World’s Most Famous Liar Is At It Again

Who knew that Bill Clinton lying could still be considered ‘news’?

Clinton served up some hot, tasty whoppers yesterday in Boonville, Indiana:

“A lot of the way this whole campaign has been covered has amused me,” he said. “But 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. Did y’all see all that. Oh, they blew it up. Let me just tell you. The president of Bosnia and Gen. Wesley Clark — who was there making peace where we’d lost three peacekeepers who had to ride on a dangerous mountain road because it was too dangerous to go the regular, safe way — both defended her because they pointed out that when her plane landed in Bosnia, she had to go up to the bulletproof part of the plane, in the front. Everybody else had to put their flack jackets underneath the seat in case they got shot at. And everywhere they went they were covered by Apache helicopters. So they just abbreviated the arrival ceremony. Now I say that because, what really has mattered is that even then she was interested in our troops. And I think she was the first first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to go into a combat zone. And 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.”

What a not-so-subtle way for Bill Clinton to torpedo his wife’s campaign. He gratuitously reopens the Tuzla Lie just as it was fading away, subverts the idea of Hillary’s 3 a.m. prowess at handling problems, reminds everyone that both Bill and Hillary are pathological liars, and points out that Hillary is old.

But, Bill Clinton did set a personal best here for stuffing the most crap into a sock. It is a masterpiece: interlocking lies, fibs, exaggerations, omissions, misdirections and mischaracterizations so profuse and well-crafted that one is only left saying, bravo! Except, in the YouTube age, this little game no longer works. And that, ultimately, is what is bringing the Clinton era to a close.

Crossposted from Ken McCracken