Published: March 27, 2008 10:25 am            

Column: We don't need no stinkin' surprises

LEBANON, Ind. — Memo to Chelsea Clinton:

If you can’t stand the heat, back away from the oven.

Memo to Chelsea Clinton’s handlers: If you had not anticipated that question, and given Chelsea a scripted response, you are incompetent buffoons.

Chelsea, who aspires to again be First Daughter, was at Butler University recently when student Evan Strange asked whether the Monica Lewinsky scandal had affected her mother’s reputation.

Chelsea was shocked -- shocked that someone would bring up that issue.

“I do not think that is any of your business,” Chelsea told Strange. Other students cheered her response.

Chelsea said it was the first time in visits to 70 campuses that anyone had asked her about Lewinsky.

So: 70 different audiences didn’t have the courage or the curiosity to wonder how Chelsea responded to what had to be a formative period in her life? At least 70 times, Chelsea was not asked what has to be an obvious question? Speaking of dodging bullets ...

Oh, wait, that’s a Hillary Clinton story.

Hillary, who is running — and running, and running, and running — for the Democratic nomination for president, last week claimed to have been shot at, unsuccessfully.

She dramatically described to an audience her harrowing landing at Tuzla Air Base in Bosnia-Herzegovina, during a visit when she was First Lady. “We had to run...” she said.

No, she didn’t. Nobody ran. They walked. They strolled, actually.

Hillary was insinuating the U.S. Secret Service would have allowed the First Lady and the First Daughter to land under sniper fire.

Presented with video evidence, taken from several angles, that the “sniper fire” was nonexistent, Hillary was forced to say she “misspoke.”

Reminds me of a punch line applicable to many jokes: “Whom are you going to believe? Me or your lyin’ eyes?”

Generally, when someone has been shot at, it is a memorable event.

Generally, when someone is running for significant national office, an enormous amount of personal stress is produced, which can lead to errors of memory. I think Hillary was embellishing reality, in a ploy for voter sympathy. She got caught.

Besides, Hillary has been married to Bill for a while now, so she’s pretty much pumped as much sympathy as is in that particular well.

Billary is/are used to blunt questions. Some of Chelsea’s defenders argue she should be exempt from tough treatment.

If you are going to play hardball, on occasion someone will throw at your head. Chelsea is a grown-up; she’s participating in a presidential election campaign. And she was surprised by Strange’s question.

I don’t think so.

I am shocked -- shocked that Chelsea’s handlers had not prepared her for a Lewinsky-related question.

The surprise is not that Chelsea was asked the question. The surprise is that she was surprised.

The “It’s none of your business” response would have been appropriate for President Clinton, at the first whiff of the Lewinsky issue. But Bill dissembled. Bill dissembles well. In this instance, he dissembled himself into impeachment. He eluded conviction because the U.S. Senate voiced the political equivalent of “eeeuuuwwww, ick,” and ran from the issue as fast as it could.

So: No, Chelsea, you do not get to say, “I don’t think that’s any of your business” when someone asks how the Monica Lewinsky affair affected your mother, who wants to be leader of the free world.

But you are the daughter of a man who famously answered a question, “that depends on what the definition of is, is.”

Perhaps surprise is not surprising.



— Rod Rose writes for The Lebanon (Ind.) Reporter. He may be reached at rod.rose@reporter.net.

        

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