Hillary Clinton: the only grownup in the room

hillary clinton

I didn’t watch every single moment of the House Benghazi Select Committee hearing today.

And as I write this blog post, it’s finishing up.

I do, though, want to make one point: The only grownup in the room among the principals involved in this hearing was the former secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Democrats and Republicans on the panel went after each other like hyenas fighting over a carcass. Meanwhile, Clinton managed to stay above all that.

As for what I’ve heard among the questioners grilling Clinton, I need to say that I heard nothing new in either the questions or the answers given by the lone witness.

Which leads me to the source of the tension between committee members: the motive for the hearing in the first place.

Democrats allege that Republicans who control the House of Representatives have gone after Clinton over the Benghazi tragedy for a single purpose: to blow her presidential campaign out of the water. Indeed, many of the questions coming from the GOP side of the dais veered repeatedly into territory that’s been covered repeatedly during the several previous congressional hearings.

Democratic members, though, didn’t acquit themselves well, either, as they bitched repeatedly about their GOP colleagues’ conduct during this entire sorry episode.

“Benghazi” has become political shorthand for an incident that resulted on Sept. 11, 2012 in the deaths of four brave Americans during a firefight at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. Clinton led the State Department at the time.

Three years after the fact and after countless hearings, testimony, investigation and posturing … Congress has found nothing.

The Benghazi panel’s conduct today shouldn’t make Congress proud.

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s dignity, though, throughout this hearing demonstrated something quite different.

And commendable.