Hillary Clinton recently made statements regarding her trip to Bosnia in 1996. These statements (almost) immediately were shown to be false. She was selling herself based on her experience, and made material misrepresentations of fact. Her explanation? "She misspoke."
Dictionary.com's definition of misspeak is as follows: 1. To speak, utter, or pronounce incorrectly; 2. to speak inaccurately, inappropriately, or too hastily.
I'm curious, if she spoke inaccurately, how she did so with such detail, and how she discounted a fellow passenger's explanation on the matter? I'm also curious, if she misspoke with such clarity, if she was referring to another mission that she flew to, and if so, when and where that was? Because otherwise, this seems less like a misstatement and more like a lie.
Perhaps the most perplexing part of this is how her spokesperson (and by extension, Hillary herself) could expect us to simply accept that she misspoke, and then turn the attention to Obama (in the article linked first, Clinton Spokesperson Howard Wolfson said the Obama campaign was pressing this because they had "nothing positive to say about their candidate"). They need to come up with a better answer, if one is available. But I think this is her losing moment - like George Romney's "brainwashed" statement, or Howard Dean's explosion, or Gary Hart's Donna Rice. At least, it would be, if the Press didn't give her a free pass on this issue.
Nelson M. has another take on this at The Liberal Journal.
4 comments:
Her explanation: she was "sleep deprived." Perhaps some one else should answer the White House phone at 3am.
BUT WHAT ABOUT OBAMA'S CRAZY BLACK POWER PREACHER GUY, HUH? WHAT ABOUT HIM! IGNORE THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN! DO NOT LOOK AT THE ISSUES. FOCUS ON THE CRAZY PREACHER MAN!!
Let's just say it... She "f"'d up and she got busted lying.
OK--this is TOTALLY off topic but I just realized after all this time who you remind me of! You know the apple commercials with the "apple guy" and the "PC" guy??? OK, you totally remind me of "PC" guy!! Yes, by George, that's it!! You are "PC" guy...
Thanks for the link, Steve.
The lie was pretty bad because it reinforced the idea that she will do or say anything, and it really goes to the heart of her experience argument. Coupled with some of Obama's endorsements and calls for her to concede, it's been a bad week for her campaign.
But a week is an eternity in politics, so it's still possible that a week from now we'll all be talking about something completely different.
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