Governing--providing for the common good, peace, and economic growth--and politics--scoring political points, attacking your opponents, and casting blame--are two different activities that often follow the same path.

Good politicians used to separate politics from governing. Two US Southerners set two different paths on race, in politics and governance. Strom Thurmond, a US senator from South Carolina, who talked outrageously, always lost the important votes; he ended the Helm's filibuster against the King Holiday bill and gave race-blind constituent service and community grants. George Wallace, a governor of Alabama who had stood against black civil rights, barred the doors of his state's university, flanked by armed state patrols. Later, he visited every black community to tell people his views changed when he was shot and disabled. He won again, and appointed more African-Americans to state office than any other Alabama governor. In a spring 2015 primary, a Mississippi Republican received African-American help against a Tea Party opponent.

Power is changing the fundamental agreements about the political economy. In America, the choice is between national benefits or national wealth. Which way? Which party? What's the local guidance?

The role of politics--the heavyweight fights for power, the efforts to embarrass your opponents--takes place in the very same historic American buildings built to govern America. But the Capitol in which the Senate and the House of Representatives meet were built after America developed its two party system, unique among nations.

From its earliest days, America mixed politics with governance. Slavery was its earliest, most important intersection; slavery exposed tensions between government and freedom, and freedom and equality. The two American parties reflect these two positions in their ideals.

Those governing recognize the enormous advances of power. American democracy by its structure and founding ideas also has a tension between the common good and those who want to consolidate power over the common will.

In America, one side pretends their governing is only for the benefit of "the American people," since it ignores the nearly 50 or more percent of the people who voted for the other side and seek different policies. The two parties divide America's people into two large groups by states that want different laws and approaches to governing. But America's political economy is so large, governing also means incredible power.

One party denies its politics. Its denial has helped make that one party, the Republican party, become a wealthy, majority-of-a-minority party.

But as a majority-of-minorities, they build state parties to control national elections. Many of their US House winners from the states are members of the Tea Party. They love political battles over budgets and funding. They once shut down the entire US government by refusing to vote to fund it, and closed it for 18 days. (The US lost $24 billion in GDP during the period.)

The 11 hour US House Select Committee on Behghazi hearing, in which former Senator and US Secretary of State was the only witness was an important hearing on American governing and politics--although one side denied it! Both parties named appointees to the Select Committee, many newcomers, and this was their first national test! The hearing was televised. The Committee members and Mrs. Clinton would be viewed by a large set of Americans, around 42 million (over 3x times of the 14 million combined households for cable's premier public service live telecasts, C-SPAN and C-SPAN2).

Once sworn in, Clinton remained seated at the witness table alone with a microphone in front of an elevated dais that curved around the room where the House members of both parties set.

Late, in the last hours, Secretary Clinton got questions about her emails, the amount of emails, the search for emails, emails to whom, about what--including email traffic between staff.

However, the State Department does its most important correspondence, personal notes, and documents, by cable; the diplomatic system that encrypts and sends documents to protect their security. The Select Committee had not requested or reviewed any of the cables tied to the tragedy at Benghazi. In Benghazi, a small band of Libyan insurgents attacked the small US consulate and killed the US ambassador and three of the US embassy staff.

The unspoken politics in the room is that:

commanders are humiliated and retired for their battlefront errors—

a mission of duty completely at odds with today's quick strikes, unknown attacks behind any door, in a time when the best decisions are often made at the lower level, closest to the field, a point every community organizer knows, including the US Commander-in-Chief.

Today is big power politics. Emails. For 11 hours.

Why shift the focus away from the responsibility of the President, it is his oversight—he is charged with protecting the lives of every single American, esp. those in service of government—to the Secretary of State? Simple politics. Blaming the President scores no political points, this is his last term. Putting blame on Mrs. Clinton could score big: she is the leading candidate and flavored to win the Democratic party's nomination next summer.

So put her under the heat lamp. It's an email roast.

Democrats on the committee pointed out the politics. The official report by an independent review committee had long ago submitted its report and most of its recommendations were in place. A November 2014 Republican-lead House report found the Obama administration had no fault.

The new committee took the plight of leadership and emails. Questions asked about her mails included search words (Mrs. Clinton didn't know.), changing volume (Important business was done face to face or by diplomatic cable.), staff emails (Mrs. Clinton was unfamiliar with the employees or their messages to each other.). The Republicans tried to equate missing emails to neglect. Emails were their political tea leaves.

One House member drew a different outline. He suggested a conspiracy between the State Department and the CIA, to fit a narrative together. Another member, for the cameras, dramatically hand shredded paper into smaller pieces, signaling what he thought Mrs. Clinton thought of the lives of the dead, and what he thought of her.

The entire 11 hours found no specific errors and generated no suggestions for keeping Americans on duty abroad safe from armed attacks. It is generally thought that Mrs. Clinton won the day. Her calm, listening leadership made strong political points and, not surprisingly, in her remarks, she turned to the governing tasks, the hearing's purpose.

Her opponents had a much more difficult task: in order to generate blame, they would have to slander death.