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Turns out many in the media have been following the lead of the NY Times re Hillary Clinton. Jake Tapper starts us off with the dénouement of Benghazi.
As of today, it’s official, the Obama administration is holding no one responsible for what happened before the deadly attacks on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya. Last fall, it was only a matter of days after those four Americans were killed in Benghazi before evidence started appearing indicating that State Department officials paid insufficient attention to requests from diplomats and security personnel in Libya desperately asking for additional security. Around that time, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put four State Department officials on administrative leave. But, as of today, those four have been invited back to work. Secretary of State John Kerry decided that the four do not deserve any formal disciplinary action, and a State Department official tells me that there was no breach of duty for these officials and that they are not returning to their previous positions. …
Salon with a Camille Paglia interview that will not please Hillary.
… As a registered Democrat, I am praying for a credible presidential candidate to emerge from the younger tier of politicians in their late 40s. A governor with executive experience would be ideal. It’s time to put my baby-boom generation out to pasture! We’ve had our day and managed to muck up a hell of a lot. It remains baffling how anyone would think that Hillary Clinton (born the same year as me) is our party’s best chance. She has more sooty baggage than a 90-car freight train. And what exactly has she ever accomplished — beyond bullishly covering for her philandering husband? She’s certainly busy, busy and ever on the move — with the tunnel-vision workaholism of someone trying to blot out uncomfortable private thoughts.
I for one think it was a very big deal that our ambassador was murdered in Benghazi. In saying “I take responsibility” for it as secretary of state, Hillary should have resigned immediately. The weak response by the Obama administration to that tragedy has given a huge opening to Republicans in the next presidential election. The impression has been amply given that Benghazi was treated as a public relations matter to massage rather than as the major and outrageous attack on the U.S. that it was.
Throughout history, ambassadors have always been symbolic incarnations of the sovereignty of their nations and the dignity of their leaders. It’s even a key motif in “King Lear.” As far as I’m concerned, Hillary disqualified herself for the presidency in that fist-pounding moment at a congressional hearing when she said, “What difference does it make what we knew and when we knew it, Senator?” Democrats have got to shake off the Clinton albatross and find new blood. The escalating instability not just in Egypt but throughout the Mideast is very ominous. There is a clash of cultures brewing in the world that may take a century or more to resolve — and there is no guarantee that the secular West will win. …
Jennifer Rubin with interesting take on Benghazi.
A former Bush national security figure had an interesting take on Hillary Clinton’s challenge, should she run for president in 2016, and her historical legacy, even if she doesn’t.
The observation has been made by numerous critics of the Obama administration that the real center of national security power has always been in the Oval Office, where political operatives played an inappropriately large role on national security matters. The former official says this is no excuse for Hillary: “She was perfectly happy to be an irrelevant secretary of state, racking up the frequent-flier miles, rather than engaging in a serious policy debate in Washington. A secretary of state has to do a lot of showing up, but that travel has to be restrained or one is never in Washington long enough to impact the important decisions.”
The ex-official attributes the Benghazi debacle in large part to Hillary’s globetrotting and lack of executive focus. He figures, “Perhaps if she had spent more time in Washington, she might have had time to ask some questions about the deteriorating security situation in Libya, and in Benghazi in particular. The excuse that she can’t be responsible for reading all the cables that come in to State is no excuse for her not paying enough attention to what’s happening in Libya — and it wouldn’t have taken much attention — to ask whether there was a security problem, and if so, what plans did we have to handle an emergency, particularly after the fiasco in early 2011 when it took forever to get Americans out of the country.” Needless to say, the failure to have a system in place for flagging critical memos is solely her fault.
Hillary’s famous 3 a.m. phone call ad turned out to be prophetic. Obama was not prepared for the myriad of foreign policy challenges. But neither was she.
Here’s Politico on the story.
Tabloid headlines. Personal dramas. Organizational disarray. Score-settling between rival factions documented in news accounts like a soap opera.
Does this have a familiar ring?
No one — or mostly no one — truly believes the swirl of headlines surrounding Bill and Hillary Clinton in the summer of 2013 should lead to a grand conclusion about whether another iteration of a Clinton campaign can be run effectively, free of the internecine warfare and incessant drama that marked her 2008 bid.
But if Clinton and her supporters were hoping to allay those doubts well ahead of a possible 2016 run, the past few months have not been helpful.
Clinton supporters would point out, fairly, that much of what has happened to them this summer — the steady stream of unseemly stories about Anthony Weiner’s continued virtual liaisons, his wife and Clinton confidante Huma Abedin’s very public decision to stand by him, and reports of mismanagement at the Clinton Foundation — has been beyond their control.
But it has all still renewed the question that hangs over Hillary Clinton: Has she learned from the mistakes of the past, and can she finally break some recurring cycles in her public life? Can she manage a functional, and focused, national campaign? …
The NY Post zeros in on Clinton organizations’ travel expenses for 10 years. Would you believe $50 million?
Bill Clinton’s foundation has spent more than $50 million on travel expenses since 2003, an analysis of the non-profit’s tax forms reveal.
The web of foundations run by the former president spent an eye-opening $12.1 million on travel in 2011 alone, according to an internal audit conducted by foundation accountants. That’s enough to by 12,000 air tickets costing $1,000 each, or 33 air tickets each day of the year.
That overall figure includes travel costs for the William J. Clinton Foundation (to which Hillary and Chelsea are now attached) of $4.2 million on travel in 2011, the most recent year where figures are available.
The Clinton Global Health Initiative spent another $730,000 on travel, while the Clinton Health Action Initiative (CHAI) spent $7.2 million on travel.
CHAI also spent $2.9 million on meetings and training, according to the report, conducted by the Little Rock, Ark. Accounting firm BDK CPA’s and Advisors. All three entities have global reach, while CHAI has the most staff.
It’s impossible to discern from tax filings how the total travel costs were reached, although the former president is known to rack up his personal miles on private jets.
Wealthy businessman John Catsimatitis has lent aircraft to Clinton and to the foundation multiple times for travel, including Clinton’s recent trip to Africa along with daughter, Chelsea.
Clinton sometimes uses Catsimatitis’ Boeing 727, opting on other flights to use a smaller Gulfstream jet. …
Power Line cheers on Maureen Dowd.
You know the old saying about how even stopped clocks are right twice a day. The New York Times op-ed columnist version of this would be that one of the Krugman-Friedman-Collins-Dowd foursome will get something right about once a year. (I’ll take once a decade from Friedman or Krugman.)
Today is Maureen Dowd’s turn to get something right, reminding us of why she was a popular political news journalist before the Times ruined her by making her an self-indulgent, faux-introspective op-ed columnist. She trains her snarky eye on a worthy target: the Clintons. …
Jennifer Rubin says the Clintons never change.
You can see how Hillary Clinton lost in 2008. She comes in with an air of entitlement. The chattering class declares her the prohibitive favorite. She runs a campaign with questionable political judgments based on her own inevitably.The cloud of controversies that follow the Clintons like Pig Pen’s dust comes blowing in. The pundits and then the voters are reminded what an ordeal the Clintons can be while Hillary Clinton’s innate caution and lack of accomplishment make her less than stirring as a presidential candidate. Enter someone to her left to remind primary voters that they are forever being cheated of a “real” standard bearer.
With the exception of a rival to her left, you can easily fit 2016 into the same sequence. In 2008 Clinton was 30 or more points ahead in early polling, but she ran on experience in a “change” election. Now, to the dismay of some of her media fans, she’s weighing in very early, trying to rid the field of competitors before the race even starts. But soon we are reminded of the Clintons’ money-grubbing ways (then it was the Lincoln bedroom, now it is the Clinton Foundation) and penchant for mismanagement. The Anthony Weiner incident not only echoed the Clintons’ private dramas but also focused on the peculiar deal Clinton struck with , Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin:
“Ms. Abedin, 37, a confidante of Mrs. Clinton’s, was made a “special government employee” in June 2012. That allowed her to continue her employment at State but also work for Teneo, a consulting firm, founded in part by a former aide to President Bill Clinton, that has a number of corporate clients, including Coca-Cola. In addition, Ms. Abedin worked privately for the Clinton Foundation and for Mrs. Clinton personally.”
Yes, the line between the taxpayers’ money and the Clintons’ own pecuniary interests has been as porous as President Obama’s red lines. …
