Following up on an item from a week or so ago, Hillary Clinton has actively touted a 1996 trip to Bosnia as evidence of her foreign policy background. Sinbad, a comedian who traveled with the then-First Lady for this trip, raised questions about the accuracy of Clinton’s version of events, but the candidate and the campaign insisted, before and after, that the incident is evidence of Clinton’s crisis-management background.
Indeed, just a few days ago, Clinton said, “I certainly do remember that trip to Bosnia, and as Togo said, there was a saying around the White House that if a place was too small, too poor, or too dangerous, the president couldn’t go, so send the First Lady. That’s where we went. I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”
The WaPo’s Michael Dobbs gave the story some close scrutiny and found “numerous problems with Clinton’s version of events.”
Had Hillary Clinton’s plane come “under sniper fire” in March 1996, we would certainly have heard about it long before now. Numerous reporters, including the Washington Post’s John Pomfret, covered her 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. “As a former AP wire service hack, I can safely say that it would have been in my lead had anything like that happened,” said Pomfret.
According to Pomfret, the Tuzla airport was “one of the safest places in Bosnia” in March 1996, and “firmly under the control” of the 1st Armored Division.
Far from running to an airport building with their heads down, Clinton and her party were greeted on the tarmac by smiling U.S. and Bosnian officials. An eight-year-old Moslem girl, Emina Bicakcic, read a poem in English. An Associated Press photograph of the greeting ceremony, above, shows a smiling Clinton bending down to receive a kiss.
“There is peace now,” Emina told Clinton, according to Pomfret’s report in the Washington Post the following day, “because Mr. Clinton signed it. All this peace. I love it.”
The First Lady’s schedule, released on Wednesday and available here, confirms that she arrived in Tuzla at 8.45 a.m. and was greeted by various dignitaries, including Emina Bicakcic, (whose name has mysteriously been redacted from the document.)
Worse, there’s also a video that contradicts Clinton’s anecdote.
Now, the Bosnia trip was 12 years ago, and I suppose someone’s memory can play tricks on him or her once in a while. In my experience, watching Clinton as a senator and a candidate, it’s just not her style to make up tall tales to impress people.
But this case seems to get back to the problematic dynamic we’ve been talking about for a few weeks now — the Clinton pitch is predicated on all the wrong assumptions.
When it comes to presidential candidates and foreign policy expertise, there are basically two categories: less experienced candidates who emphasize judgment, vision, and temperament (such as Obama this year, and Bill Clinton in ‘92), and more experienced candidates who emphasize expertise, knowledge, and background (such as Joe Biden).
In some ways, I think Obama’s early efforts to define himself pushed Clinton in this direction. Recognizing from the outset that his resume on the national stage is thin, he immediately began touting his strengths — temperament, maturity and judgment. Clinton, reluctant to say “Me too!” felt compelled to embrace the “expertise” label.
But in order to back that up, she had to start telling stories such as the Bosnia anecdote, which has not fared well.
As hilzoy explained:
Honestly: there was no need for Clinton to do any of this. She did play a serious policy role in her husband’s administration (even if she didn’t help pass the Family and Medical Leave Act, as she claims.) The only reason for her to inflate a trip with Sinbad and Sheryl Crow into a serious diplomatic mission, and a trip to Northern Ireland involving “a visit to a women’s drop-in centre and two business parks” into helping bring peace to Northern Ireland, is that by pretending to have been more involved in foreign policy than she really was, she can pretend that while Barack Obama isn’t ready to be commander in chief, she is.
It’s such an easily avoided mistake, it’s disappointing that it’s happened at all.