Kathleen Parker: Hillary Clinton’s Classy Mea Culpa on Libya
Kathleen Parker: Hillary Clinton’s Classy Mea Culpa on Libya
Once again, Hillary Clinton has demonstrated herself to be the classiest person in the room. No wonder she’s one of the most revered public figures in America.
But she is a politician, the context by which all things must be judged — at least on second pass. The first pass goes as follows: She manned up. She took responsibility for the attacks at the Benghazi compound. Good for the secretary of state.
Speaking from Peru on Monday, Clinton told CNN, “I take responsibility” for protecting diplomats. “What I want to avoid is some kind of political gotcha.”
Which brings us to the second pass.
There’s nothing like a preemptive act of courage, otherwise known as falling on one’s sword, to prevent a gotcha, particularly during a presidential campaign in which the challenger is trying to focus on security and/or intelligence failures that resulted in the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans.
This rendition seems to be the most popular among Republicans — so far. Alternatives include that Clinton is making herself a target so that Republicans will attack her and attract sympathetic women back to the Obama fold. Riiiiight.
In the month since the attacks, a timeline of which shows a variety of explanations and backfilling, the word Benghazi has become Barack Obama’s WMD. What did he know and when did he know it?