Taking Credit
For something you didn’t do: it seems that Hillary Clinton did just that when it comes to Northern Ireland, and the peace process there. According to Lord Trimble of Lisnagarvey, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and former First Minister of the province, at least.
“I don’t know there was much she did apart from accompanying Bill [Clinton] going around,” he said. Her recent statements about being deeply involved were merely “the sort of thing people put in their canvassing leaflets” during elections. “She visited when things were happening, saw what was going on, she can certainly say it was part of her experience. I don’t want to rain on the thing for her but being a cheerleader for something is slightly different from being a principal player.”
Mrs Clinton has made Northern Ireland key to her claims of having extensive foreign policy experience, which helped her defeat Barack Obama in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday after she presented herself as being ready to tackle foreign policy crises at 3am.
“I helped to bring peace to Northern Ireland,” she told CNN on Wednesday. But negotiators from the parties that helped broker the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 told The Daily Telegraph that her role was peripheral and that she played no part in the gruelling political talks over the years.
Now, all politicians exaggerate their credentials, but this is simply quite pathetic. There’s no need for her to pretend that she played a major role in the peace process. Firstly it’s not true, secondly even if true, it wouldn’t make many people suddenly think “yeah, I’m gonna vote for her.”
So it’s useless and false.
Clinton should have, as the Lord points out, used this as “experience” in a different manner: she may not have been a key player, but she saw it all happening. She knew about the negotiations, the talks and so on. That’s important. That’s also experience. Witnessing what happens, and learning from it, being close to developments like that is important. It makes her different from, say, Obama. He never witnessed anything like it. When he talked about helping a homeless person in Chicago - nothing wrong with that obviously - she was traveling with her husband to Northern Ireland, and she saw how, slowly but surely, the different parties came together.
But, Clinton exaggerates it and, by doing so, makes a fool of herself. This “I invented the Internet” all over again. What’s next, she’s the one who decided to declare war on Germany and Japan in World War II and she dictated the terms of surrender?
I trust not, but it’s a stupid thing to say and these are the cynical jokes her opponents will - rightfully - make.
This article at the Chicago Tribune also addresses her foreign policy (lack of) experience. Billary exaggerates even more than Mittens, and that is why many opposed their campaigns.
Who’s Mitten?
Mittens = Mitt Romney
Ggg.
and this example is certainly far from the first of her claims.
it’s just a chronic stance she takes.
Red phone red phone scary things in the international scene bombs bombs quick reactions Obama lacks substance and gumption I was close to Bill and Bill did things please associate please associate me with him…
Hillary is now trying to foment the same media free ride she was claiming was Obama’s only source of success in the past. Quick and easy cognitive lockdown by pushing the hind brain and Hollywood-esque depictions of a president’s responsibilities. Oh and she used a black girl - don’t forget the just-turned-18-and-worried-about-inexperienced-presidents minority girl (who happens to be an Obama supporter IRL).
Clinton really has the Giuliani/McCain self-aggrandizing spiel down pat.
Considering that she once claimed that she was named for Sir Edmund Hillary, who really wasn’t known outside of his native NZ at the time of her birth (his ascent of Everest took place several years after her birth), she seems to have a habit of stretching the truth (much like her husband.)
Christine, link, quote, etc.?
If true it’s hilarious. It means that she’s either lying or that her parents didn’t give her a name until she was 6 years old.
Heh.
Michael, here’s a quick link to the naming lie. I’ll try to get the original articles later.
Oh, I thought it was common knowledge. She first made reference to this when she met Sir Edmund during Bill’s presidency. Here’s a link, and here…
Apparently after it was pointed out to her that this was impossible, for a while she said that her mother had read an article about him (before his Everest expedition) and just liked the way he spelled his name with two ‘ls’. Apparently the latest backtracking on the story is that her mother was the one who fabricated the whole story, just telling Hillary this in order to help her aspire to great things.
It is hilarious, isn’t it? Why would you publicly say something that obviously isn’t true, as though people might not notice it? Apparently she left this anecdote out of her autobiography, but Bill included it in his. He’s actually got a history of telling fake anecdotes too- the most famous one that I remember was when he talked about seeing black churches being burned during his youth in Arkansas (and then an Arkansas newspaper noted that there had never been any such church burnings in AR.)
To be fair, though, a lot of those kinds of stories are fabricated (I’m sure a lot of Reagan’s were, for example) and I think most voters consider them ‘truthy’ if not true. But the Clinton’s seem to go a bit overboard with it.
That’s überpathetic.
And you’re right, most politicians create stories like that for themselves. As for Bill’s autobiography: never trust autobiographies. The only thing you know after reading is what the author wants you to know or think.