Was George W. Bush responsible for our failures in Iraq? How about the botched response to Hurricane Katrina? Apparently not, at least according to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In an interview with ABC News, Mrs. Clinton made it clear that, while she was “responsible” for the results of the September 11, 2012, terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, she wasn’t really responsible:
“Mrs. Clinton, in an interview with ABC News, made clear that while she bore responsibility as former secretary of state, she said she had also delegated the job of protecting the diplomatic facility to people with more training and expertise in such matters.
Asked by ABC’s Diane Sawyer if she had missed ‘the moment to prevent this from happening,’ Mrs. Clinton said: ‘No.’
Could she have personally done anything to make conditions safer in Benghazi for the U.S. personnel stationed there? Ms. Sawyer asked.
Ms. Clinton said that she had given ‘very direct instructions’ to security professionals, adding, ‘I’m not equipped to sit and look at blueprints to determine where the blast walls need to be or where the reinforcements need to be.’
‘That’s why we hire people who have that expertise,’ she said.”
According to Mrs. Clinton, she was “responsible” (in some theoretical, philosophical sense), but she really doesn’t take responsibility. The State Department had hired people to do this; it was their job to do it; it wasn’t hers.
On that theory, as long as George W. Bush hired (or his Administration hired) the right people at the CIA, State Department and Defense Department, then the failures in Iraq weren’t his fault. Same way with Katrina. The president just hires people (or hires people who hire people). It’s their job, not his, and it’s not his fault if it doesn’t work out.
Except that is not the way it is. In business, if a company is losing money, the company president can’t say that it’s not his or her fault, that it was the fault of the people underneath him or her, that he or she doesn’t do the details. That’s not the way it works. One of the jobs of a company president is to hire the right people. But he or she is also responsible for their results. Company presidents not only have to hire the right people; they also have to make sure the results are good. If they aren’t, then it’s not just the people who the company president hired (or the people under them) who are responsible. It’s the president, too – because he is responsible for their results.
In the Civil War, if Abraham Lincoln had not found Ulysses S. Grant (and William Tecumseh Sherman, George Meade, George Thomas, etc.), he wouldn’t have been re-elected. The voters wouldn’t have said, it’s not Lincoln’s fault the generals didn’t win; it’s their fault. No, they would have said, it’s Lincoln’s fault, and we’re not going to re-elect him.
The same with George W. Bush. He may have appointed the right people (or thought he did) for the war in Iraq from 2003 to 2006, but that doesn’t matter. They didn’t produce. The results were bad, so it was Bush’s fault. And he wouldn’t have been re-elected if he could have run in 2008.
In the same way, Mrs. Clinton was responsible for what happened in the State Department when she was Secretary of State (except to any extent she was not allowed to do what she wanted by the President). She wasn’t supposed to know how to look at blueprints. But she was responsible for appointing people who knew how to do it (or who knew how to find the people who could do it). If the people she appointed didn’t get the job done, then it was her fault for not appointing the right people. Maybe she tried to appoint the right people, but if they didn’t do the job, then they weren’t the right people. She is responsible for their results. She can’t say “not my job” – because it was her job to get the right people to do the job. And when it came to Benghazi, they didn’t do the job.
I am not saying that politicians are not entitled to make mistakes. They are. They are human. They make mistakes. But we should expect them to take responsibility, real responsibility, for the mistakes made by the people for which they are responsible. Hillary Clinton is not doing this.
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Note: Obviously, the bigger problem with Benghazi is the Obama administration’s inaccurate explanation for how and why the attack occurred. Why did the Administration explain it wrong? Because they really did not know or because they did not want to say for political reasons? But even though that is the bigger problem, when former Secretary Clinton says she is “responsible” but then immediately says she wasn’t really responsible, it irritates me. Therefore, this post.
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