“Secretary Clinton had originally been asked by networks to go on. She declined to do it.”

-- Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, talking to NBC News.

The Obama Democrats are today furious at the opposition of Republicans that ended the bid of presidential favorite U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice to replace outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Rice, a stalwart retainer of the House of Obama, knows that Clinton, the matriarch of the rival Democratic clan, let the ambitious ambassador take the fall.

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But this would be sort of like being upset at the bear that trashed your campsite in search of your food. The bear was just being a bear, like Lindsey Graham and John McCain were just being themselves. Bears like peanut butter and Republican senators like to bedevil controversial Democratic appointees.

The real question is who forgot to seal up the cooler and hang the rest of the chow from a tree branch. Who enticed the bears into camp?

Rice, a friend and confidante of President Obama, gave the answer on Thursday night in an interview with NBC’s Brian Williams. It was Clinton herself that set in motion what would become the shambles of Rice’s once-inevitable march into the top cabinet slot for the second Obama term.

It was a round of Sunday show interviews in the wake of the Sept. 11 raid by Islamist militiamen in Libya that ultimately doomed Rice’s chance to have the top job. Rice, no doubt looking for the chance to burnish her profile on big issues, sallied forth the following Sunday to lay out the administration talking points that the deadly attack was a spontaneous result of riots over a YouTube video offensive to Muslims.