All Blog Posts from Horserace

After Hillary Clinton squeaked out must-wins in Ohio and Texas earlier this month, it appeared to provide some much-needed breathing room for a candidate on the ropes. Just two minor contests then remained before a six-week stretch of nothingness. There was plenty of time for Democratic voters in the remaining states, and those all-important superdelegates, to get over their Obama-mania and reconsider the risks of anointing the young upstart with the nomination.

For a time, it seemed that the "vetting" process the Clinton campaign had claimed was lacking for Barack Obama was beginning to kick in. The controversy surrounding Obama's former pastor and his ensuing speech on race began just the sort of party introspection Clinton's camp has long hinted would eventually sink his candidacy. Then came the sniper fire.

For a candidate pushing experience and "no surprises," the episode has been damaging to her entire rationale for getting those superdelegates to throw their weight behind her. Within two days time, the worm had turned and those clips of Rev. Jeremiah Wright shouting "God damn America" have been replaced with those of Clinton's arrival in Bosnia sans the bullets flying around her as she claimed.

Thus it wasn't much of a surprise when Clinton chose yesterday to weigh in for the first time on the Wright stuff. "He would not have been my pastor," Clinton said in response to a question asked during a meeting with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review editorial board. Clinton repeated her comments about Wright in a news conference later in the day, making the point that one cannot choose their family members but can choose their pastors.

"It’s disappointing to see Hillary Clinton’s campaign sink to this low in a transparent effort to distract attention away from the story she made up about dodging sniper fire in Bosnia,” responded the Obama campaign to her comments. Clinton said she was responding to a direct question about Wright but she could certainly have chosen not to do so.

Every day spent talking about Rev. Wright, race or any other even slightly controversial subject involving Barack Obama is a good day for Clinton. Every day spent talking about her embellished wartime adventures is a very bad one. Every week spent split between the two only erodes her already long odds at winning the nomination. So far in this campaign lull, time has not been the ally Clinton once hoped it would.

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As CBS News' Sharyl Attkisson reports, Hillary Clinton's 1996 visit to war-torn Bosnia wasn't quite the harrowing experience that she recounted in a campaign speech last week. While campaign "embellishments" aren’t exactly a novel part of politics, their unveiling can be especially damaging when it involves the underlying argument a candidate is selling.

In recent weeks we've seen a bit of erosion in Clinton's claims of "experience," aided by the release of her public schedules as First Lady and an examination of her role in national security and international relations during the 1990s. That 3am phone call ad suddenly doesn't look like such a good idea right now.

When confronted with a different tale than the one Clinton had relayed in last week's speech, in which she said her plane had landed amid sniper fire and resulted in a dangerous dash to the waiting cars, Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson allowed that the candidate has misspoken. "The facts are clear from contemporaneous news accounts that she was entering a potentially dangerous situation," Wolfson told reporters in a conference call. "She has written about this before, she has talked about this before and there you have it. Now, is it possible that in the most recent instance in which she discussed this that she misspoke."

Clinton herself echoed that characterization. "I went to 80 countries, you know," she told the Philadelphia Daily News editorial board. "I gave contemporaneous accounts, I wrote about a lot of this in my book. You know, I think that, a minor blip, you know, if I said something that, you know, I say a lot of things - millions of words a day - so if I misspoke, that was just a misstatement."

That all doesn’t quite add up to Roger Clemens' contention that his friend and colleague "Andy Pettitte "had "misremembered" about steroid use but it's not helpful all the same.

It was just a week ago when the feeding frenzy surrounded Barack Obama and his relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and that's where Clinton needed it. Faced with a thread-the-needle campaign strategy that rests on winning big in Pennsylvania and carrying that through to victories in Indiana, North Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico, every day spent on something like this only adds to the challenge.

At the end of the day, even if Clinton were to run the table in the next ten contests, it will be the superdelegates who will most likely decided this nomination fight. In order to make the sale with them, she needs to be nearly perfect. Misstatement or not, she can't afford those kinds of mistakes.

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A 12-year-old report by CBS News' Sharyl Attkisson has been making the rounds following scrutiny of Hillary Clinton's claim that she and her party landed "under sniper fire" and were told to "run to our cars" during a 1996 trip to Bosnia. Clinton also said there was "no greeting ceremony."

Attkisson's report seems to contradict Clinton's assertion. In it, Clinton is seen waving as she arrives in Bosnia. She is greeted by the country's acting president as well as an eight-year-old girl. You can watch the report by clicking on the video box at left.

On Sunday, the Washington Post wrote that there are "numerous problems with Clinton's version of events," which have been challenged by the comedian Sinbad, who accompanied her on the trip. "A review of nearly 100 news accounts of her visit shows that not a single newspaper or television station reported any security threat to the first lady," writes the Post.

Attkisson has now written her own take on the events, which has just gone up over at the Couric & Co. blog. There, Attkisson reports that while the trip was dangerous – it was "easy to imagine we may be narrowly escaping enemy bullets," she writes – "we had no known incidents of enemy fire on our aircraft."

"To be sure, it was not the 'safest' trip for a First Lady to take: there were serious risks in traveling to Bosnia, even for the President's wife under the vigilant protection of the US military," she concludes. "It took some guts for her to go. But I don't recall, and did not note, any close calls on this trip with sniper fire or any other dangers."

Below, a Clinton's speech from March 17th in which she discusses the trip.



Update: Clinton spokesman responds. See below for more.

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