Hillary Clinton again wants to play pretend: now she was an opponent of the war before Barack Obama. This woman's pliable relationship with the truth would bother me if I didn't believe that she was being intentionally dishonest. My principle objection (well, one of them) to Hillary Clinton's candidacy is that it's apparent that, in many areas, her long-term tenure in Washington has corrupted her and has made her unwilling to challenge the Beltway CW on many subjects, and defense issues are the apotheosis of this trend. Specifically, though, Clinton has bought into the notion that she undoubtedly thinks that John Kerry fell for: that flip-flopping is a mortal political sin and that she, as the first woman president, certainly cannot ever appear to be weak by changing her mind. It's psychoanalytic, sure, but it makes sense considering the Beltway context.
I think that's just backward: Clinton admitting to making a mistake would defuse a lot of the criticism about her, and the idea that she could admit to making a mistake and say that she learned something from it would mark an effective departure from the G.W. Bush way of doing business, which isn't too popular the last time I checked. I often get the sense that such things have just never occurred to Clinton, and I've had my fill of this character flaw in my executives, thank you.
