Was the Bosnia Episode a Tipping Point?

As someone who's been what others would identify as a "liberal" or "worse," dating back to the time I helped organize my fellow high school students to oppose the bombing of Cambodia, it's always a little disorienting when I find myself agreeing with a Reaganite. But, for example, when Pat Buchanan writes "Iraq was an unnecessary war that may become one of the great blunders in U.S. history," I have to agree.

And now I find myself agreeing with Peggy Noonan. A reader called our attention to her March 2008 Wall Street Journal commentary titled "Getting Mrs. Clinton."

The Bosnia episode either "confirmed what you already knew," Noonan writes, namely that Clinton lies strategically, or "revealed what you feared" in an unforgettable way, that "she lies more than is humanly usual, even politically usual."

Many in the press, Noonan suggests, are uncomfortable "to have a person whose character you feel you cannot admire play such a large daily role in your work."

"But I think it's fair to say of the establishment media at this point that it is well populated by people who feel such a lack of faith in Mrs. Clinton's words," Noonan says. She continues:

What, really, is Mrs. Clinton doing? She is having the worst case of cognitive dissonance in the history of modern politics. She cannot come up with a credible, realistic path to the nomination. She can't trace the line from "this moment's difficulties" to "my triumphant end." But she cannot admit to herself that she can lose. Because Clintons don't lose. She can't figure out how to win, and she can't accept the idea of not winning. She cannot accept that this nobody from nowhere could have beaten her, quietly and silently, every day. (She cannot accept that she still doesn't know how he did it!)