Hillary's Psychic Reality
During the Democratic debate in Philadelphia, Hillary Clinton gave the following gloss on her Bosnia fairytale: "I can tell you that I may be a lot of things but I'm not dumb... 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 ...on a few occasions I was not as accurate as I have been in the past... So I will either try to get more sleep...or have somebody who is there as a reminder to me. "
Huh?
Ordinarily, saying things that aren't in keeping with what one knows to be the case is called "lying". And what's dumb got to do with it? No one ever accused Hillary of being dumb. And dumb couldn't explain her Bosnia remarks anyhow.
Yet bizarrely enough, the press didn't seem to notice or comment on the utter absurdity of her remarks. Either they were accepted as some kind of apology or they were relegated to the ever-expanding swamp of campaign "gaffes" and "silliness."
In any case, the Bosnia story has now been overshadowed -- most recently by the lunatic performances of Reverend Wright. But whether or not Reverend Wright is a nut-job is not remotely the same order of question as whether snipers were shooting at Hillary Clinton. Everyone senses this, even if they can't articulate it.
It is truly unsettling to watch someone lie so effortlessly and with such seeming sincerity. To recap: Hillary, sporting a big festive shamrock scarf, looked straight at the audience and in a remarkably relaxed way recalled an incident where she had landed in Bosnia under sniper fire. She described a situation so dangerous that the greeting ceremony at the airport had to be canceled and claimed that she'd run to her vehicle with her head down in order to make a quick getaway. She even had an accompanying hand gesture conveying her dramatic dash for dear life.
There were no obvious tells that Hillary was bluffing. She chuckled a little as she described her narrow escape -- a curious affect given the gravity of the situation, but people do react in different ways to trauma. Overall, it was a pretty smooth performance. If there were any pangs of conscience they were not visible.
As political lies go, it was an outlier. Hillary didn't impulsively lie because she was caught off-guard. She didn't lie because the truth would be damaging to her political career or painful to her family. She didn't lie to win over a political base. She didn't lie to distance herself from an event that suggested some improper conduct or an unsavory person that could tarnish her reputation. She didn't lie because she was promoting behavior in the public sphere that she was not abiding by in her personal life. She didn't lie to cover up a mistake that had been made.
Hillary's lie was different. She lied with no need to do so. And she made the story up out of whole cloth. It wasn't as if one bullet was fired at her and she exaggerated the incident. There was no sniper fire - never, ever. It was the sort of lie a child might tell playing make-believe. In an article in Huffington Post, Nora Ephron confessed that she'd "lost hours trying to figure out why" Hillary told such "a big lie".
But let's say she was motivated by political gain. Some have suggested the story was meant to embellish her foreign policy experience. But dodging sniper fire doesn't really speak to foreign policy expertise; it speaks more to issues of character like bravery and patriotism. Maybe it was supposed to suggest that Hillary could be a better match for John McCain because she too had put herself in harms' way for her country.
Of course, as a political calculation, this would have been crazy. Considering the probability of getting caught, the risks of telling this lie far outweighed any conceivable political gain. As New York Times columnist Frank Rich pointed out her story had "been publicly debunked by journalists and eyewitnesses" for months. "Why would so smart a candidate play political Russian roulette with virtually all the bullet chambers loaded?"
Wouldn't it have entered her mind that if she was found out it would be seen as an insult to anyone who'd seen real action? One GOP ad with grainy footage of McCain limping home from Vietnam contrasted with Hillary's cheerful tale of coming under sniper fire in Bosnia, and the race would be over.
Hillary may have gambled that her audience wanted to believe her. Or she may have figured the story was so tall that the public would never dream she'd made it up. Whatever her thought process, Hillary appeared unfazed by the possibility of detection. Guilt, fear of humiliation, or any other negative repercussions did not appear to inhibit her. Apparently, there was no little voice in her head, helping her to distinguish between right and wrong. Christopher Hitchens concluded that Hillary may be "someone who lies without conscience or reflection".
When Hillary's lie was exposed, she attempted to diminish it. She said she "misspoke" because of sleep deprivation. Then she said she "misspoke" because, after all, she spouts "millions of words a day". But Hillary couldn't have "misspoke" She'd repeated the story on several occasions. Perhaps she was saying that she continually "misspoke". But if she continually "misspoke", surely Chelsea, who had accompanied her to Bosnia, would have pointed this out. (Psst, Mom, nobody was shooting at us).
Maybe there was nothing Hillary could say, but a little remorse would have been nice. Instead she seemed irritated: "So I made a mistake. That happens. It proves I'm human which you know for some people is a revelation". In other words, we were to blame for holding her to too high a standard of truth.
When it became apparent that people weren't willing to dismiss Hillary's Bosnia "misstatement" so quickly, she attempted to make light of it. Appearing on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno, she joked: "I was so worried I wasn't going to make it [here]. I was pinned down by sniper fire at a Burbank airport." She referred to the Bosnia flap as "a mismatch of words and actions", and since, after all, she'd got it right in her book, she'd "obviously had a lapse".
The Hillary camp must have realized the story wasn't completely dead, because Bill Clinton brought it up again. In a bizarrely misguided attempt to minimize its impact he revived the story in a version of his own : "There was a lot of fulminating because Hillary one time late at night when she was exhausted misstated and immediately apologized for it, what happened to her in Bosnia in 1995... You woulda thought, you know that she'd robbed a bank the way they carried on about this. And some of them when they're 60, they'll forget something when they're tired at 11:00 at night too".
Of course, it wasn't one time. It wasn't late at night. She wasn't exhausted because she said it three different times. And she didn't apologize immediately (or even close to immediately). It also begged the question: If Hillary could be gaga at 11:00 pm, what would she be like when the phone rings at 3:00 am?
When President Clinton's story backfired, Hillary's campaign tried to paint Bill as the storyteller and his wife as the authority. At a rally in Indiana, Bill said: "Hillary called me and said, 'You don't remember this. You weren't there, let me handle it'''. Now let me get this straight: Hillary was there, so Hillary ought to know, except it turned out that Hillary didn't know, so Bill makes up a story to explain the story that Hillary made up even though she was there.
There are two possibilities: Hillary may be a pathological liar. Or, more persuasive to me, Hillary believed what she was saying and her description of her Bosnia trip was a true representation of her psychic reality and not external reality. In her internal world, Hillary may feel as though she's always being shot at by sniper fire and that she's heroically managed to stay alive.
This theory makes sense of Hillary's recklessness. It didn't feel reckless to Hillary to repeat this lie over and over again, and she paid no heed to those who contradicted her, because in her mind, she was telling the truth. Only when confronted with undeniable evidence of external reality -- actual footage from her Bosnia trip - did she admit (possibly to herself as well as the public) that her version of events was not true.
It also explains Hillary's reaction when exposed. She was angry because she was forced to abandon her psychic reality for external reality. For her, this was tantamount to giving up the truth in exchange for mere facts. When she said "It proves I'm human which you know for some people is a revelation", she may well have been reminding herself.
While most of her explanations have made no sense, when Hillary told Leno that she'd had "a lapse", she was right on. She'd had an actual lapse in mental functioning. Fantasy took over from reality. Reporters and pundits were already starting to question whether Hillary believed her own story. Hitchens wondered whether "she was subject to an illusory past". Melinda Henneberger, writing in Slate, said, she could only conclude that Hillary must have believed the lie because she could not imagine any other reason why "any presidential candidate would knowingly cook up such a doozy of a drama about dodging a sniper's bullets in Bosnia -- given that she was accompanied on this trip by a planeload of reporters". Henneberger concluded that this was more disturbing than if she had lied and "ought to be a deal breaker".
This may explain why Hillary's explanation in the Pennsylvania debate was so bizarre: "I can tell you that I may be a lot of things but I'm not dumb." She wanted to shift her problem into the domain of IQ rather than raising a question about her psychic functioning. If people began to question her grasp of reality, she'd be history.
The sensed of a shared reality is fundamental to the functioning of the world. In the same way that delusions and hallucinations are so disturbing, or that contradicting a child's perceptions is so traumatic, so Hillary's story constituted a jarring attack on our sense of common reality.
In the course of Hillary's campaign, a number of features have repeatedly emerged that are also elements of her Bosnia tale. 1) Hillary is both hero and victim; 2) facts are of no consequence; 3) And there are no witnesses or observers to the facts. This last point is always startling. For example, Hillary's explanation of her vote on the war made Nora Ephron wonder if Hillary thought we "weren't alive at the time."
On the tarmac in Bosnia, Hillary is the victim for being shot at and the hero for braving a war zone. And she's apparently having a negative hallucination that nobody else was there. The irony, of course, is that when the Bosnia story was discovered, it reinforced Hillary's psychic reality: Once again she felt she was being sniped at (this time by journalists). And that she had to heroically fight on and escape this near-death experience. Which it now seems she has.
For those who think Hillary won't go all the way to the convention in Denver, think again. Hillary sees herself as the victim in this primary campaign -- blaming the press, or the Democratic rules of proportional representation, or the caucus system, or whatever else she comes up with between now and August. She considers herself a heroic fighter for the good of the country; she ignores all the merely factual evidence that she is losing by every measure; and she imagines that nobody is there to notice.
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Everybody lies. Absolutely everbody. Even the Pope lies. But there was something so very creepy about the Bosnia lie, the detail, the fact that she repeated it three times, her patchetic attempt to laugh it off. Did she think she would not be found out? I can't get over it.
Hillary's lies says more about her supporters than her actually lying. For people to continue to "cheer" this woman on is pathetic.
Amen Charmed! I have been saying that all along! This undying and blind support for Hillary make me believe that this is a spritual war! The Clintons' race-bait tactics have made this a war of "Good" vs "Evil" The Clintons AND Jeremiah Wright are on one side On the other side there is Barack Obama and the American People that are ready for change. Obama 08!
Thanks, gigi! My brother and I were discussing this just yesterday.
Solid piece, but I must respectfully disagree. I think Sen. Clinton lies because she almost always gets away with it. She is banking on the laziness of the MSM. Not a bad bet.
More like Cheney every day!
A thoughtful analysis of Hillary's Bosnia story. Doesn't everyone have someone like Hillary in their lives?
Right now, I have a sister in law who is similar. Everyone in the family knows she will embellish the truth, in some cases to the point where it diverges from consensual reality. I had a boss once who a co-worker described as willing to "stand on his head to tell a lie". I have a client now who if asked about the success of a promotion will relate something that causes of the eyes of her employees to dart about uneasily, with arched eyebrows. Even looking within and back, I know that I will, in retelling some adventure to an audience of friends, add some emphasis or color to the story in an attempt to sex it up, though I draw the line at outright fiction. I think that is the difference- Hillary is busy creating her own mythos right now, and facts shouldn't be getting in her way.
In political life there seems to be an expectation that politicians, if their mouths are open, are lying. And that is a big part of Obamas appeal. He just doesn't seem to be a big liar. Whether someone who is not an accomplished liar can rise to the office of the Presidency remains to be seen. Hope.
Everybody does it! That reminds me of Nixon's defense to the Watergate break-in. Everyone did the same! In fact, oddly enough, Hillary begins to remind me of Nixon more and more!
She moved to Washington to work on his impeachment so she picked up a lot of tips while she was there. She learns from the best!
By the way....who cares about a shamrock scarf? Are you that petty?
Shamrock scarf only paints the picture that this woman who presents herself as a true patriot, a proud american woman who celebrates the holidays on her neck, is a bold faced, stepford pathological liar. I think the shamrock scarf adds an element to the story actually..
The shamrock scarf was to get Ireland people to vote for her.
No offense Cybersense, but are you even paying attention to what this blogger is saying? Or are you just taking one teenie little random mention, and trying to blur over the whole gist and meat of the blog.
Hmmm.... sounds suspiciously similar to the tactics of a certain forementioned candidate.
The scarf was cute, navy with green clover. I thought the author placed the detail in the piece because it was distinctive and stuck in her mind. I also thought it might help people remember those broadcasts in particular, and place them within the timeframe of St. Patrick's Day.
First, as a clinical psychologist, you should go back to your studies. She never said she was shot at and you know this Ellen. Another spin on this from you makes you a little less credible in your profession. Sorry, but I call them I see and know them. I have been around to know a bit more and although HRC's comments on this was wayward, it has been too spinned out of proportion as many other spins on both candidates. You want to pick apart and psycho analyze something or someone in politics, I would think that someone who does not commit on important issues is something to be concerned about. Someone who does not commit then points the fingers at those who do and finding things wrong with them is something to talk about. Or perhaps even those who a degree and psychology, who finds time to write books but is out of loop on actual profession, may be missing more about the true psychology of people in your true attempt to keep her writing career in the "view".
I guess this proves the old adage is true...it'
I know a great therapist, do you want her number? Obam 08
First of all, "spinned"?
Here's the problem cyberdeflector, misspeaking would be saying, "We landed in Bosnia on a Tuesday" when it was actually a Thursday. Saying, "My only child and I had to duck our heads and run because we were under fire" is actually beyond lying and it says something quite disturbing about the person doing the fabrication. Imagine her press conferences as president.
She misspoke. She's human. She was exhausted. She's getting older and forgets things (thanks for that one Bill).
Before defending something by trying to change the subject I would suggest imagining what your reaction would have been to Obama making up this story, smugly laughing it off when called on it and even joking about it in the vein of Bush's "Nope. No WMDs under here". This incident is not insignificant.
It's that smug hypocrisy that brings out the vigorous attacks on Hillary from Obama supporters. Hillary's a fighter but she's also a victim? She's being unfairly picked on but Obama "can't stand the heat in the kitchen"? In each case they can't both be true.
Take a close look at how each of the candidates has responded under pressure. Is the person who laughs hysterically at inappropriate times (like when being asked a difficult question), deflects responsibility, and makes excuses the person we want in the White House. While I would certainly take Hillary over George Bush those are some personality traits I have more than had my fill of.
Well, I really remembered her saying she was shot at. Perhaps I am now revising my reality?
The clinical psychologists I've known would not say things like "it has been too spinned out of proportion" and "although comments..
It doesn't require a license to know when someone's telling you a stinking lie. It doesn't take a degree to know that someone is an unprincipled boor. That's your girl. You want her, you can have her. But keep her to yourself. We've had plenty. No more.
Good catch, PennP.
Excellent piece, Ms. L!
You have misdiagnosed Hillary, tho -- she's suffering from an extreme case of narcissism -- THAT'S her problem. And the serial lying and bizarre behavior she has exhibited are merely manifestations of that particular personality disorder.
How do I know this to be true? I know someone who has been afflicted with the same disorder and behaves the same way. The only difference is, the individual I know has only managed to destroy the lives of a handful of people, mostly those closely related to her, not on a national or global degree, as is the case with Hillary -- and her partner in crime, Bill.
The Clinton psychodrama will continue as long as people enable them -- like someone offering a drunk another bottle. THEY are the news -- and THEY must be in the media spotlight everyday!
Watch their actions. Listen to their words. See if what I've said isn't true.
You are so right. She is a classic narcissist.
Just like George Bush and his entourage!
I question the "psychic functioning" of Hillbilly supporters. I think their pathetic lives are "illusory". This chick needs to be in a rubber room! An her unAmerican AND unChristian supporters. Shame! Go Barack.
What many people fail to realize is the Hillary is displaying the kind of self-aggrandizing behavior commonly observable in people suffering from Narcissistic Personality disorder. Those with NPD create idealized versions of themselves and then totally buy into this manufactured story as the truth. They lie effortlessly and refuse to acknowledge mistakes. They exhibit a great sense of entitlement and objectify or exploit others as tools or pawns to achieve their aims.
Sounds like a pretty accurate assessment to me. Something's wrong with the woman, that's for sure.
I've known a couple of NPD's and while I won't attempt to psychoanalyze Hillary Clinton as I don't know her personally, I will say she exhibits a key characteristic of this disorder. NPD's feel that the rules don't apply to them. This is exemplified by HRC's ludicrous inisistence that the Michigan and Florida votes be counted, although the primaries were disqualified. She initally had no problem with their disqualification, but because she ended up winning them, of course the DNC leadership needs to change the rules to her advantage. Her feeling of specialness and that she is beyond the rules could also explain her outrageous behavior--
Sadly, George Bush displays many of these characteristics too.
What does it say about the people who support her and McCain? What would they choose phony bullshitters, old hack politicos over someone who has all of the fine characteristics we should want in the WH representing us after the years and years of hacks and phonies and pretenders? Why would we want more of the same?
Is change just so freakin' terrifying that people are willing to risk everything for more of the same old ugly?
Note to Hillary and Ladowsky: when you find yourself turning cartwheels to make a story go down you should just stop trying to swallow and recognize how unpalatable the words are.
Hillary lied, and then she lied about lying.
Her "joke" on Leno was loathsome, akin to Bush's parody of looking for WMD. Both were grievous insults.
The media, and now a clinical psychologist, are giving her a pass on this. The Republicans won't, and neither will I.
"She lied with no need to do so" When did she first exagerate that comment? December of 07 comments on a corkscrew landing to avoid sniper fire wasn't it? Check the newsweek factcheck just days before she embellished it more but they didn't even mention the comments heading into texas and ohio.
How about the march 1st stories heading into texas and ohio.
"Contrasting that with her own experience, she evoked foreign battlefields, recalling a trip to Bosnia as first lady, when the welcoming ceremony “had to be moved inside because of sniper fire.”
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Now as the lies were out before texas and ohio and other votes as well how come the media with her didn't call her on it until march in a loud manner aka TV coverage tp prevent it's stump use.
In short she got to talk up her courage on the same day of her 3am adds heading into texas ohio. Nah that didn't help. She lied because she was getting away with it and it's the perfect lie for her targets in this race.
Cold calculating and focused on one goal. What did she do when the story break, Ohh yeah had the cajun call richardson judas. Sorry she's not a victim and she did lie for benefit and FINALLY got called on it loudly.
People are seriously proposing that hair-trigger John McCain be given a psych profile test, like they give to the people in charge of lauching nukes and the pilots. I think each candidate should be administered this test. (McCain is simply too dangerous and should be administered the test tomorrow). Clinton is not as overtly scary but there is a subtext of scary that pops through the surface occassionally ("obliterate" Iran. There is perhaps a more sane way to pledge allegiance to Israel then to threaten Iran with destruction).
Clinton went on the Tonight Show and joked about her Tuzla lie. I never served in the military, but my mind immediately went to those who have actually faced death in combat, and how they would be feeling about her mocking their service. Belittling. Talk about out-of-touch.
I do not understand why we haven't seen more articles such as this one, critical of the ease with which Senator Clinton lies. And the degree to which she believes her lies. Her trustworthy rating is in the toilet, and people aren't flocking to Obama? Does America simply make allowances for deceitful politicians, having suffered the likes of Nixon?
Senator Clinton seemingly tells lies when it would be just as easy to tell the truth. This characteristic often develops in children who grow up with one or both parent an alcoholic. It probably is a common characteristic for any number of personality disorders; I just know about the parent-booze connection.
Good article, but I do think you got one thing wrong - she IS a pathological liar. If this were a single instance, maybe you have a point. But, she seems to lie every time she speaks.
Great article.
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