The witch hunters of the Benghazi committee came across about as poorly as the zealous Puritans of “The Crucible.” They managed to make Hillary look rational, sympathetic and human by comparison. The trouble with arguing from fixed ideas that seem like revealed truth to you is that not everyone shares your faith. To fellow true believers you are St. George, but to those with a different view of the world, you may seem more like the dragon.
Ideology aside, this was in many ways an unequal contest. Whatever else one thinks of Hillary Clinton, she is no dope and she has been playing on a large stage for a long time. Her first Washington experience was in 1973 as a staffer for a committee like this one, whereas the Republican committee members have been in the House for less than a decade.
Hillary was at the head of her Wellesley class and graduated from Yale Law. She crusaded on behalf of disenfranchised women and children when young, was appointed chair of the Legal Services Corporation by President Carter, a group to provide legal aid for those who can’t afford it. As a corporate lawyer she was twice named one of the most influential attorneys in the country before the age of forty.
Some argue that Hillary owes her career as First Lady of Arkansas and the United States, Senator and Secretary of State to her marriage to Bill Clinton. It didn’t hurt, but it has also been argued that he owes his career as Attorney General and Governor of Arkansas and as President to her. No matter how you parse that symbiosis, it is clear that she is a considerable person, especially alongside her hapless accusers on the Benghazi committee.
They served as a reminder of the kinds of people who occupy seats in the House of Representatives. They are often narrow-gauge characters who have roots in the hometown they represent and have worked their way up through local politics. Generally they went to the state college and law school. If they already had their eye on elective office that would save them from any taint of uppity, outsider credentials.
Many practiced hometown law or worked in the family business, assiduously cultivating contacts at the Rotary and the church social. They are party loyalists because that’s how you advance, and their perspective on the world is often strictly parochial. What’s good for the country is what their district wants, and issues farther afield don’t deserve much of their attention.
The Benghazi Republicans are almost all recent arrivals in Washington, as part of the anti-Obama, Tea Party wave. Roskam, Westmoreland and Jordan came to the House in 2006, Chairman Gowdy and Reps. Pompeo and Roby in 2010 and Rep. Brooks in 2012. I believe only one member has ever served in the military, Pompeo, and I doubt many have ever come within a thousand miles of Benghazi unless on a church trip to the Holy Land or on a tax-payer funded congressional junket.
Here’s the rundown. After getting a law degree at Chicago-Kent College of Law, ranked 72nd in the nation, Peter Roskam of Illinois was a legislative aide to Tom Delay and Henry Hyde for a year each, then retreated to his father’s business and worked as a personal injury attorney. He first went to the Illinois House in 1992.
Jim Jordan who still lives where he was born, Urbana, Ohio, was a high school and college wrestling champion who got his law degree from tiny Capital University, ranked 61st best law school in country. He became a wrestling coach to OSU and was elected to the Ohio legislature in 1994. His House district is considered one of the most conservative in the nation having been occupied by Democrats for just 16 years in the 150 since the Civil War. Jordan is an evangelical and a founder and the chair of the Tea Party’s Freedom Caucus in the House, the group that ousted Speaker John Boehner and denied the job to Kevin McCarthy. Thus, Jordan was never likely to be impartial toward Hillary Clinton or knowledgeable about geopolitics, as his questioning showed.
Martha Roby of Alabama has previous experience on the Montgomery City Council. Her law degree is from Samford University ranked 149th in the nation.
Susan Brooks is an Indiana University School of Law graduate, ranked 87th, and has been a criminal defense attorney, the Deputy Mayor of Indianapolis and was appointed a U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Indiana by George W. Bush.
Lynn Westmoreland is a high school graduate who worked as an executive in his family’s construction business. He served in the Georgia legislature from 1993 to 2005.
Trey Gowdy, the committee chairman from Spartanburg, S.C., was educated at Baylor and the University of South Carolina Law School. As of 2011 it dropped to a third tier unranked category, but prior to that was ranked in the 80s. Gowdy was a federal prosecutor and a Seventh Circuit solicitor, which is the South Carolina equivalent of a District Attorney. His House district is so gerrymandered to favor Republicans that no Democrat even bothered to contest it in 2014. Gowdy won 85% of the vote with the remainder going to an even farther-right libertarian.
Gowdy is a Tea Party member and counts among his legislative accomplishments the introduction of a bill that would have allowed members of Congress to sue presidents. Given his conduct of the Hillary prosecution, one wonders how many of the cases he prosecuted in South Carolina will now be re-examined. Those who are bemused by Gowdy’s Tintin hair style might want to look at a picture of his previous coiffeur at his Wikipedia entry. It has the drowned rat look of the Penguin character from TV’s “Gotham,” so Tintin is an improvement.
Best for last. Mike Pompeo, who was born in Orange County, California, now represents a Kansas district, and he practically qualifies as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Koch empire. He attended West Point and served for five years in armor, that’s tanks not chainmail. He then attended Harvard Law, currently ranked second in the nation after Hillary’s number one ranked Yale, which may have added to the ire he directed toward the witness. He then worked for two years for the powerful Washington law firm of Williams and Connolly. Obviously Pompeo is a heavyweight compared to some of his committee colleagues.
He helped found an aircraft parts firm, Thayer Aerospace, in 1997 in Wichita and cashed out a decade later when it was sold. The company was funded by the venture capital arm of Koch Industries whose headquarters is also in Wichita. Pompeo next became president of Sentry International, an oilfield equipment company, a partner to Koch Industries through a Brazilian company.
When he ran for Congress his largest contributor was a Koch PAC, and he has also been patronized by the Koch-funded tea party group Americans for Prosperity. His stance as a climate change denier undoubtedly didn’t hurt, indeed was probably part of the price of admission. The Kochs have a long history of treating Kansas legislators whose campaigns they finance as their personal lobbyists.
When House Majority leader Kevin McCarthy let slip the news that the Benghazi Committee was intended to damage Hillary Clinton, this was regarded as news, but the credentials of the Republican members of the committee made obvious that the fix was in before the first witness was called. And now that the country has seen them in action, little doubt remains. Of course they saw Goody Clinton with the devil.
Full Disclosure: As a graduate of he 39th best and 82nd best graduate programs in their fields, I know personally what mediocrity looks like when I see it.