Benghazi

The speculation over the import of the newly released emails, and the announcement from John Boehner that he will seek a special committee to conduct a narrowly focused investigation of the Benghazi atrocity and its sequelae, have much of the American Right in a lather of excitement. Yet that excitement is tempered by a question few have dared to confront squarely:

Why did it take so long to get to this point?

In particular, why did it take Boehner so long, and so much external pressure, to call for a select committee? What was he waiting for, when even before the most recent, Judicial-Watch-driven disclosures, there were enough indications from the evidence and enough problems with witnesses’ testimony to justify a focused search for the answers? Given that the GOP’s majority in the House of Representatives guaranteed a favorable vote on any motion to investigate, what did he fear?

The thing only begins to make sense when one considers the consequences from each potential outcome.

The mildest of all defeats—in the nearest term, at least—would arise from a failure of the House to approve a select committee. Despite the Republican majority, that remained a possibility. It would have been a blow against Boehner’s command of his caucus and a serious demerit against the Republicans in November. Whether Boehner granted that possibility any credence, only he could say...and I doubt that he will.

Looking somewhat further forward, should the select committee be impaneled but fail to acquire sufficient sincere Democrat participation not to look like a purely partisan effort, it would clearly be a futile undertaking. Purely partisan efforts of any sort have acquired a most unsavory aroma, a development that’s currently working against the Democrats. Boehner has good reason to fear that possibility, for reasons we’ll address a bit later.

Then there’s the possibility that the select committee might fail to produce a definite result, whether for insufficient evidence, lack of energy in the inquiry, or successful obstruction by its Democrat participants. That outcome would provide political capital to the Democrats, who could make it a feature of their campaigns this year and in 2016 that the Republicans are so desperate to return to control of the federal government that they’re willing to chase phantasms, at taxpayer expense, even when nothing solid looms behind them. Boehner has good reason to fear that development, as the GOP’s odor among he electorate isn’t all that much better than that of the Democrats.

But if the select committee were to produce a definite result—one that directly implicates the president in disguising the nature of the atrocity for political purposes—the next step would be a vote of the full House on the impeachment and trial of Barack Hussein Obama. It’s hard to imagine that the House would fail to impeach...but even harder to imagine that even one sitting Democrat would vote yea on the matter. Thus, regardless of whether Democrat participation in the select committee were sincere, or at least no more obstructive than usual, the impeachment vote would be a partisan affair that could not help the GOP and might well be used to wound it.

And here we come to the very worst possibility. For if the impeachment vote were to succeed, the Senate would be required to schedule a trial of the president. The outcome of the trial would be a foregone conclusion, as no sitting Democrat Senator would vote to convict him. It’s not just difficult to imagine any other result; it’s flatly impossible. If you recall the aftermath of the Clinton trial before the Senate, the president’s position after it failed to remove him from office was actually strengthened. He had nothing more to fear from the GOP for the remainder of his time in the Oval Office. It freed him to do as he pleased. Imagine Barack Hussein Obama freed to do as he pleased, and shudder.

We’re a long distance, in time, space, and political integrity or the lack thereof, from the trial of Andrew Johnson, wherein nearly every Republican in the Senate voted to convict and remove a Republican president. It hardly matters that that effort failed as well, for those who sought Johnson’s removal did so out of their conviction that he was willfully undermining the Reconstruction effort they had legislated. The idea that the president’s sworn duty is to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” carried a lot more weight back then than it does today.

John Boehner is principally a politician. He approaches every question laid before him from a political perspective, if not solely, at least first and foremost. And he has good reason to fear what the select committee will force upon him. That the committee itself is being forced upon him by the zeal of others in his party cannot have pleased him. None of the outcomes delineated above will do so either.

It remains to be seen whether the Benghazi atrocity, the Obamunists’ subsequent Byzantine political maneuverings, and the revelations that have followed will have any beneficial consequences whatsoever. From here, the answer cannot be foretold.