I’m not sure the Obama administration could have handled this any worse. Â We live in a highly politicized world and somehow the Obama administration is “shocked, shocked” that this issue is being hyped. Â And while I’m sympathetic to the flurry of criticisms of FoxNews and others for hyping this, I’m also struck by how badly the administration has handled it all.
The core of Obama’s foreign policy has been to lighten America’s global military footprint and to redirect away from Bush’s flawed idea that we could “defeat” terrorism.  In other words, the gist of Obama’s foreign policy has been to  maintain pressure on groups like Al Qaeda and reduce their capabilities.  But, in the end, given America’s global posture, various types of terrorist attacks are probably going to happen.  The key is to maintain a steady approach and not over-react and overcommit — as Bush did in Iraq and elsewhere behind his “global war on terror.”
Overall, I think this is a solid, prudent, and reasonable approach. Â However, this is generally where this administration gets into trouble. Â One of the central flaws of the Obama administration has been is its tendency towards vacillating displays of arrogance, indifference, dismissiveness, and open disdain towards those that challenge what it concludes are its inherently “reasonable” positions. Â While it seems clear that both President Obama and Secretary Clinton were deeply disturbed by the deaths of Ambassador Stevens and the others, the initial response also suggests that the administration did not see the attack as posing much more than the type of terrorist attack that is probably going to happen from time to time. Â It was a pretty big deal, but not a really big deal. Â If we’re looking for reasons why McCain and Graham are so angry about Benghazi, I think this is it.
My sense is that this is also why the vetting process on the talking points seems to have been so ambiguous — and almost casual. Â By her own admission, Rice was more or less parroting the talking points given to her. Â Neither she nor others in the administration appear to have thought enough about the matter to scrutinize them more closely before she made her television appearances because while the attacks were seen as tragic, they were just that — tragic. Â If Rice and others in the administration had felt that these attacks signified a broader, deeper, more strategic event, I’m guessing she/they would have gone back to the sources and demanded clarification and more understanding. Â In this sense, the story is as much about what Rice and the administration did not do and say as what they did.
I think this is where the story gets much of its traction. Â The administration missed the significance of the symbolism of the death of Ambassador Stevens. Â It was a much bigger deal to others than to the administration. Â That the administration hasn’t acknowledged and responded to this, is part of what continues to drive the story.
Seriously, I don’t even know what you are talking about. Maybe I don’t follow the echo chamber of US domestic politics enough but you are really making it hard to understand your point.
Posts on blogs such as the Duck of Minerva often deal with timely political controversies. Explaining the relevant background will occasionally require significant space and effort and thus, among other things, bore readers who have been following the issues while detracting from the argument.
In light of this, we could simply assume that our readers know about topics that English-language news outlets are devoting a lot of space to. After all, the profile of our readership skews significantly toward those who follow major news items related to US foreign policy.
Or we could simply assume that readers who don’t know about relevant topic — but want to understand posts on them — will use their skills with the useful invention known as the “search engine” to educate themselves. Indeed, we have reason to believe that the profile of our readership skews even more significantly toward people who know about sites such as “google” and “bing.”
Both of those are, in my view, excellent warrants for not providing copious background material on stories such as the political storm surrounding Susan Rice.
But we also have a nifty tool at our disposal. It is called a “hyperlink.” If one clicks on certain words or phrases (which, in our template, are blue and underlined) one will be taken to news stories, blog posts, papers, or other “places” that often provide details related to the hyperlinked words and phrases. For example, clicking on “flurry of criticisms” in Jon’s post would have sent you to an article describing some of those criticisms.
*** This has been a public service announcement from the staff of the Duck of Minerva ***
Dan having taken care of the larger point, allow me to take care of the lesser one. “U.S. domestic politics” is not an echo chamber. You may find it parochial–that’s likely unfair, but okay–but it’s not like some little society somewhere where nobody talks to anyone else. By any reasonable standard, the United States and its domestic politics matters to a large audience in a way that (for instance) Canadian or Vietnamese domestic politics don’t. This isn’t always healthy–we care about lots of pathological domestic political systems, including Pakistan, Egypt, and the inner workings of the EU–but it’s definitely worthy of study. In this particular case, your not knowing about something that has been amply discussed by all major U.S. and Anglophone news sources says more about you than the “editorial” choices on the Duck.