WarSclerotic

Hillary Clinton ducked questions Friday about what and when she knew about the nature of the attacks on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, and then she got the heck out of D.C. The Secretary of State, who flew to Peru Monday for a conference on women’s empowerment, is savvy enough to smell political trouble.

Throughout the fallout from Libya, she has taken a low profile. But this position is becoming increasingly untenable. The focus of Congressional attention and debate has shifted to her shop. Even as they defer to an internal investigation—whose conclusions won’t be out before Election Day—Joe Biden and the White House last week dumped responsibility for the security and intelligence failure that led to the assault on the Benghazi mission on the State Department and CIA. Does the Secretary care to comment?

On the day after the September 11 attacks, Mrs. Clinton stood alongside President Obama at the White House without speaking. When the Administration needed someone to appear on the Sunday morning talk shows the next weekend to discuss Libya, Mrs. Clinton was the natural choice. Yet she made no appearance and was replaced by U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice.

An early Obama supporter and candidate to replace Mrs. Clinton in a second term, Ms. Rice offered the now infamous view that the attacks were a “spontaneous reaction” to an anti-Islam YouTube video. For eight days after the assault, the Administration stuck to that story.

Two weeks after Benghazi, appearing before the United Nations General Assembly, President Obama devoted 12 paragraphs to the “Innocence of Muslims” film clip. He didn’t use the word terrorism and mentioned al Qaeda—per his standard stump speech—only to say it “has been weakened, and Osama bin Laden is no more.”

The next day, on September 26, Mrs. Clinton took part in a special U.N. session on Africa and told a different story from the President. She blamed Benghazi on “violent extremists” possibly linked to an al Qaeda offshoot in northern Africa. Other Administration officials, though not the President, had by then begun to speak about a terrorist link.

These changing story lines prompted Congress to call hearings last week, but Mrs. Clinton didn’t appear. Three career State officials and a Utah National Guardsman testified instead. They said additional security had been requested but denied, and that the ability of Libyan forces to protect the Benghazi mission, which was kept open despite worsening security in the city, had been overestimated. The underlings took the heat.

In Thursday’s Vice Presidential debate, Mr. Biden claimed, “We did not know they wanted more security again.” A White House spokesman said on Friday that the Veep was referring only to the White House, not State.

Asked about this on Friday, Mrs. Clinton passed on the opportunity to clarify what she was doing the night of the attacks, when she knew about changed intelligence, and what she told Mr. Obama. She said a review board is looking into it, and in passing she defended Ms. Rice whom she said “had the same information from the intelligence community as every other senior official did.”

CNN reported Monday night from Lima that Mrs. Clinton finally addressed the White House comments by saying “I take responsibility” for what happened in Benghazi. She added that “I want to avoid some kind of political gotcha” so close to an election. That’s nice, but it still leaves many questions, such as why her own comments to the U.N. differed so much from the substance and tone of Mr. Obama’s. Saying you take “responsibility” in brief interviews from faraway Peru is a long way from acting as if you’re responsible.