Most of the polls, verdicts, analyses, post-mortems, etc. on the GOP Select Inquisition on Benghazi are in, and the overwhelming majority calls it a shameful loss for the Trey Gowdy-led gang of prosecutors and a definitive win for the outnumbered, yet gallant and effective Elijah Cummings-led let’s-have-some-sanity team.
But he biggest winner was, without a doubt, the target of the inquisition, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Below are excerpts from two analyses.
The first one, is a column by the New York Times Editorial Board that hits the nail on the head with serious, pragmatic commentary.
The second one is not as serious, but because of its “unseriousness” perhaps says more about how Clinton benefitted from the inquisition than any other pundit has been able to state.
First, the New York Times editorial Board:
Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former secretary of state, spent hours on Thursday facing down a gang of spiteful Republican lawmakers who once saw great promise in hauling her before a congressional committee to hold her responsible for the deadly attack that killed the American ambassador and three colleagues in Libya in Sept. 2012.
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The pointless grilling of Mrs. Clinton, who fielded a barrage of questions that have long been answered and settled, served only to embarrass the Republican lawmakers who have spent millions of dollars on a political crusade. In recent days, some prominent Republicans have even admitted as much.
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If there was any notion that the Select Committee on Benghazi might be on to something, it was quickly dispelled. In a flailing performance, the committee’s chairman, Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, made it evident that he and his colleagues have squandered more than $4.6 million and countless hours poring over State Department records and Mrs. Clinton’s email. They produced no damning evidence, elicited no confessions and didn’t succeed in getting an angry reaction from Mrs. Clinton.[::]
“It is a prosecution,” Representative Adam Smith, one of the Democrats on the committee, said during the hearing. “It is a partisan exercise.”
Mrs. Clinton, who lost her temper the last time she testified on Capitol Hill about the Benghazi attacks, was thoughtful and patient on Thursday. She acknowledged the findings of an independent investigation into the attacks led by the former American diplomat Thomas Pickering and retired Adm. Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That inquiry identified systemic failings by the State Department, which Mrs. Clinton said she took steps to address before leaving office in 2013.
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The suggestion that she was personally negligent and that her team took steps to cover up facts are “a very personally painful accusation,” Mrs. Clinton testified. “I’ve lost more sleep than all of you put together,” she said. “I have been racking my brain about what more could have been done or should have been done.”
The editorial concludes:
Now that the hearing, which was intended to be the climactic point of the Benghazi committee inquiry, is over, the Democrats who reluctantly agreed to join the panel when it was established in May 2014 should walk away. The Republicans are expected to issue a report. May it be the final chapter of a wasteful and counterproductive exercise that accomplished nothing.
Read more here.
Then we have the inimitable Andy Borowitz writing at the New Yorker that there is no group of people who Hillary Clinton owes more for raising her poll numbers and advancing her presidential campaign than the “gang of seven” who allowed her to grin and bear it, even shine, at the inquisition.
According to Borowitz, Hillary Clinton has thanked the House Select Committee on Benghazi for what she calls an “invaluable service to my Presidential campaign.”
Borowitz points out how Clinton’s statement is characterized by “fulsome gratitude” towards the Republicans on the committee, “in contrast with the adversarial tone of much of Thursday’s hearings.”
Borowitz:
“For months, my campaign has been rocked by difficulties and doubts,” [Clinton] said. “Yesterday, with your help, all of that changed.”
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Clinton gave special thanks to the committee chairman, Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, who she said “went far beyond the call of duty to help get my candidacy back on track.”
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“One lingering question about me as a politician has been whether people like me enough to vote for me,” she said. “I want to thank you, Trey Gowdy, for making me seem likable.”
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The statement ended on an emotional note, in which Clinton said that, if elected, she “will never forget” the Benghazi committee’s role in winning her the White House. “You were there for me when I needed you,” she said.
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Amazing how (GOP) life imitates satire.
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