Bill Clinton Won’t Let Hillary Clinton’s Damaging Bosnia Issue Die

Isn’t it time to bluntly say it: isn’t the time WAY PAST when Senator Hillary Clinton needs to get a big roll of duct tape and use it on her counterproductive husband former President Bill Clinton?

When the history of the Hillary Clinton campaign is written — win or lose — a special chapter will be devoted to how Bill Clinton, a one time savvy politician, evolved into a tin-eared political operative who did more damage to his wife than help her when he opened his mouth at key points during her campaign. His latest is in singlehandedly reviving Hillary Clinton’s embarrassing Bosnia account, which was totally contradicted by videos shown on broadcast news, cable news, you tubes and posted on countless websites. She later said she “misspoke” — and she took a hit in many polls.

Enter Bill Clinton who decided to to play Dr. Frankenstein to bring the monster credibility issue to life again once it seemingly died. The best account of this is via MSNBC’s First Read:

Stumping in Indiana yesterday, Bill Clinton resurrected the Bosnia sniper fire story, per NBC/NJ’s Mike Memoli. “[T]here was a lot of fulminating because Hillary, one time late at night when she was exhausted, misstated, and immediately apologized for it, what happened to her in Bosnia in 1995,” he said. “Did y’all see all that? Oh, they blew it up.” He went on to say, “I think she was the first first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to go into a combat zone. And you would’ve thought, you know, that she’d robbed a bank the way they carried on about this. And some of them when they’re 60 they’ll forget something when they’re tired at 11:00 at night, too.” He said something similar at a later stop.

How many things were wrong in his remarks? She didn’t just once misspeak — at 11:00 pm — about the Bosnia story; she did it numerous times, and not just at night. The trip, moreover, took place in ’96, not ’95. And Hillary wasn’t the first first lady since Eleanor Roosevelt to visit a combat zone; Pat Nixon went to Saigon in 1969, as Politico’s Ben Smith reminds us. What was Bill thinking? Bill may be one of those pols who believe you confront a negative, instead of ignoring it. And if you show that you don’t believe a negative, then folks won’t hold it against you as much — at least those are the lessons Bill learned in ‘92 and ‘98, right?

But it gets even worse for Bill Clinton:

ABC News’ Jake Trapper, on his Political Punch blog, not only reports the latest Bill-Clinton-Without-A-Leash incident but details all of the “errors” in the account:

(1) Her most glaringly wrong telling of the tale, on March 17, 2008, was in the morning.
(2) She actually told versions of the story several times. (And none was at night.)
(3) In an e-mail to journalist Eric Jansson, former acting Bosnian president Ejup Ganic said “we didn’t expect snipers,” though, “we still believed that some positions on the hills were occupied by radical Serbs, so I was worried about the overall safety.”
(4) Not according to the pilot Colonel William “Goose” Changose (Ret.), who said, “nobody under my watch has ever directed anyone to sit on their flak jackets. … We do not direct people to sit on their flak jackets.”
(5) It wasn’t immediate at all — it was 11 days later, first in an editorial board meeting with the Philadelphia Inquirer/Philadelphia Daily News, then later in a press availability.
(6) She never apologized.
(7) It was 1996, not 1995.
(8) He qualified it with “I think,” but then-first lady Pat Nixon went to a combat zone in Saigon, Vietnam, in July 1969.

Meanwhile, if readers think some of my recent posts about Bill Clinton — I voted for him and defended him during impeachment but now consider him one of the most inept and counterproductive politicians in recent history — have been blunt, read what NBC Political Director Chuck Todd has to say about Bill Clinton’s political bungle:

Seriously, what was the former president thinking when he decided to bring up the Bosnia story and then do so with the incorrect facts? Watching Bill on the trail makes folks wonder whether he could have held up to scrutiny in 1992 had YouTube and instant fact-checking existed back then. No one has seemed less prepared for the intense scrutiny of this campaign than Bill. He seems to forget that even when he’s in rural Indiana, he’s on the national stage.

In ‘96, the Clinton campaign thought their local market strategy was innovative (it was), since it allowed him to talk to key media markets outside of the interference of the national press. Now, the national press is everywhere since local can become national in an instant. Today’s Bill Clinton gaffe is going to revive this question: Has Bill Clinton helped HRC’s bid more than he’s hurt it? She may not have gotten this far without him, but is he preventing her from getting to the finish line?

Meanwhile, First Read got this statement from the Clinton campaign:

“Senator Clinton appreciates her husband standing up for her, but this was her mistake and she takes responsibility for it.”

Why does this flap matter?

The Bosnia debacle hurt Hillary Clinton because it revived questions about the Clinton’s credibility and seemingly confirmed years of conservative talk show demonization that the Clintons would do and say anything to get elected.

Democrats, in recent years, have felt the same way about President George Bush and Karl Rove.

The issue had just started to fade and Hillary Clinton was starting to stabilize her campaign again in terms of media coverage, newspaper stories and broadcast clips.

Now at this critical time, Bill Clinton has thrust this no-win-for-Hillary issue back into the news cycle. It’s unlikely to dominate the campaign the same way the Bosnia issue did when it first surfaced, but it again underscores the fact that Bill Clinton is a former President who is frittering away the grandeur surrounding former Presidents and emerging as just one more political operative — whose statements cannot be trusted.

The problem: many voters many think twice about Hillary Clinton given the fact that they just know Bill Clinton will be hanging around the White House.

And if Hillary Clinton can’t control her husband for telling voters inaccuracies that can be shot down by journalists and eat into the news cycles she so badly needs to influence in terms of getting her positive message out, how can she be ready on day one to provide an administration that has more credibility and is more trustworthy than the current credibility-challenged one?

Advice to Mrs. Clinton go to THIS LINK and place an order.

A CROSS SECTION OF OTHER OPINION ON THIS ISSUE:

–John Aravosis:

And it’s the same outright lie the Clinton campaign has been repeating over and over, which means it’s a talking point lie… It’s a flat-out lie. They know it’s a lie. But they seem to think that you’re so stupid, you won’t notice. Amazing.

–Michelle Malkin has the headline “Liar Liar Campaign On Fire” and writes:

This is Bill Clinton’s brain on truth deficit disorder again.

–Stephen Green:

This story won’t get huge play, but it will probably resound with enough people to narrow Hill’s margin of victory in Pennsylvania, and maybe give Obama an even bigger-than-expected win in North Carolina. And it simply can’t help her fundraising, which is sadly lacking these days. All because of Bill just has to remind us that they’re both big liars, just when the last lie was fading from view.

Is there any other conclusion to reach other than Clinton is sabotaging his own wife’s campaign?

–Hot Air’s Allahpundit:

This sort of thing simply has to be compulsive for him. In no rational world does it make sense to reintroduce this subject, lie about it, and lie about it so clumsily that the press would have to rub his face in it even if they didn’t want to. Which, thanks to Obamania, they do.

–The New York Times’ lively The Caucus blog:

So much for Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton hoping that she had put behind her those misstatements about her trip to Bosnia under sniper fire, to the point where she even joked about it on a comedy show recently.

But seemingly without provocation, former President Bill Clinton has revived the controversial episode, tossing out a few inaccurate one-liners in her defense as he complained about how harshly she was judged in retelling that 1996 trip while she was First Lady. And his remarks have whipped around the Internet overnight and this morning.

–The New Republic’s The Plank blog:

It looks like Bill Richardson’s endorsement of Obama isn’t the only thing the Clintons can’t let go of. …You could say this is nitpicking on the press’s part, but the press isn’t the one who brought this up. Message to the Clintons: let it go!

–Be sure to read the libertarian blog Below The Beltway’s analysis.

–Comments From Left Field (WARNING: adult language on CFLF’s headline):

As I’ve said, polling seems to indicate that [the Bosnia issue] gone. She may have lost a couple of points permanently, but for the most part that storm has been weathered.

So why, why, why on this beautiful green and blue planet would her husband decide to bring the whole thing up again? Seriously? Why do it? And then, why try to interject a different version of the whole sordid tale other than the one we just watched play out?

This isn’t just the matter of beating a dead horse, mind you, it’s worse than that. The reason why is because now a whole bunch of people are going to dig into Bill Clinton’s version of the story, and find fault with it…