How Hillary Is Worse Than Cheney

How Hillary Is Worse Than Cheney
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Dear Stumped:

Why do you think that Democrats get roasted for "memory lapses" while Republicans do not? For example, in his vice presidential nomination acceptance speech in August 2000, Vice President Cheney spoke of flying over Arlington by helicopter and being emotionally touched by its "crosses row on row." Headstones at Arlington aren't cross-shaped, but no one called him a liar. Yet when Hillary Clinton remembers her trip to Bosnia as being dangerous but gets the details wrong, she's a liar. I'm sure her trip to Bosnia was dangerous, and she probably was lectured about potential snipers in open spaces like airport runways.

I recently had the experience of being absolutely certain that an event happened a certain way, and would have sworn to it on a stack of Bibles. Yet when confronted with a record of the event in my own handwriting, it is clear my memory was inaccurate -- although somehow I still can't believe it. With the recent passing of my mother, my siblings and I have been reminiscing over old family times, and we have discovered significant variation in our memory of some events. I don't believe any of us is lying.

It appears to me that Republicans are free to have memory lapses while Democrats are held to to a standard that none of us could meet in our daily lives.

Signed,

Too Young for Senior Moments

Dear Too Young,

I don't agree. I think we cut politicos of all parties plenty of slack when it comes to faulty memories. Your Cheney example is a case in point: That wasn't resume-pumping. It was not a huge deal. He probably saw rows of crosses at a different cemetery, or was moved flying over Arlington for a different reason. It's as if I told you I read a horrifying story about a car bombing in Baghdad in the New York Times when in fact I read the story in The Washington Post. That's an understandable lapse of memory.

Republicans do get in trouble when their supposed memory lapses stray into the realm of lying. Remember Mitt Romney early in the primary season getting roasted for claiming that he saw his father march alongside Martin Luther King in support of civil rights? Romney's father may have been sympathetic to King, but Romney looked ridiculous trying to spin a rather poetic definition of the verb "to see." And he got clobbered, justifiably.

Clinton's lie was far more serious -- and for all the brouhaha, I don't think she has been criticized enough for it. If Cheney claimed he'd come under fire sometime when he hadn't, there'd be no end to the media's relentlessness! To claim that you had to sprint to dodge bullets (with daughter and Sheryl Crow in tow) when you didn't -- and then to say you "misspoke" because of a lack of sleep? C'mon. We're veering into pathological territory here, something more serious than a faulty memory.

To your point, coming under fire and being briefed about potential dangers are not the same. I was warned about street crime in Rio de Janeiro before I went there, but wasn't mugged. If I told you I'd been shot at while there, and then took it back, saying I misspoke because I was tired and had been told Rio wasn't safe, what would you make of me? Would you hire me as your babysitter? Accountant? Lawyer? President?

Would you then want me picking up that phone at 3 a.m.? I wouldn't.