Flying Hillary

Hillary Clinton greatly contributes to the strangeness of the political circus this year, though we have become habituated to her pathological lying on matters high and low, criminal and civil. To borrow from Shakeseare’s Polonius, she lies on matters tragical, comical, historical, pastoral, pastoral-comical, historical-pastoral, tragical-historical, and tragical-comical-historical-pastoral.

When it comes to lying with every word and with great conviction, Lillian Hellman has nothing on Hillary Clinton. Last month, the New York Post fairly disparaged one recent Clinton performance as “another pack of lies.” It’s become her trademark.

Yesterday Politico’s Glenn Thrush posted his account of an interview with Clinton at the end of last week along with a related podcast. Thrush has also posted the transcript of his interview. Here are the concluding paragraphs of Thrush’s account of the interview:

When we talk about 2008, it’s less in the context of the political lessons learned than in the sheer physical and emotional demands the two-year marathon exacts on everyone involved. Her saving grace, she says, is a capacity to fall asleep in a minute on an airplane – and stay asleep even when it’s being buffeted by severe turbulence that scares the hell out of other passengers.

“I can’t fly the plane; I can’t change the weather — falling asleep, you’ll either wake up and things will be fine or you won’t,” she said. “Early on, back in Arkansas, we would fly on anything. I flew on crop dusters. I flew on planes that were so small you felt like you were putting on a pair of pants. I’ve been on planes where doors have flown off … I think [all that] set me up for just knowing that, once I put myself on the plane, I was just going to have to take a deep breath and hopefully enjoy it. I find that very true for a lot of life.”

I find the flying doors thing a little lacking in, ah, plausibility, but I may be mistaken. The transcript reflects Thrush’s sapient question regarding the flying doors: “Is that true?” I don’t see a direct answer to the question. She just rolls on.

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