J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press

Poor John McCain. The senior senator from Arizona, former presidential candidate and general Republican big-man-in-Washington was so busy on Wednesday complaining about President Obama’s handling of the Benghazi mission killings that he just didn’t have time to do his actual job and attend a hearing on the Benghazi mission killings.

Mr. McCain has said he wants to get to the bottom of what he seems absolutely certain was a catastrophic bungling of the Libyan situation by Mr. Obama and his team. He is proposing holding “Watergate-style” hearings on the matter, with lots of witnesses and of course, lots of television cameras.

But yesterday, when the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee received a classified briefing on the Benghazi issue, Mr. McCain was absent. His spokesman Brian Rogers blamed a “scheduling error.”



Politico reported that Senator Susan Collins was a bit miffed at Mr. McCain for not showing up and said it was unnecessary to create “a brand new committee” just for Benghazi “when we already have the Senate’s chief oversight committee, plus the Intelligence committee, examining this very important matter.”

Slate pointed out that Mr. McCain’s absence is a problem because Senate rules preclude other Senators from talking to him about the closed hearing. I’m not sure anyone is going to follow that rule, but it just underscores the risk that Mr. McCain is taking of looking buffoonish over the Benghazi killings.

Or, I should say, looking buffoonish again, because the whole thing is a reminder of how in 2008 he “suspended” his campaign against Barack Obama and dashed off to Washington during the financial meltdown. All he did was cry “emergency” and make everyone realize that no one in Washington, including in his own party, really cared what he had to say about the crisis.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky also missed the closed meeting on Benghazi, but managed to find the time for a TV interview in which he said he had big questions about what happened. “I don’t know enough of the details,” he said.