Hillary's Truth

I watched a PBS documentary last night entitled Bush's War. It was basically a chronology of our five year adventure in Iraq with emphasis on how policy makers drove policy and how it mutated over the years. Overarching the entire conflict has been the issue of veracity-- seeking out the truth and telling the truth, no matter how hard or difficult that process may be. It is this capacity that I believe is the most important quality a president can have as it is the bedrock of a president's wisdom and judgment.

Today, George Bush still retains affection among many Americans. However, simultaneously, most Americans do not consider his view of reality accurate or truthful. The same is true with Hillary, as we see in the redactions of her White House papers and in her account of her Bosnia trip, an itinerary of which we could imagine as follows:

9.05 AM Helicopter lands
9:06 AM Run and dodge bullets.
9:08 AM Stop and smile as eight year old girl reads poem
9:10 AM Run and dodge more bullets

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BfNqhV5hg4

I could forgive a few such incidents like this. Unfortunately, Hillary and Bill both have a well-earned repoutation of dissembling for as long as they have been in the public arena, as Carl Bernstein and Frank Rich remind us.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-bernstein/hillary-clinton-truth-or_b_93523.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/opinion/30rich.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

I'm not sure I want to spend the next four to eight years parsing sentences trying to discern what the truth is in distinction to what her truth is.

Obama's shaky handling of the Reverand Wright controversy has also eroded his credability. But his race speech was impressive, and for once I saw a politician talk as one adult to another, instead of unbundling focus-tested platitudes. He comes across to me as someone who tries to express what he believes as honestly as he can without triagulating or pandering. McCain has also had his moments that fall short of frankness. However, when he told the unemployed in Michican not to expect to see their off-shored jobs returned and when he said that we American may be in Iraq for another 95 years, perhaps hewas being candid, more so than his handlers would have liked. Unfortunately, the serial lies of Bush and his administration is McCain's cross to bear during this election cycle, and it will probably mean his defeat, despite his personal probity.

Issues come and go. But at the end of the day, it's character that matters and it's character that is destiny.