How would you like to be a super-delegate on the receiving end of a late-night call from Hillary, Bill, or even tagalong Chelsea? There would be urging, cajoling, pleading, demanding, arm-twisting, bribing, perhaps blackmailing in an attempt to obtain your support. You'd listen politely, which I am sure Gov. Richardson did on several occasions, before excusing yourself by saying, "I have to check on the kids in bed." You hang up the phone, your forehead damp with sweat, as the incessant Clintonian refrain " Obama can't win the general election" buzzes in your head like a mad horsefly.
The next morning, you wake up with a Hillary hangover. You feel sympathy for the likes of Nora Ephron who recently confessed to being obsessed by all things Hillary. In fact, the Nora Ephron syndrome is only norepinephrine flooding your system with a surge of hormones that causes physical sensations like an increased heart rate. Yes, the Clintons have that affect on Democrats. You can imagine the effect they have with Republicans!
Because the Clintons are the soap opera that never ends, they have become this season's favorite reality show. Instead of prime-time viewing, we have the primaries. Yet wouldn't it be grand to see the Clintons on a show like Fox's "Moment of Truth" in which they would be hooked up to a lie detector machine. First question to Hillary: Have you ever lied? Second question: Were you ever under enemy fire in Bosnia?
Of course, you can easily beat the machine. Polygraph experts say that having a thumbtack in one's shoe can do the trick; you press down and the sharp pain will throw off the reading. Or you can secretly hyperventilate.
Politicians, like criminals, are notorious for being liars. This is not to say that Hillary is a miscreant or gangster; she's just not that good of a liar. Bill is much more of a maestro in this realm.
Back in the days of Nazi Germany, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels said that if you say the same lie long enough, people will believe in it. Perhaps that partially explains Hillary's Bosnian bold-faced fib; she began to believe in her own fantasy concoctions--and she hoped that others would too. Had she not been caught flat-footed and foolish in this contretemps, she would have continued peddling the same B.S. all the way to the convention. It wouldn't be a matter of "having misspoken." This was a lie that calcified as time went on, no different than when Bill said, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." Had he come clean at the start, there would have been no costly impeachment trial, Al Gore would be president, we wouldn't be bogged down in Iraq, and so on.
There are gaffes aplenty when it comes to politicians, but a careless remark can become toxic when it's wrenched out of context. Al Gore was hit hard when he told Wolf Blitzer that he invented the Internet. But did he really say those exact words? Here's what he actually said to the CNN newsman on March 9, 1999: "During my service in the United States Congress I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
Seven months later, Gore was asked the following question at the Democrat presidential primary debate at Dartmouth College: "What is the biggest mistake you have made in your political career?" The former vice-president answered, " I would say that my biggest mistake was in my choice of words when I claimed to have taken the lead in the Congress in creating the Internet. I'm proud of what I did in that area, incidentally, because there was a little network called DARPANET in the Pentagon, and I did take the lead in the Congress in providing funding for the people who created what later became the Internet."
To this day, the Internet gaffe still hounds Gore. But a momentary verbal screw-up is far different than calculated prevarication. With Hillary's Bosnian lie, and many others by her that remain to be catalogued or coaxed out of news cable news archives, it was never a case of accidentally choosing the wrong words. She's too intelligent to be tongue-tied or brain-addled like our current president who treats English as his second language ( he has no first).
Hillary's crime is one of hubris coupled with her addiction to being a pathological triangulator. She's always weighing the pros and cons of what should be said, what should be omitted, what should be parsed, what should be elided, what should be amplified, what should be exaggerated, what should be made up. There's always a devious angle to be played. She approaches her intended audience like a pool shark going for a triple-bank shot.
That is why the prospect of a Hillary presidency is problematic and vexing, and why so many Democrats are rooting for the other guy. She's too Nixonian. Tricky Dick was never faulted for being dimwitted or unschooled in foreign and domestic policy. He was a wonk long before the word was created. But Americans never really trusted Nixon. He was too much the used-car salesman who hitched a ride on the McCarthy Red Scare Express. When he said, "I am not a crook," the effect was quite the opposite. We all felt he had something to hide.
With Hillary as president, the nation would be exposed to a constant crises-- is she telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? How would we ever find out? We must be spared this nightmare. In any case, who knows how the Democratic presidential nominee end game will play out, despite Obama's slender delegate lead. While it's 2:59 a.m. for Hillary and her chances appear increasingly bleak, anything can happen in that next minute.