On October 22, the House Select Committee on Benghazi will hear testimony from Hillary Clinton regarding “…her role in the events that led up to the 2012 Benghazi, Libya terrorist attack that left four Americans dead — and, more than likely, her email practices that have come under fire in recent weeks.” It will offer House Republicans the opportunity of a lifetime: grilling the front-running (though wounded) Democratic presidential candidate under oath and before a sea of media.
If Republicans want to inflict maximum damage on Mrs. Clinton, they should call off the hearing.
The reasons are quite simple.
Clinton’s campaign has been taking on water for weeks. She’s been reduced to offering a non-apology apology, which shows a campaign that is increasingly running out of damage control options. The White House is leaving her to twist in the wind while Joe Biden does his best Mario Cuomo imitation and Bernie Sanders continues to close in on her in Iowa (while leading in New Hampshire).
What’s a Clinton to do?
Play for time…and trust that its most reliable of lifelines appears when it’s needed most — the GOP.
Republicans have always been there for the Clintons. They chased Bill with hellish fury in the 1990s, eventually impeaching him and, in the process, giving rise to the enduring epithet, “Clinton Derangement Syndrome.”
The pursuit couldn’t topple Bill, but it did devour two House Speakers, and eventually the GOP’s Senate majority. It made Hillary into something that seemed utterly inconceivable — a sympathetic character who rode that wave of good feelings into the Senate for eight years.
Yes, the doubts raised along the way may have helped fuel, to a small degree, Mrs. Clinton’s failed White House bid in 2008. But it never put a dent in the Clinton Machine. The money and influence kept flowing – as did the high-handed, and downright shady day-to-day operations of Bill & Hillary, Inc. The Clintons are wealthy and powerful. Thanks in no small part to the GOP’s unceasing, and often histrionic, pursuit.
There is no reason, at all, to believe the Benghazi committee will change that. Republicans (and congressmen in general) simply cannot help themselves. With an apparently weakened enemy in their grasp, committee members will do what they have done throughout history: grandstand and bluster. It might even get some of the more obscure members that most precious thing of all, a viral gotcha.
In other words, they will give Clinton exactly what she so desperately needs.
She will be able to show that warmth and human connection the focus groups says she lacks. Clinton will be able to punch back, and show she’s tough and decisive, or she can adopt the pose of a woman being senselessly harassed and unfairly savaged by preening bullies. Maybe both.
Sympathy rekindled, and Republicans portrayed as chasing phantoms, she effectively reboots her campaign.
The Clinton playbook works once again.
None of this removes the possibility that the various other investigations into her email issues won’t blow up her campaign. Her influence there is tangential to non-existent.
But a circus-like hearing solves some immediate political problems. Perhaps just enough to make her unbeatable, and inevitable, once again.
The pure politics of this hearing say that if Republicans want Clinton to fall, they should deny her the platform and audience she needs. Let the drip, drip, drip of the email investigation continue to erode her political viability. Let the White House continue to keep her at arms-distance and publicly toy with the possibility of a Biden bid. Let Bernie continue to roll up the crowds and poll numbers.
That’s how they bring Clinton down and wreck the Machine.
