Sen. Hagel has been defeatist about Iraq and Afghanistan. And he seems much given to what the late Jeane Kirkpatrick called the "blame-America-first" syndrome
The conventional wisdom is that Barack Obama dodged a politically perilous "bullet" when he declined to nominate Susan Rice as the next Secretary of State. Had he done so, the President would have provided his critics a high-profile platform for exposing and critiquing his administration's conduct with respect to Benghazigate and the larger, dangerous practice of "engaging" Islamists, of which it was a particularly dismal example.
