How Hillary Is Worse Than Cheney

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Dear Stumped:

Why do you think that Democrats get roasted for "memory lapses" while Republicans do not? For example, in his vice presidential nomination acceptance speech in August 2000, Vice President Cheney spoke of flying over Arlington by helicopter and being emotionally touched by its "crosses row on row." Headstones at Arlington aren't cross-shaped, but no one called him a liar. Yet when Hillary Clinton remembers her trip to Bosnia as being dangerous but gets the details wrong, she's a liar. I'm sure her trip to Bosnia was dangerous, and she probably was lectured about potential snipers in open spaces like airport runways.

I recently had the experience of being absolutely certain that an event happened a certain way, and would have sworn to it on a stack of Bibles. Yet when confronted with a record of the event in my own handwriting, it is clear my memory was inaccurate -- although somehow I still can't believe it. With the recent passing of my mother, my siblings and I have been reminiscing over old family times, and we have discovered significant variation in our memory of some events. I don't believe any of us is lying.

It appears to me that Republicans are free to have memory lapses while Democrats are held to to a standard that none of us could meet in our daily lives.

Signed,

Too Young for Senior Moments

Dear Too Young,

I don't agree. I think we cut politicos of all parties plenty of slack when it comes to faulty memories. Your Cheney example is a case in point: That wasn't resume-pumping. It was not a huge deal. He probably saw rows of crosses at a different cemetery, or was moved flying over Arlington for a different reason. It's as if I told you I read a horrifying story about a car bombing in Baghdad in the New York Times when in fact I read the story in The Washington Post. That's an understandable lapse of memory.

Republicans do get in trouble when their supposed memory lapses stray into the realm of lying. Remember Mitt Romney early in the primary season getting roasted for claiming that he saw his father march alongside Martin Luther King in support of civil rights? Romney's father may have been sympathetic to King, but Romney looked ridiculous trying to spin a rather poetic definition of the verb "to see." And he got clobbered, justifiably.

Clinton's lie was far more serious -- and for all the brouhaha, I don't think she has been criticized enough for it. If Cheney claimed he'd come under fire sometime when he hadn't, there'd be no end to the media's relentlessness! To claim that you had to sprint to dodge bullets (with daughter and Sheryl Crow in tow) when you didn't -- and then to say you "misspoke" because of a lack of sleep? C'mon. We're veering into pathological territory here, something more serious than a faulty memory.

To your point, coming under fire and being briefed about potential dangers are not the same. I was warned about street crime in Rio de Janeiro before I went there, but wasn't mugged. If I told you I'd been shot at while there, and then took it back, saying I misspoke because I was tired and had been told Rio wasn't safe, what would you make of me? Would you hire me as your babysitter? Accountant? Lawyer? President?

Would you then want me picking up that phone at 3 a.m.? I wouldn't.

Dear Stumped,

If Hillary Clinton should win the presidency and visit the Middle East, would she be required to cover her head and face -- like many women in the Middle East, even though she's president of the United States?

Billy C. Turner

Dear Billy,

Certainly not. American executives and diplomats -- such as Condoleezza Rice -- do not submit to such backward practices when they travel in the region. One of the things that makes the prospect of a female president so exciting is the statement it will send: America is (or at least is becoming!) a society of equal opportunity and gender equality.

Then again, if that first female president is Hillary Clinton, she will probably come back from her Middle East tour claiming that a burqa was forced upon her when she arrived. When the videotape showed otherwise, she'd claim she "misspoke" on account of a lack of sleep, and because she had heard some women are forced to wear burqas....

Dear Stumped,

Please help me. I am about to lose my sanity. I honestly don't get it: Would Barack Obama quit the race if the situation were reversed and he trailed by 150 or so delegates? Why is everyone calling on Hillary Clinton to drop out?

It all drives me mad. Let the game play out!

James Angus Linney

Dear James,

I agree that calls for Hillary Clinton to withdraw are outrageously premature, and there is a double standard here. It all stems from expectations. It reminds me of the Wall Street earnings game. If a company is expected to post a profit of at least 55 cents a share but instead makes only 47 cents per share, its stock gets punished and everyone wants its CEO ousted. But if a scrappy competitor expected to make only 40 cents a share posts results of 49 cents a share, its CEO will be heralded as a visionary genius.

Convert those earnings-per-share numbers to popular-vote percentages and you have a rough idea of where Clinton and Obama stand today. But they started from very different places in terms of expectations -- and Clinton unwisely stoked expectations early on, with the result that she is being pummeled now with perhaps more glee than is called for. As close as this contest is, it is hard to see how she pulls it out, but with her proven resilience, 10 states still to vote, and all those uncommitted superdelegates, I see no reason for her to drop out now. And I don't think it is fair to claim she is doing any damage to the party by staying in till all states have voted. That argument may start making sense in July, if she is still considerably behind then, but for now, as her husband puts it, we should all just "chill out."

Of course I am not an unbiased observer here. If she drops out now, I won't be able to have any more fun with "Snipergate."

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