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A dozen years ago, New York Times columnist William
Safire observed that Americans of all political
persuasions are coming to the sad realization that our
First Lady -- a woman of undoubted talents who was a role
model for many in her generation -- is a congenital
liar.
The First Lady was Hillary Rodham Clinton. Safire went on to list several scandals of the day that will remain mostly forgotten unless she gets the Democratic nomination, and then they will be repeated around the clock on Fox News.
Safire also wrote a language column for the New York
Times, and so it surprised me that he used the word
congenital.
Its primary meaning is existing at
birth but not hereditary,
as with a congenital heart
defect.
No one is born a liar, for lying requires
language, and we have none at birth.
Clinton's latest whopper is still fresh. It concerned a
good-will visit to Bosnia in 1996, of which she recently
said I remember landing under sniper fire. There was
supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the
airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get
into the vehicles to get to our base.
She has recounted that adventure several times this campaign season, perhaps to burnish her commander-in-chief credentials. She and Sen. John McCain have come under under enemy fire, whereas Sen. Barack Obama has not, or something like that.
Then it was conclusively demonstrated with contemporary
video recordings that there was no sniper fire at the
airport, and that there was a leisurely greeting ceremony
on the tarmac. Her response? She misspoke
because
she was sleep-deprived.
Was she groggy every time she told that tale this year? And how does her sleep-deprivation rationale fit with her assurances that she's the candidate who's ready to answer the red telephone if it rings at 3 a.m. ?
When she was campaigning in Colorado before our Feb. 5
caucuses, Clinton mentioned all these women in their
nineties
who were born before women could vote but were
now excited because a woman was a viable candidate. Her
campaign even produced a 90-year-old woman who was a
life-long Colorado resident
The problem with this fabrication is that women have been voting for president and every other elected office in Colorado since 1893. Women got the vote in all states with the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920, but women had already voted in many states: Wyoming since statehood in 1890, Arizona with statehood in 1912, etc.
So was Clinton lying about the presence of Colorado women who remembered a time when women could not vote here (they'd have to be about 120 years old)? Was she just ignorant of the history of female suffrage in this country? Was it bad staff work, when she could have localized her message with something like how glad she was to be in a place with such a progressive tradition on women's rights?
Whatever the case -- fabrication, ignorance or sloth --
it does not speak well for her as a candidate. Granted,
this may be no big deal, especially since we abide in one
of her insignificant
states. But it's certainly part
of a pattern of falsification that extends from her claim
that she was named after Sir Edmund Hillary to her
explanations of her 2002 vote on Iraq.
As she says about her Bosnia misspeaking, So I made a
mistake. That happens. It proves I'm human, which, you
know, for some people, is a revelation. This is really
about what policy experience we have and who's ready to be
commander-in-chief. And I'm happy to put my experience up
against Senator Obama's any day.
So let us grant that she does have much more experience in lying from the White House, going all the way back to 1993, and ask ourselves if that's the kind of experience we want.
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