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I retired from the Army in January 2001. In the years that followed, still committed to and interested in national defense, I found myself watching the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings on CSPAN.

There was a pattern to those hearings. Lawmakers were prepared to ask a solid first question, maybe even a reasonable second question. However, many times, the depth of knowledge ended there. When the testimony from the Defense Department went deeper, as it often did, the senators were stumped. And so, they reverted to their political or personal ideologies. They used these hearings as another platform to push their agenda, not a place for serious conversation about challenges in our national defense.

Not Hillary Clinton. She knows her stuff, especially when it comes to what we need for a strong national defense.

I noticed it first during a hearing in 2003. She was new to the committee. Like her colleagues, she posed good first and second questions. But then something different happened. The harder the Defense Department came back at her with prepared answers, the deeper she dug. She didn’t fall back on political tropes. She capitalized on her knowledge to engage everyone in robust conversation.