Benghazi Hearings Shed Light On Clinton's Viability

It's no secret that I am not a fan of Hilary Clinton. Still, unlike most democrats, republicans such as myself can be fair about the issues, the controversies, and the scandals. My take away from the recent congressional hearings with Mrs. Clinton regarding the entire Benghazi thing is that she was not hurt by the hearings, and the republicans missed an opportunity to bring to light what I think is one very important and crucial question.

Why did she choose to openly lie to the American people about the nature of the attack on the facility in Benghazi?

Because the fact that she did in fact lie is quite clear if anyone was paying an ounce of attention to the hearings. She told the American people that the attack in Benghazi was due to a video that riled the core of factions of terrorist groups. Yet at the same time confided to family members, the Egyptian prime minister and the Lybian president that it was a planned attack that had, in her words, nothing at all to do with any video.

The open question for me is did the video narrative come into play because we were two weeks from Obama's reelection campaign, and because he was campaigning that his war on terror was effective and was telling us that "Al-Qaeda is on the run," and the true facts of the attack would have squarely rendered those claims false, and could have had serious implications for Barack Obama winning a second term in office?

I think the answer is yes. She did not come out and say it. And unfortunately the republicans did not press the issue. But why should this be so important to anyone? Republican, democrat or independent? Because it should have people asking the question of what kind of a leader can we trust who puts politics before being truthful to the American people, especially in a case where four American lives were lost?

Quite clearly this should immediately disqualify her for ever holding the highest office in the land.

What else might she lie about? What kind of transparency can we expect? Do we want more secrecy in government, or less? Do we want a president who tells us one thing, and knows that what they are telling us is patently false? Or do we want a president who can be honest and forthcoming, even when the truth hurts?

I think the latter is what we truly want.

This is not to suggest that anyone in politics, on either side of the aisle, tells the truth one hundred percent of the time. We know this is not true at all. But it is when lives are at stake and when people have a right to know what we are doing, what is happening, and when politicians are reluctant to tell the truth because it might hurt their careers that we really have to start asking crucial questions and holding those politicians accountable for their actions.

Keep in mind that our system of government was never set up to protect our leaders. It was never set up to protect our elected officials. Our system of government was set up to protect the citizens of this country, and to protect those who we put in harms way on behalf of our government and for the protection of our people. If the American people do not hold Hilary Clinton accountable for outright lying for political gain then we have a serious problem in this country, and the country as a whole is in trouble.

Okay. So there is an underlying perspective that Hilary and Barack are not friends. Why would she be on board to lie and protect the president to win reelection? What would she have to gain?

For me this a very easy answer.

Quite simply, she wants her shot at the White House. She wanted it before Barack Obama became president and probably felt that the election should have been hers in the first place. If the truth about Benghazi would have come out at the time, it is quite possible that Barack Obama would have lost, Mitt Romney would have won, and due to her age, and the possibility that Romney could have remained in office for two terms, her chance to ever effectively run for the White House would likely never have happened.

She was protecting Barack Obama to ultimately protect herself and protect her chance at the presidency further down the road.

That should make anyone quite scared to have her in the Oval Office if you ask me. Her interests are not, and have not been the interests of the American people. Her interests at the core are hers alone. To advance herself to the White House and gain power. She will stop at nothing, as the Clintons have proven through the years, to get what she wants. And if it means outright lying or leaving people dead...let the bodies hit the floor. "What difference does it make?" She wants to be president. Nothing else matters. 

The Failure of an American President

I have no desire at all for a president to fail. But when a president does in fact fail, I think it is all too imperative that the American people recognize this, despite any party affliliations one may have, or any other biases for that matter. To do anything else is to the detriment of the institution of the presidency of the United States, and to the country itself.

I think in the case of president Barack Obama, his failure to the American people is all too obvious, and on many levels. But also obvious is that part of the reason that the president has managed to escape his own failures is that a large population of Americans are simply disengaged from the issues that rule the day. Even worse, I think the pool of these disengaged Americans, whom are otherwise often referred to as the uninformed voter, is a growing pool.

How else could president Barack Obama have been reelected but without the support of uninformed voters?

During his presidency gas prices doubled, and median household income was slashed by a whopping $4,000 a year. Not only that, but unemployment rates were sustained above 8% for a stubborn 40 months or so. And something I find interesting that doesn't seem to get a lot of attention is a statement made by Congressman Betty Sutton that in 2010, on average, 23 manufacturing facilities were permanently shuttered every single day.

The latter I find particularly interesting considering democrats have always been on the side of American labor and jobs. Moreover, manufacturing jobs are the bread and butter of the middle class, and provide good paying jobs to people who perhaps have less opportunity to go to college—in other words, the working class that democrats have always touted being on the side of obviously received no benefit whatsoever from the Obama administration during his first term in office when so many promises were made that he would fix a broken economy, and put hard working middle class America back to work.

Back to work where would be a good question since few businesses were hiring, and any new businesses in the green economy that Barack Obama claimed would provide new jobs with great pay for struggling American workers mostly have all gone bankrupt.

The green economy has produced no real new jobs for anyone, and while unemployment numbers may be showing some indication of improving, we are not even close to replacing the total of lost jobs since the beginning and end of the Great Recession.

And then of course, there was Benghazi, which I think would have been a terrible blow to any president on any side of the aisle seeking reelection. Four Americans died. And it is clear that the Obama administration lied to the American people about what happened. Moreover, the failure by the Administration to keep Americans safe in regions where there were obvious threats to safety, was all but ignored by the people who helped to keep president Obama in the White House.

My point in all of this is that it is okay to give a shot to the new kid in town. Barack Obama came onto the scene almost out of nowhere and was able to connect with the American people, and brought great messages of hope and change, and made a promise to the American people that he would be the great leader in restoring the faith of the American people in their government. He was going to fix things and make life better for everyone. But he did none of these things. And it is not okay to fail to recognize this. It is not okay to overlook failures.

The people did not overlook the failures of Richard Nixon. Nor did they overlook the failures of Jimmy Carter. The American people got it. Something was wrong, and the American people were paying focused attention to the details. The American people on both sides of the aisle did not allow for excuses to be made.

Richard Nixon resigned, in part, because he knew that to do otherwise would damage the country, and he knew that to continue to serve in the office of the president was not in the best interest of the American people. And Jimmy Carter was not reelected because clearly no one was better off than they were when he took office.

As a result of uninformed voters and disengaged Americans, a president was allowed to slide past the radar, and allowed to perpetuate the course of failure, and this may prove a very difficult course to reverse. The impact on the American people and the American way of life has been severely compromised in my opinion, and while I am not suggesting doomsday has arrived, I think it can only get worse.

Now we have the IRS scandal, the AP scandal, and we still don't know what happened in Benghazi. Of course there was Fast and Furious. And the economy is still in the slowest recovery mode in history. Worst of all, the president has only increased his belief in the policies that have yet to be proven to have helped in any way.

Failure is not something to hope for at all. But it is also not something to be ignored.