"Trey Gowdy Says His 11-Hour Benghazi Hearing Didn't Reveal Anything New."

HuffPo paraphrases.

AND: From Amy Davidson in The New Yorker:

Clinton has been immersed in politics for decades, and yet the panel managed to make the contrast between her manner and the ways of Washington look stark. She appeared to be a sensible outsider. At 7:15 P.M., nine hours after the hearings began, Martha Roby, of Alabama, asked Clinton about her movements when she went home on the night of the attack. “Were you alone?” she asked. Yes, Clinton said. “The whole night?” Clinton started to laugh once more. “I don’t see why that’s funny,” Roby said. Not funny, perhaps, but, like the Benghazi committee itself, absurd.

"Republican lawmakers sharply questioned Hillary Rodham Clinton on Thursday..."

"... seeking to build a case that the former secretary of state had been derelict in her duty to secure the American diplomatic mission in Benghazi...."

The hearing was punctuated by a series of increasingly pointed exchanges, especially among Democratic and Republican committee members. At one point, a shouting match erupted between Mr. Gowdy and two Democrats on the committee about the focus on Mrs. Clinton’s email exchanges with Sidney Blumenthal, a former aide to her husband and a personal friend.

But after more than six hours of testimony, exasperated Democrats on the Republican-led panel said they might quit their participation on the committee, declaring it a partisan sham aimed at damaging the leading Democratic presidential candidate.

That makes it sound like Hillary was on the sidelines, which suits her interests.

I sat down to watch when it started. I thought she made a fine opening statement. Though I'm mostly a steely, distanced observer of political theater, it reached me when she said:

I traveled to 112 countries as Secretary of State. Every time I did, I felt great pride and honor representing the country that I love. We need leadership at home to match our leadership abroad. Leadership that puts national security ahead of politics and ideology.

Maybe some actress coached her, but she got just the right emotional pitch on the word "love." I don't know that she's good enough to fake that, but even complete frauds can choke themselves up at the appropriate cornball moment. Still, I thought it was real. Hillary Clinton loves our country. Does she not?

I stuck with it for the first few rounds of questions, enough to make me think she'd make it through the ordeal unscathed, perhaps even with new luster. I had other things to tend to. Who can sit around all day watching television? It's the first part that matters. She was fine. After that, only really striking things are noticed, and apparently all that happened was committee members fighting with each other. Meaningless. Am I being too blithe? Point out what I should care about. And don't say: 4 men died. That was very well covered by Hillary at the beginning of her prepared statement.

"I would say in some ways these have been among the worst weeks of my life," said Trey Gowdy, the chair of the House Benghazi committee.

"Attacks on your character, attacks on your motives, are 1,000-times worse than anything you can do to anybody physically — at least it is for me."

Hillary before the Benghazi committee is "going to be less a showdown than a show trial. The verdict is already in. The Republicans are guilty."

"It’s not that Hillary has gotten so much more trustable. It’s just that the Republicans are so much less credible."

Maureen Dowd conveys the talking point. Whatever Hillary is, look at the Republicans: They're worse.

Dowd's NYT readers, it should be noted, tend to think she's not pro-Hillary enough. A top-rated comment is:

Typical Doud [sic] performance. Dismiss the comm for the farce that it is, but attack Clinton anyway and keep the nonsense and lies about Benghazi and emails going. It doesn't matter that other secretaries of State had their own private email servers? It only matters that Clinton had one? Doesn't matter that the messages she is said to have sent or received were not classified at the time? Doesn't matter that no one, NO ONE, has discovered any email sent or received over this private server that went astray or would have made the slightest difference if it had? At least Doud understands the basic political purpose of the comm and its "investigation" -- get Clinton. Too bad she can't recognize that she does the same thing, repeatedly.

Obama distances himself from Hillary's email troubles.

From the transcript of last night's "60 Minutes":

Steve Kroft: Did you know about Hillary Clinton's use of private email server--

President Barack Obama: No.

He's quick with that "no."

Steve Kroft: --while she was Secretary of State?

President Barack Obama: No.

Steve Kroft: Do you think it posed a national security problem?

President Barack Obama: I don't think it posed a national security problem. I think that it was a mistake that she has acknowledged and-- you know, as a general proposition, when we're in these offices, we have to be more sensitive and stay as far away from the line as possible when it comes to how we handle information, how we handle our own personal data. And, you know, she made a mistake. She has acknowledged it. I do think that the way it's been ginned-up is in part because of-- in part-- because of politics. And I think she'd be the first to acknowledge that maybe she could have handled the original decision better and the disclosures more quickly. But--

The repetition of "in part" is telling. There's a criticism in there. Republicans are making too big a deal of it. But Hillary made mistakes.

Steve Kroft: What was your reaction when you found out about it?

President Barack Obama: This is one of those issues that I think is legitimate, but the fact that for the last three months this is all that's been spoken about is an indication that we're in presidential political season.

Obama did not answer the question. Kroft interrupted with a question, Obama continued answering the question he was was working on, and Kroft did not repeat the question. Obama has a packaged, distancing message, and he gets it out.

Steve Kroft: Do you agree with what President Clinton has said and Secretary Clinton has said, that this is not-- not that big a deal. Do you agree with that?

Obama has already said that the Republicans have made too big of a deal out of it, but the new question tries to eliminate the comparative. It could be a big deal but not as big a deal as the Republicans have made out of it.

President Barack Obama: Well, I'm not going to comment on--

Steve Kroft: You think it's not that big a deal--

President Barack Obama: What I think is that it is important for her to answer these questions to the satisfaction of the American public. And they can make their own judgment. I can tell you that this is not a situation in which America's national security was endangered.

More distancing. He covers the ground he could be held responsible for — America's national security — and leaves her to explain herself to the American public. The question wasn't, however, whether Hillary will persuade Americans to let her off the hook, but whether it's "that big a deal." Obama did not help her off the hook. He won't say. And the next question shows why he was smart not to let Kroft nail him down:

Steve Kroft: This administration has prosecuted people for having classified material on their private computers.

President Barack Obama: Well, I-- there's no doubt that there had been breaches, and these are all a matter of degree. We don't get an impression that here there was purposely efforts-- on-- in-- to hide something or to squirrel away information. But again, I'm gonna leave it to--

Squirrel!

Steve Kroft: If she had come to you.

President Barack Obama: I'm going to leave it to Hillary when she has an interview with you to address all these questions.

And so the deflecting of Hillary email questions skitters to an end. You got a problem with Hillary, go ask Hillary.

Fitly enough, the next question is whether he wants Joe Biden to get into the race, a question set up by an implicit dig at Hillary — "Right now, there's nobody on either side of the aisle that is exactly running on your record." Obama, continuing his evasiveness, refuses to say: It's up to Joe to decide, but what a great vice president Joe Biden has been:

I think Joe will go down as one of the finest vice presidents in history, and one of the more consequential. 

Didn't every viewer make the same wisecrack we did? Finest vice president... that's not saying much!

"Hillary Clinton: I Totally Oppose The Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement I Negotiated In 2012..."

"... even though 'In her 2014 memoir, Hillary Clinton listed the negotiation of TPP as one of her key accomplishments as Sec. of State.'  As Twitchy asks, 'Did TPP flip-flopper Hillary even READ her book before sending it to GOP candidates?'"

I have the book in my Kindle, so let me do a search:

So we worked hard to improve and ratify trade agreements with Colombia and Panama and encouraged Canada and the group of countries that became known as the Pacific Alliance— Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Chile— all open-market democracies driving toward a more prosperous future to join negotiations with Asian nations on TPP, the trans-Pacific trade agreement....

As President Obama explained, the goal of the TPP negotiations is to establish “a high standard, enforceable, meaningful trade agreement” that “is going to be incredibly powerful for American companies who, up until this point, have often been locked out of those markets.” It was also important for American workers, who would benefit from competing on a more level playing field.

And it was a strategic initiative that would strengthen the position of the United States in Asia. Our country has learned the hard way over the past several decades that globalization and the expansion of international trade brings costs as well as benefits. On the 2008 campaign trail, both then-Senator Obama and I had promised to pursue smarter, fairer trade agreements. Because TPP negotiations are still ongoing, it makes sense to reserve judgment until we can evaluate the final proposed agreement.

It’s safe to say that the TPP won’t be perfect— no deal negotiated among a dozen countries ever will be— but its higher standards, if implemented and enforced, should benefit American businesses and workers....

It "won’t be perfect," but perhaps the imperfections mounted after her involvement ended. I see a loophole she might be able to exploit.

Hillary resisted the gay rights agenda out of fear of "a huge Fox generated media storm led by Palin et al."

This is getting presented in the liberal press in a somewhat negative way — for example, from the L.A. Times, "New batch of Hillary Clinton's emails shows her cautiousness on gay rights":

Hillary Rodham Clinton has lately positioned herself on the forefront of gay rights, but tucked into a newly disclosed batch of her emails is a reminder that she had long taken a more cautious approach to the issue...

But, of course, she was cautious and wary of the media response. "Parent One" and "Parent Two" instead of "mother" and "father" is absurd bureaucratese.

A nice ego boost for Sarah Palin there, knowing she's got prime real estate in Hillary's head.