One side says ‘they didn’t lay a glove on her’

The other side swears they exposed the secretary as a self-serving, hard, cold political operative that didn’t have the decency to raise a finger to help American diplomats in distress.
Those are the polar opposite views on how former secretary of state and current probable Democratic presidential nominee performed during her marathon, emotionally grueling testimony yesterday before a bitterly divided congressional panel investigating the deaths of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other American heroes on 9/11 three years ago.
As I watched yesterday, it seemed to me that the Republicans were scoring at least a few political points as they relentless questioned every aspect of Secretary Clinton’s performance before, during and after the terrorist attacks on our consulate in Benghazi Libya.
But my wife Erica, watching the same scene remarked about how distastefully mean and rude the congressman grilling Hillary was behaving.
The bottom line is that the shouting, sweating, accusing and finger pointing discovered nothing remotely resembling a smoking gun. If you hated Hillary before the hearing, then you feel your wrath is justified. If you loved her then you think political operatives who will sink to any low blow to score cheap political points have victimized her.
It would have been a different scenario if other Republican leaders including the House Majority leader Kevin McCarthy hadn’t admitted publicly that the real motive for the hearings was political, to undermine Hillary’s prospects. That admission allowed the five Democrats on the 12-member panel to self-righteously condemn their Republican colleagues as opportunist political hit men.
Benghazi was a policy and operational failure of the Obama Administration. Politics played a big role how they responded after the four deaths at the shamefully inadequate facility in that chaotic North African city. But there is nothing remotely illegal about what they did. No one is going to be indicted. And because they didn’t knock her down much less knock her out, Hillary wins.
Add that to Vice President Joe Biden not running, and following her bravura performance at the Democratic debate, she is going to be a formidable rival for Donald Trump or Ben Carson or whoever wins the GOP nomination.