Her surrogates have been equipped with talking points blasting the Benghazi Committee as a “partisan charade.”

Her main defender David Brock is expected to give a “pre-buttal” speech Wednesday, laying out a detailed case against the committee that essentially turns the tables and puts its members on trial. At Correct The Record, a PAC that coordinates with Hillary Clinton's campaign, a war room of about 30 staffers will be on hand to defend Clinton and attack the committee as she heads to Capitol Hill Thursday to testify in front of the House Select Committee on Benghazi. And the outside super PAC supporting her campaign, Priorities USA, will be airing its first television commercials of the cycle in the two days leading up to the hearing, and has also conducted its first polls on attitudes toward the Republican-led panel.

But Clinton herself is expected to show up solemn and serious in manner, her full commander-in-chief mode on display, allies told POLITICO. In the end, others will do the partisan screaming for her while she attempts to treat the appearance as part of her responsibility to the four Americans killed in Libya under her watch in 2012, as well as an opportunity to outline more broadly how she would conduct foreign policy as president.

If there’s a larger theme to the hearing for Clinton — at which she is expected to be grilled on both the Benghazi attacks as well as her use of a private email account while she was secretary of state — it is presenting her theory of the case for American diplomatic engagement abroad. While Clinton to date has largely avoided extensive discussion on the campaign trail of foreign policy matters, she is expected to offer a full-throated defense of the fact that the United States had diplomats on the ground in Benghazi. She is expected to lay out the rationale more broadly for “smart power,” the carrot-and-stick approach of combining soft diplomacy with the threat of force and sanctions. The hearing, allies said, is expected to provide Clinton with a stage to make the case for maintaining a diplomatic force in dangerous corners of the world, rather than retreating.

The high-profile hearing has forced a shift in calculus for the Clinton campaign that has focused almost all of its efforts to date on economic policy at home, and on presenting the former secretary of state as a down-to-earth candidate in touch with the concerns of middle-class Americans. When she has waded into foreign policy, however, it has been a win: one of her best moments on the campaign trail so far was her speech on the Iran deal at the Brookings Institution last month.

That part of her résumé is now on full display, with the Clinton campaign launching a staunch defense of her foreign policy record. On Monday, the campaign released a five-minute video highlighting Clinton’s greatest achievements as secretary of state, including testimonials from Cabinet members lauding her work. In the video, Clinton is presented as more Iron Lady than bartender Val, her winning “Saturday Night Live” character — she is described as having an “iron will,” and as “dogged, determined.” 

“If you use the soft power of diplomacy,” former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright says in the video, “with the hard power of the threat of the use of force, and sanctions — that is smart power. There was nobody better at wielding it than Secretary Clinton.”

Albright, who has been campaigning in Iowa as a surrogate for Clinton, also gave a speech at the Center for American Progress that helped set the stage for Clinton's defense of her own record.

“We have restored America’s reputation after years of grave damage in the wake of Iraq,” Albright said. “We have strengthened our position in Asia and build stronger relationships with India and Japan. We have successfully negotiated a bold diplomatic agreement with Iran... We have deployed smart power and placed a great emphasis on technology, public-private partnerships, economics and energy, and people-to-people ties in global engagements ...The question voters will face next year is whether to build on this record of progress or take a giant leap back to the policies of the previous decade.”

The campaign is also expected to announce a leadership council of foreign policy advisers over the next few days, experts who are supporting her campaign. That council is expected to include: James Steinberg, a former deputy secretary of state; Nicholas Burns, who worked in the State Department under former President George W. Bush; Julissa Reynoso, former ambassador to Uruguay; Vikram Singh, vice president for national security and international policy at the Center for American Progress; Kurt Campbell, a former assistant secretary of state; and Jeremy Bash, a former adviser to Leon Panetta who now runs a consulting firm with longtime Clinton confidant Philippe Reines. 

Clinton herself has testified once already on the attacks, in January 2013, during a heated six-hour hearing. On the emails, she has been giving interviews for a few months now and is not expected to go beyond what she has already said — that she did not email any classified material on her private server while secretary of state. As with last week’s Democratic debate, the biggest issue for Clinton in terms of preparation is not the substance but the presentation — allies said the most important thing for her to keep in mind is to remain calm and not come across as overly defensive. Many Clinton allies also said they expected the Republicans on the committee to help her by overplaying their hand and allowing her to look like she is under attack.

While Clinton is expected to take the high road at the hearing, her surrogates have been armed with talking points blasting the Republicans “willing to sink to exploit the deaths of four brave Americans in order to attack Hillary Clinton,” according to a copy of the talking points obtained by POLITICO.

Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign and donors appeared to be lowering expectations ahead of the crucial moment. On NBC Monday, ommunications Director Jennifer Palmieri said “the debate was a bigger moment” for the campaign than the hearing will be. “[Clinton] is looking forward to Thursday. She wants to answer all the questions and move on,” she said.

Some longtime donors, however, were less excited about the showdown. “I don’t think that anyone comes out of a hearing like that completely unscathed,” said longtime Clinton donor Jay Jacobs. “The issues are too complex and the facts too fluid. So, in my book, a ‘win’ is just a few healable bruises. They may hurt when you get them, but fade away with time.”