Does the Buck Ever Stop with Hillary Clinton?

Mainstream pundits have many excuses for Hillary Clinton’s Benghazi, Libya, performance. The most common being trotted out was that Benghazi was below her radar screen, and she can’t be expected to know everything going on in her shop. Let’s count the ways this is unconvincing, if not downright wrong.

First, of course, every politician (ahem, a Northeastern governor) is held responsible for what goes on by underlings. The head of an organization must be held accountable for the people she hires. And, yes, leaders need to take ownership of the “culture” around them.

The Clinton culture is simple: Deny, insulate, deny. This is how Hillary and Bill Clinton have kept scandal from enveloping them again and again. (The Rose law firm documents were in a closet?!) They have loyalists, Cheryl Miller is among the closest, who clear up messes, as she apparently was seeking to do when she cautioned State Department personnel against talking to members of Congress. Clinton can keep trotting out the excuse that every scandal is someone else’s doing, but at some point the lady who knows so little about what is going on around her ceases to be seen as a competent leader.

Journalists who’ve never worked in a big company, served in the military or held an executive post may not have a good grasp on how information gets to the person at the top. It begins with the person at the top and/or her chief of staff setting up procedures and understandings about what is urgent, what gets elevated and what should never be a surprise for the boss. If this doesn’t exist, it is because the boss wants plausible deniability (that Clinton culture again) or because the boss is so caught up in minutiae and/or is out of the office so much (Clinton, to a tee) that the organization is chaotic and slow to react.

Read more from this story HERE.