that went like this:
“Benghazi panel gives Clinton presidential platform”
The 11-hour hearing yields precious little new information and no major political missteps by the Democratic front-runner.
If I was the person (in terms of politics) I’d been until fourteen or so years ago, I’d most likely have scanned that headline and figured it meant that Hillary had done well, had done nothing wrong, there was nothing new, all was okay, and that I didn’t have to read any further. All I needed to know was contained there: nothing more to see, move right along. And I’d have been only too happy to have done so, because hearings are boring and there’s lots of better things to do. Multiply that by many, many, many millions.
I’m remembering back to the Watergate hearings, though, when there were also better things to do and yet we were riveted to our TV screens. What was the difference?
One difference was that televised hearings were relatively few and far between in those days compared to our C-SPAN era. Another was that something was up, something was in the air, something that felt very important. How did that get conveyed? It had become clear for quite some time that President Nixon might be implicated, and Nixon was the sort of figure that even most of his own supporters didn’t like all that much, and whom the MSM absolutely detested. There was no way the media was going to defend him, and that was part of the “something in the air.”
Besides, the media itself was a big part of the story. Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward were cast as heroes, and they and the rest of the press had a big investment in seeing a president brought down (especially this president). Plus, there were characters such as Democrat Sam Ervin, who became an audience favorite. He was given to pronouncements such as this one, part of his reaction to Nixon’s refusal to turn over the tapes (at least somewhat analogous to Hillary’s initial stonewalling on the emails):
I deeply regret that this situation has arisen, because I think that the Watergate tragedy is the greatest tragedy this country has ever suffered. I used to think that the Civil War was our country’s greatest tragedy, but I do remember that there were some redeeming features in the Civil War in that there was some spirit of sacrifice and heroism displayed on both sides.
Hyperbole much? Can you imagine if a Republican senator had referred to Clinton’s behavior as “the greatest tragedy this country has ever suffered,” how much that senator would have been ridiculed? And yet, in quite a few ways, I see Benghazi as worse than Watergate. Certainly, the reaction of the Democrats is far far worse than the reaction of Republicans to Watergate; it was Republicans who ultmately turned on Nixon and forced him out by withdrawing their support.
I wrote about the Democrats’ reaction to Benghazi two years ago, when the Issa hearings on Benghazi had already began:
David Gelernter nails it:
It is the Democratic Party that’s on trial today; and to a lesser extent, America’s mainstream media. For Democrats (and especially Democratic senators) it is put-up-or-shut-up time: are they Democrats or Americans first?…
How would Republicans act if a GOP administration were under this sort of cloud? We know exactly how. It was the radically partisan Edward Kennedy who proposed that a senate select committee investigate Watergate””but in February 1973, the Senate voted unanimously to create that committee. Republican Senator Howard Baker was vice chairman, and asked the key question: ”What did the president know and when did he know it?” Which Democratic senator will ask that question today, now that the issue isn’t breaking-and-entering but lying about four murders, including the murder of an American ambassador? Which cabinet member will be Eliot Richardson and resign rather than continuing to be part of a coverup? Will John Kerry rise to the challenge?
The answers, unfortunately are “none” and “no.”
It’s only gotten worse, much worse. Republicans are not even asking about the president any more; he seems irrelevant even though he almost undoubtedly is not. And it’s been proven without a shadow of a doubt that the person soon to be the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, “lied about four murders, including the murder of an American ambassador,” and not a single Democrat can seem to manage to say a word against her on that score. Nor, as far as I can see, can the liberal MSM.
It’s a bit like this Onion piece:
More than a week after President Barack Obama’s cold-blooded killing of a local couple, members of the American news media admitted Tuesday that they were still trying to find the best angle for covering the gruesome crime.
“I know there’s a story in there somewhere,” said Newsweek editor Jon Meacham, referring to Obama’s home invasion and execution-style slaying of Jeff and Sue Finowicz on Apr. 8. “Right now though, it’s probably best to just sit back and wait for more information to come in. After all, the only thing we know for sure is that our president senselessly murdered two unsuspecting Americans without emotion or hesitation.”…
What exactly is the news hook here?” asked Rick Kaplan, executive producer of the CBS Evening News. “Is this an upbeat human-interest story about a ‘day in the life’ of a bloodthirsty president who likes to kill people? Or is it more of an examination of how Obama’s unusual upbringing in Hawaii helped to shape the way he would one day viciously butcher two helpless citizens in their own home?”
“Or maybe the story is just that murder is cool now,” Kaplan continued. “I don’t know. There are a million different angles on this one.”
So far, the president’s double-homicide has not been covered by any major news outlets.
Just now, looking at that “Benghazi panel gives Hillary presidential platform” story with which I began this post, and starting to read the comments there, I saw this one that references Watergate:
You know, Watergate evolved to what it became in American history because of a cover-up. A cover-up of deceitful politics. HRC’s cover-up of Benghazi (she finally admitted to it) is equally shameful and four people died. America kicked out a president in 1975, in 2015 America seems to celebrate presidents (or at least candidates) who don’t even attempt to pull the wool over your eyes. Somewhere between then and now Americans have traded in their moral compass and for what I am not really sure.
They traded it in for self-congratulatory pats on the back, government dependence, and self-esteem awards for everyone. But what they’ll get goes way beyond that, and it’s not good.
[NOTE: If you want to look at some of the substantive revelations at the hearings yesterday, see this from the WSJ. Some excerpts:
Here’s what the Benghazi committee found in Thursday’s hearing. Two hours into Mrs. Clinton’s testimony, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan referred to an email Mrs. Clinton sent to her daughter, Chelsea, at 11:12 the night of the attack, or 45 minutes after the secretary of state had issued a statement blaming YouTube-inflamed mobs. Her email reads: “Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al Queda-like group.” Mrs. Clinton doesn’t hedge in the email; no “it seems” or “it appears.” She tells her daughter that on the anniversary of 9/11 an al Qaeda group assassinated four Americans.
That same evening, Mrs. Clinton spoke on the phone with Libyan President Mohamed Magariaf, around 8 p.m. The notes from that conversation, in a State Department email, describe her as saying: “We have asked for the Libyan government to provide additional security to the compound immediately as there is a gun battle ongoing, which I understand Ansar as Sharia [sic] is claiming responsibility for.” Ansar al Sharia is al Qaeda’s affiliate on the Arabian Peninsula. So several hours into the attack, Mrs. Clinton already believed that al Qaeda was attacking U.S. facilities.
The next afternoon, Mrs. Clinton had a call with the Egyptian Prime Minister Hesham Kandil. The notes from it are absolutely damning. The secretary of state tells him: “We know that the attack in Libya had nothing to do with the film. It was a planned attack””not a protest.” And yet Mrs. Clinton, and Ms. Rice and Mr. Obama for days and days continued to spin the video lie.
In other news Thursday, Judicial Watch unveiled a new cable, sent the day after the attack, from the Defense Intelligence Agency to the State Department Command Center. It explains that the attack was carried out by a “Salafi terrorism group” in “retaliation for the killing of an Al Qaeda operative.”
The cable says “the attack was an organized operation with specific information that the U.S. Ambassador was present.” The cable included details about the group’s movements and the weapons it used in the assault.
Count on the Obama administration to again resort to blaming “confusing” and “conflicting” information at the time for its two-week spin. That was Mrs. Clinton’s flimsy excuse at the hearing. But her own conversations prove she was in no doubt about what happened””while it was still happening.
Yawn and ho-hum, says at least half the country.]