Obama’s challenge to the three amigos
By Wes Pruden
PrudenPolitics.com
President Obama is still playing Sir Walter Raleigh,
standing between himself and Susan Rice, the
ambassador to the United Nations and the designated
scapegoat in the Benghazi cover-up.
“Susan Rice is extraordinary,” the president told
his Cabinet as he convened its first session since
he was re-elected. “Couldn’t be prouder of the job
she’s done.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, no
doubt grateful that she had not been elected to
scapegoathood, led the round of applause for Miss
Rice.
Spreading his cloak across the mud hole, however
much it was offered in the spirit of Sir Walter, is
not likely to keep the little lady’s feet dry. But
it’s the least a gentleman, or even someone
pretending to be a gentleman, could do for a
scapegoat of the president’s own making.
Neither the ambassador’s critics in the U.S. Senate
nor the toothless tigers of the mainstream media
have wanted to ask the question that has been
begging to be asked since the tragedy broke on Sept.
11: “What did the president know, and when did he
know it?” The two amigos – John McCain of Arizona
and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina – have been
joined by Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire in pursuing
Miss Rice, just as the White House wants them to do.
That’s how shell games work.
Mr.
Obama is a master of sleight-of-hand, though it’s
true that he might be working with easy marks,
willing to be rolled. As long as the president can
keep the anger of the amigos and their colleagues in
the Senate focused on the ladies in his cabinet,
he’ll suffer no pain. Miss Rice emerged from her
meeting with the three amigos unchastened, though
the amigos were said to be angry and frustrated, but
wouldn’t say why. It’s likely that Miss Rice did not
show the proper respect, not having the usual
forelock to tug.
The
rap on Susan Rice is mostly that she’s arrogant,
vulgar, disrespectful and full of herself, qualities
which may not endear her to others but hardly set
her apart in Washington, where humility and modesty
are not often highly regarded. She does not have a
reputation for any of those nice qualities. She once
shot the late Richard Holbrooke, widely admired in
several diplomatic posts, including the one Miss
Rice holds now, the middle-finger salute during a
meeting of senior staff at the State Department.
She
mocked Sen. McCain (as well as Hillary Clinton)
mercilessly in the first Obama campaign. She derided
his fact-finding trip to Iraq in 2008 as “strolling
around the market in a flak jacket” and said he had
a “tendency to shoot first and ask questions later.”
Senators, who often have egos as big as elephants,
have elephantine memories to match. Remembering
affronts is natural.
“She
can be a most undiplomatic diplomat,” observes Dana
Milbank of The Washington Post, “and there likely
aren’t enough Republican or Democratic votes in the
Senate to confirm her.”
But
keeping attention focused on Susan Rice, as tempting
as such a target for “unexpended ordnance” might be,
as a fighter pilot would put it, is what the amigos
must do. Miss Rice’s role in Benghazi is small beer.
The
president, in fact, may feel a few pangs of male
guilt for sending out an unarmed woman to do what he
should have done. Miss Rice insisted in her round of
Sunday-morning television interviews, five days
after the American ambassador was killed, that the
attack was Muslim revenge for that infamous video
that almost nobody saw. The president knew better:
just two days after the attack, he was told by his
intelligence briefers, armed with communications
intercepts, that members of the mob had intimate
connections to al-Qaeda. Someone should inquire why
the president didn’t tell Miss Rice about that
before he dispatched her to that unhappy place
beneath the bus – and why the ambassador in Benghazi
had to pay with his life for her ticket.
The
“facts” – which hardly rose even to the level of
“factoids” – collided with the Obama campaign’s
fairy tale that the commander in chief, with his
very own trigger finger, had already finished off
al-Qaeda once and for all.
Sen. Kelly Ayotte
The
questions crying out for asking were the questions
familiar to top-level Washington scandal, “what did
the president know, and when did he know it?” Mr.
Obama has invited his Senate inquisitors to “go
after me,” not the little lady at the U.N. The three
amigos choose their weapons.
Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington
Times