Remember when Bill Clinton was still denying his involvement with Monica Lewinsky, and an indignant Hillary went out to face the cameras on his behalf, imagining that his troubles were due to “a vast right-wing conspiracy”? Well, fast forward fifteen years and she’s at it again, this time on behalf of her boss, Barack Obama, the incredible shrinking man who loves to take credit for everything (have you heard that he got Osama bin Laden?) but finds it impossible to take responsibility for anything (whatever it is, it’s still Bush’s fault).
Rick McKee / Augusta Chronicle (click to view more cartoons by McKee)
Following Mitt Romney’s elegant rope-a-dope of Obama in their third and final debate of this election season, during which the Republican nominee left the prosecution of the administration’s foreign policy blunders to others during the final days of their race for the White House, the president’s flailing re-election campaign finds itself confronting a whole new set of problems.
While relying heavily on the complicity of the mainstream media to aid in a blatant cover-up concerning a planned terrorist attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, on the anniversary of 9/11, Obama has been desperate to run out the clock before voters can learn the truth about his incompetence and deceit. Now he must try to explain a newly obtained e-mail message that clearly shows he has been lying all along to the American people about the attack, which killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
It turns out the president and his team of eggheads knew from day one that an organized terrorist group, not a cheaply made Internet video, was the catalyst for the assault in Benghazi. And yet they chose to propagate a lie, because the truth did not fit their fairytale campaign storyline that terrorism is no longer a problem. In Obama’s words at every campaign stop, “Osama bin Laden is dead and al Qaida is on the run.”
This is the most damning evidence yet in this unfolding scandal. The State Department communique to senior officials at the White House and the Pentagon clearly shows that team Obama knew what was happening to Ambassador Stevens and the others trapped inside the consulate in Benghazi, yet chose to do absolutely nothing to help them — nothing! — for seven long hours, as the violence was underway.
So how has Obama dealt with this growing scandal? Has he held a press conference to answer the tough questions some real reporters might actually want to ask him? Has he been willing to discuss the subject honestly in the presidential debates? Has he gone before the cameras in the Oval Office, Gipper style, to explain what actually happened?
No, his solution has been to hide behind Hillary Clinton’s skirts as she attempts to revive an old familiar boogey man, the vast right-wing conspiracy. Given what this whole fiasco is doing to her reputation worldwide, why Hillary would fall on this sword for the sorry likes of Barack Obama is beyond my comprehension, but there she was, this week, making excuses:
“The independent Accountability Review Board is already hard at work looking at everything,” she said, “not cherry-picking one story here or one document there, but looking at everything which I highly recommend as the appropriate approach to something as complex as an attack like this.”
Translation: Most of our good friends and political allies in the media are on the reservation, where they should be, until Election Day. But those right-wing nut jobs at Fox News, the Drudge Report and on talk radio are screwing up our narrative with just two weeks to go. Shame on them!
When Hillary ran against Obama in the 2008 Democrat primaries, she called into question his ability to deal with that hypothetical “three a.m. phone call.” Apparently, he just doesn’t take those calls. He lets them go to voice mail and flies off to Vegas for a fundraiser.
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© 2012 by Doug Patton, Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. Now working as a freelance writer, his weekly columns are syndicated exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Astute supporters and inane detractors alike are encouraged to email him with their pithy comments at dpatton@cagle.com. For info on using his column at your publication or website, please email Cari Dawson Bartley at cari@cagle.com. This column has been edited by the author.
