Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s testimony to Congress on the debacle at Benghazi, happening just weeks or maybe even days before her departure from office, may be an appropriate time to look at the job she has done as Secretary of State. In doing so, it is hard not to look first at Benghazi.
Secretary of State Clinton knows that the stand-up thing to do, in situations like this, is to take responsibility. And she does – sort of. Appearing before the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee yesterday, she said:
“As I have said many times since Sept. 11 [2012], I take responsibility. Nobody is more committed to getting this right. I am determined to leave the State Department and our country safer, stronger and more secure.”
But while she said she “take[s] responsibility,” she also emphasized that a bipartisan investigation of the Benghazi attack
“made very clear that the level of responsibility for the failures that they outlined was set at the Assistant Secretary of State level and below. These requests don't ordinarily come in to the secretary of State.”
In other words: “I’m responsible – but don’t blame me. It wasn’t my fault. It was handled by people way below me.”
I understand why Secretary Clinton wants to sound like a big shot and say “I’m responsible.” But when she also says, right after that, that it was little people, not her, who made the bad decisions, so it really wasn’t her responsibility, well, that isn’t very impressive.
Which brings me back to the question of what kind of a job Hillary Clinton has done as Secretary of State? She has certainly been busy. She has traveled all over the world. She talked to leaders. She rushed off to crises. It was impressive – in a busy sort of way. But what did she accomplish or do that somebody else would not have done? That question brings me to a concept that has been developed in baseball that might be helpful in evaluating the kind of job that our elected and appointed officials are doing.
The concept is called “WAR” – or “Wins Above Replacement”. Here is an explanation of what WAR is (in baseball):
“WAR basically looks at a player and asks the question, ‘If this player got injured and their team had to replace them with a minor leaguer or someone from their bench, how much value would the team be losing?’ This value is expressed in a wins format, so we could say that Player X is worth +6.3 wins to their team [over a 162 game season] while Player Y is only worth +3.5 wins.”
So, the question, for public officials such as Secretary of State Clinton, is not “what did they do?” The question, rather, is: “What did they do that a replacement secretary of state would not have done; how much better – or worse – were they than a replacement secretary of state would have been?”
President Nixon going to China in 1972 is an example of something that a replacement president would not have done. Going after al Qaeda bases in Afghanistan after September 11, 2001? Any president would have done that, so you wouldn’t get a plus WAR for doing it.
How does Secretary of State Clinton rank on a WAR basis? What has she done that a replacement secretary of state would not have done or what has she done better than what some other secretary of state would have done? She has gotten a lot of publicity, but has she gotten a lot of accomplishments? To be honest, in general I don’t know. But as for Benghazi, she did no better than a minor leaguer or replacement secretary of state off the bench: Claim to take responsibility but then blame somebody else.
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