I did not watch the Benghazi hearings, unlike many others, in hopes of catching Secretary Clinton out, with my ears perked up for some admission that could sink her presidential ambitions.

Secretary Clinton did not disappoint in her performance on Thursday.

She admitted to no wrongdoing, nor to breaking any laws.

Mistakes were made by others, the fault lies elsewhere.

Secretary Clinton was far more adept at bobbing and weaving than the members of Congress who questioned her were at pinning her down.

She put up with hours and hours of questions, and no one laid a glove on her.



Secretary Clinton was far more adept at bobbing and weaving than the members of Congress who questioned her were at pinning her down.

She brushed off blame by saying security decisions were handled at lower levels of the State Department professional staff, not by the secretary.

She didn't receive Ambassador Stevens' requests for more security -- implying that if only she had things might have turned out differently.

It was a masterful performance. She showed enormous discipline and nearly super-human stamina.



She let nothing slip. But in the end she let everything slip. She got a perfect score, but failed the test.

She didn't mean to, but she showed us a glimpse into her soul.

It was chilling.



We now know that when Secretary Clinton met the plane carrying the bodies of the four Americans who died at Benghazi that the Obama administration had intially lied about what happened.

She stood over the flag-draped coffins of four dead Americans knowing that the first narrative blamed their deaths on an Internet video, which caused a demonstration outside the consulate to turn into a deadly attack, when she already knew the truth.

She looked into the eyes of the families of the fallen heroes knowing all about that.

She always knew they died from a planned terrorist attack from an Al Qaeda-like group. That's what she told her family and foreign leaders according to newly released emails.

So why support the false narrative at the start? Because the Obama administration had an election to win eight weeks later, and a terrorist attack that killed four Americans didn't fit into that plan.



President Obama asked voters to reelect him because he had killed Usama bin Laden. Al Qaeda was on the ropes. Qaddafi was dead and the Libyan war a success. The wave of war was a receding. President George W. Bush's War on Terror was over because Obama and Clinton had won it.



A terrorist attack that killed Americans at Benghazi did not fit into that campaign narrative, so it had to be retold and spun into a different story. It wasn't radical Islamist terrorists, but a spontaneous demonstration that got out of control in reaction to an obscure Internet video.



In the end, the Benghazi hearings probably didn't change many minds.

Secretary Clinton's supporters will say it was a waste of time, a politically motivated witchhunt.

Secretary Clinton's detractors will say she never answered the questions.

But for me it wasn't the questions or the answers that mattered.

It wasn't about negligence or criminality or incompetence.

Instead it was -- and still is -- about character. And Secretary Clinton has been found wanting.

The even greater tragedy is Secretary Clinton doesn’t think she did anything wrong. In today’s Washington integrity and truth telling -- even to mourning families -- take a backseat to the relentless pursuit of power.

No wonder the rest of the country wants to throw all the bums out.

