Here’s an interesting exchange between Jake Tapper and CNN’s Piers Morgan on Susan Rice’s post-Benghazi Sunday-show appearances. Tapper questions why Rice was chosen to be the mouthpiece of the administration when President Obama, in this week’s presser, said Rice “had nothing to do with Benghazi in the first place. Indeed, why? Other than it looks like Hillary Clinton wanted nothing to do with the story:
MORGAN: Perhaps the biggest story today is Benghazi, which is blowing up again. Republicans John McCain and Lindsey Graham and other senators pushing very, very hard now, getting very vicious in the rhetoric towards Ambassador Rice and so on. What do you think — at the central plank of this, do you believe that Ambassador Rice is at fault? Or she — as Barack Obama said today, she was merely passing on intelligence. She was not a key player in all of this.
And therefore, if he wants to make her secretary of state, he can do it. What do you think?
TAPPER: First of all, I was substituting for George Stephanopoulos that Sunday as host of “This Week.” And we were trying to get Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. All the shows were trying to get Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to talk about Benghazi.
For whatever reason, she didn’t go out. They put out Dr. Susan Rice, the U.N. ambassador. It’s very interesting today that President Says, you know, Susan Rice had nothing to do with Benghazi. Then I don’t what she was doing on the show.
MORGAN: That was my reaction. Didn’t she make herself a key player? She was the person put out by the administration to launch the defense. And she could have said look, we believe there are a number of possible theories here. That may have been a get out. But she didn’t take that option.
TAPPER: She, I think, was a good soldier. She did what the administration told her to do. She read the talking points.
We don’t need “good soldiers” at the highest levels of government. Whether it’s Colin Powell with doubts about Iraqi WMDs or Susan Rice here, isn’t it about time we demand better from our public servants?