Senator Clinton’s claims about her visit to Tuzla, Bosnia—and the footage disproving her account—have created quite a stir. And with good reason. As the Associated Press wrote yesterday: "What makes Clinton’s situation unique—and the Bosnia embellishments so damaging—is the fact that the New York senator has built her candidacy on the illusion of experience. Any attack on her credentials is a potential Achilles heel."
Unfortunately, Clinton’s fantastic invention of a sniper-raked landing is only one in a growing list of instances in which she has exaggerated her role as First Lady, particularly with respect to domestic policy.
This could be a really devastating line of attack against Clinton. First, it undermines her claims of experience, which is supposed to be why she's "ready to lead on day one." If you can wipe out the main argument for her candidacy, she's destroyed.
Furthermore, these criticisms raise serious questions about her electability. This is the question she's trying to raise about Obama, but for anyone who was sentient in 2000, these exaggerations and fabrications should evoke memories of Al Gore fending off the "flip flop" charges and looking silly as he was accused of plenty of silly comments he never made, like claiming to have discovered Love Canal or having invented the internet. Of course, the press exaggerated Gore's supposed exaggerations. Also, there was no YouTube in 2000 to demonstrate and disseminate an accurate depiction of what Gore said in these instances.
Unlike Gore, who in a few individual instances made ill-advised comments that then got blown out of proportion, Clinton has made the questionable claims numerous times, and has even put some of them on her website, like saying she was involved in the creation or passage of key domestic accomplishments such as SCHIP and the Family and Medical Leave Act. The public record and the statements of people like Henry Waxman who were directly involved in that legislation doesn't support or even contradicts her claims.
If the serial exaggeration accusation sticks to her, it will further solidify the emerging media narrative that the only major question left in the Democratic contest is when Hillary Clinton will concede that she has lost and that Barack Obama will be our presidential nominee.