Talking Points

So “the Benghazi affair”  raises its silly head again; an issue that could be of some modestly serious import but is not because it is a discussion about the relative validity of various “talking points.”  No one raises the more basic truth that the existence of “talking points”  is a problem in and of itself, regardless of whether they were valid or not.

Talking points are what people use to get their stories straight when they are not intending to reveal what they actually know. Susan Rice, it seems, had been given the wrong set of talking points, which is to say she told the wrong story, which would not have happened if she had been revealing her own knowledge. As Judge Judy says, “If you tell the truth, you don’t need a good memory.”

The whole Benghazi “defense”  is about members of the administration getting together to agree upon what they were going to say, and people who are being honest don’t do that. Somehow that point keeps getting left out of the discussion.