Embellishment and Hillary Clinton Fatigue

How is it that any politician running for national office thinks that they can get away with embellishment, lying, or misleading statements in the modern age of communications? How Hillary Clinton can relate a story of “running under sniper fire” when video exists of the actual events is beyond me. In recent history, Dan Rather was run out of town for forgeries, Barack Obama’s minister’s sermons were exposed, Gary Hart had pictures of his affair exposed, Eliot Spitzer had his prostitution usage exposed, Nixon had tapes in the White House, Bill Clinton left evidence on a dress, Kwame Kilpatrick had 10,000 text messages, and on and on. There is virtually nothing that happens of consequence that doesn’t leave some trail of evidence.

Hillary Clinton started out behind the eight ball. People already had, at least independents and conservatives, an opinion of her as a scheming, no trick too dirty political opportunist. Her campaign had to be, in part, an effort to convince people that the impression was false and that she was genuine. Moving to New York to be elected certainly hadn’t helped that view. Everyone, even Democrats, knew that the move was political opportunism. The Clintons always complained about the “politics of personal destruction” and then were the foremost practitioners of it. Hillary Clinton had to run an almost perfect campaign in order to offset that image. To the Democrats, she was the “heir apparent” to the Presidency and the primaries were to be a formality (thus, the unimportance of super-delegates). In fact, the super-delegates were supposed to get the nomination process over more quickly by squashing any second place usurper who dared to make it a contest. What the Democratic leadership had not counted on was the appeal of someone other than Hillary Clinton. Make no mistake, Barack Obama is an appealing candidate, but a large part of his appeal is that he is NOT Hillary Clinton. Recent polls have shown that 19% of Obama supporters would vote for John McCain if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee. That speaks volumes about the opinion of Democrats. In the Michigan primary, without Barack Obama on the ballot, almost 40% of Democrats did not vote for Hillary Clinton. They preferred “none of the above”. Many Democrats have been dismayed with what the Clintons did to the Democratic Party for a long time but always held their tongues because they were convinced that Hillary would be President. The haters of President Bush feel the Clintons were responsible for him being elected. Now that there is another viable candidate who is actually leading her in delegates, the truth is coming forward. There are a lot of Democrats who don’t like her in a big way and never did. Combine that with the fact that Republicans loath her and it makes for a tough candidate to elect. If she was winning big, the Democrats who dislike her would hold their noses and vote for her but now they have an alternative and they are jumping on that train.

The latest Bosnia embellishment is not surprising given her history of similar episodes but it is more revealing of the Democratic Party as a whole as they use it to again justify why so many would support anyone else. In a column just before New Hampshire I wrote that I didn’t think Obama had much of a chance. I clearly underestimated the undercurrent of Democrat desire to get away from the Clintons.