Politico Mag Natl. Editor Frets Benghazi 'Pseudo-Scandal' May Keep Hillary From Running

May 5th, 2014 1:12 PM

Michael Hirsh is the recently named National Editor at Politico Magazine, an effort which turning is out to be to the left of the crumbling Time Magazine and the for-now defunct Newsweek. One of Hirsh's career lowlights — he probably thinks it's a highlight — is his December 2008 contention that President George W. Bush having a shoe thrown at him in Iraq "was somehow appropriate."

Lest there be any doubt as to the possibility that there will be fair and balanced reporting on Benghazi on Hirsh's watch, I give you excerpts from "The Benghazi-Industrial Complex; Will the pseudo-scandal be enough to stop Hillary from running?" — wherein Hirsh plows new groveling ground (bolds are mine):


Perhaps if the Republicans can’t beat Hillary Clinton fairly in 2016, they can make her so disgusted by the prospect of running that she’ll stay out of the race.

That’s where the Benghazi-Industrial Complex comes in.

Clinton’s 20-year sojourn in public life has been bracketed, jarringly, by two pseudo-scandals, both involving the tragic and less-than-fully-explained death of an important man in Hillary’s orbit. ...

It all began in 1993 – just six months into her term as first lady – with the death of her close friend, deputy White House counsel Vince Foster, whose shocking suicide on a grassy knoll outside Washington fed a never-ending meme of Clintonian perfidy. ...

There were, and are, legitimate questions about Clinton’s conduct before and after Benghazi.

Gee Mike, thanks for admitting that, although you should have added "during." Is it now okay by you to investigate that conduct fully in light of last week's revelations that the White House coached Susan Rice to lie?

Apparently not — and check out why:

If all ... (the concerns about Mrs. Clinton's conduct before, during and after Benghazi are) true ... — and it would indeed be unusual for a secretary of state to be personally making decisions about diplomatic security arrangements — it’s fair to ask why Clinton seemed to be too busy to deal with new threats in a critical region or appear herself on TV to discuss the murder of a U.S. ambassador. Sure, we know that Hillary hates doing the Sunday talk shows, but so what? She bore far more responsibility for Benghazi than the unlucky person the administration sent out in her stead, then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice, whose shaky performance deep-sixed her own Foggy Bottom ambitions.

But these are issues of competence, not corruption.

Oh, I get it. If she's incompetent, it's just fine and dandy for her to be elected President. You can't make this up.

Continuing:

There is as little evidence that Clinton or anyone else in the administration engaged in a cover-up of Benghazi as there is that Hillary ordered the whacking of her old friend Vince Foster.

The Rhodes email, in truth, did little but to lay out an unsurprising and fairly standard strategy for prepping Rice for her TV interviews later that week on Benghazi and other issues. But, innocuous as it was, that didn’t stop the Benghazi-Industrial Complex (call it the BIC, for short) from resurrecting its favorite term: “smoking gun.”

... It doesn’t seem to matter that the gradually emerging story about Benghazi has, if anything, only seemed to back the administration’s original account of the violence against Stevens and the other Americans.

... The balance of evidence today, according to intelligence officials and corroborating news reports, is that the terrible events of Sept. 12, 2012, pretty much played out in the way Rice said back then.

This is beyond delusional.

Mike Hirsh thinks that standard prep for an interview of a presidential administration's spokesperson in the Obama era is telling her to lie about what triggered a terrorist attack which killed four Americans.

He thinks that Susan Rice's Sunday fables on the Sunday TV shows were and still are accurate, apparently including her contention that they were "spontaneous."

Got it, Mike. On this matter at least, you're acting like a complete leftist tool. Your "magazine" is a sick joke. And from all appearances we're going to have to remember to put you on suicide watch if Hillary decides not to run.

This is even worse than Mike Huckabee said it was on his weekend Fox show:

They knew then, and they know now that the attack was not about a video.

We once had real newspapers and broadcast new outlets that cared about a government lying to the people. Lying and covering up in Watergate ultimately resulted in a president resigning and several of his top aides going to prison.

But there are big differences between Watergate and Benghazi. The press didn’t look the other way.

Hirsh isn't looking the other way. He's looking right at the evidence and denying that it means what we all know it means.

As long as Hirsh is Politico Magazine's national editor, it's a waste of time to read its output, except for those who toil at NewsBusters. We will don our hazmat suits and pass on the worst of its nonsense to loyal readers.

Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.