by Frank James
Did Sen. Hillary Clinton essentially admit during last night’s Democratic presidential debate that she told a bald-faced lie about her experiences in Bosnia? It seems to some of us that’s exactly what she did.
It came during her response to the videotaped question from Tom Rooney of Pittsburgh.
Q Senator, I was in your court until a couple of weeks ago. How do you reconcile the campaign of credibility that you have when you’ve made those comments about what happened getting off the plane in Bosnia, which totally misrepresented what really happened on that day? You really lost my vote. And what can you tell me to get that vote back?
SEN. CLINTON: Well, Tom, I can tell you that I may be a lot of things, but I’m not dumb. And I wrote about going to Bosnia in my book in 2004. I laid it all out there. And you’re right. On a couple of occasions in the last weeks I just said some things that weren’t in keeping with what I knew to be the case and what I had written about in my book. And, you know, I’m embarrassed by it. I have apologized for it. I’ve said it was a mistake. And it is, I hope, something that you can look over, because clearly I am proud that I went to Bosnia. It was a war zone.
The statement to key on is this one:
“On a couple of occasions in the last weeks I just said some things that weren’t in keeping with what I knew to be the case and what I had written about in my book. And, you know, I’m embarrassed by it.”
When you make statements you KNOW not to be the case, isn’t that the same as telling a straight-out lie? If that isn’t lying, then what is?What’s so amazing about this is that there was no follow-up by ABC News anchor Charles Gibson or the network’s Sunday morning talk show host George Stephanopoulos. A presidential candidate who a majority of voters don’t trust to tell the truth essentially says that she lied and there’s no follow-up? That’s fairly breath-taking in its own right.
Of course, Sen. Barack Obama was trying so hard to stick to the high road that he didn’t go there either.
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But to have a presidential candidate basically say “I lied” is a fairly astonishing moment in a presidential campaign.
One obvious follow-up is why did she feel the need to lie, to gild the lilly to such an extent? What does that say about her character or her psychology that she would lie about something so easily disproved?
Here;s another: Does she believe voters should trust an admitted liar? Yet another: Having witnessed close-up the effect lying can have on a leader’s credibility i.e. her husband’s famous finger-wagging lie, why would she engage in such behavior?
Her prior explanations of what happened was that she was tired or misspoke for the first time in all her years of public service. She tried that again last night at the end of her answer when she said:
So I will either try to get more sleep, Tom, or, you know, have somebody who, you know, is there as a reminder to me.
But unless the plain text meaning of her words in fact means nothing, it appears she told all the world that she lied.