Bosnia May Be Hillary Clinton's Biggest Mistake

By Rogers Cadenhead

Tuesday, March 25, 2008 at 11:17 AM

For days, Hillary Clinton has padded her foreign policy resume with an anecdote about a 1996 trip to Bosnia in which her diplomatic entourage evaded sniper fire and made a dangerous corkscrew landing. Now that video has emerged to prove this to be blatantly false, it may be the biggest blunder of her campaign.

Taylor Marsh, a vociferous pro-Hillary blogger and radio host, admits that the senator's embellished boast about dodging sniper fire in Bosnia was a huge mistake:

Hillary Clinton trying to prove her importance during her husband's presidency overreached massively and got caught in a whopper on Bosnia that includes tape. Now to be fair, the trip wasn't completely safe from danger, but no one cares now. We remember her well received foreign policy speech from last week, which included the words shown above, with the video tape evidence circulating today that blows what she said in a major foreign policy speech to smithereens. It's a self-inflicted wound that is by no means fatal, but definitely foolish.

As I've said before, Clinton should have from the start simply said she was her husband's most valued adviser. That she was there and learned through their back and forth, as well as from her many trips that span 80 countries, without claiming a war story. It was unnecessary, especially when the blowback certainly won't be worth it. Besides, no one expects a first lady to have the experience of a president. It's Clinton's lifetime of learning that she'll bring to the job that has real value. Hillary's life proves different opportunities from a man that needs no apologies and padding. Confidence in a life well lived has its own reward, especially when you've seen as much as Clinton has over decades of public policy involvement.

Hillary Clinton never should have campaigned on the premise that her experience as First Lady gave her the foreign policy credibility of John McCain. It's absurd -- she didn't have a security clearance and there's a voluminous public record of her globe-trotting, glad-handing trips that can prove they were ceremonial and largely inconsequential. Trading gifts and nice words with the first family of Uzbekistan does not make you more capable of answering the red phone.

Her biggest qualifications to be president are the Clinton record on the economy, the Democratic agenda, her vast public policy knowledge, and her ability to withstand the worst of the right-wing spin machine. If Democrats wanted to win this election on the basis of foreign policy bonafides, they should've chosen my man Joe Biden. Experience is overrated. Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld brought a lifetime of it to the disastrous decision to invade and occupy Iraq.

One thing I've wondered lately is whether Clinton really believes she's got commander-in-chief cred. Her invented heroics in Bosnia have been accompanied by her comment, "there was a saying around the White House that if a place was too small, too poor, or too dangerous, the president couldn't go, so send the First Lady."

This is so baldly idiotic that you have to wonder whether anyone in her campaign gave a moment's thought to how it reflects on the Clintons. Chelsea Clinton accompanied her mother on that Bosnia trip. Does the senator genuinely believe that her husband's policy while president was to send his wife and 16-year-old daughter on diplomatic trips that were too dangerous for him?