Ready, set, aim... Wait! don’t shoot!

Presidential wannabe Hillary Clinton showed in Bosnia in 1996, and now as she futilely tried to explain why she couldn’t remember she didn’t really come under sniper fire there, that she can’t even dodge imaginary bullets - or critics she said have been sniping at her, even if their volleys have hit their mark. Fortunately, it was in the area where other humans have a heart, so she wasn’t injured. She said she “misspoke,” about Bosnia after films showed her walking quite calmly off the plane, and then that she had sleep deprivation, two of the most important qualities you want in a US President, although scientific research from the Wily E. Coyote Acme Corporation has proved that if you come under sniper fire in Bosnia that you never forget it, especially if you have your teenager daughter in tow.
So she did what presidential candidates do when they are pinned down by their own ineptitude: she went on a latenight television talk show, choosing comic Jay Leno. But she turned out to be the foil, saying she had been delayed because snipers were firing at her, then stepping on both feet at the same time they were in her mouth to say – again – why she couldn’t remember much of anything in Bosnia. “Obviously, I’ve been so privileged to represent our country in, gosh, more than 80 other countries, lots of war zones and all of the rest of it. And, you know, I wrote about this in my book, and then I obviously just had a lapse.” (Memo to publisher, write a Clinton biography, “It Takes A Village Idiot To Believe Her”) (Cut to Hillary Clinton as President, the Secret Service rushes in …. “Madam President, did you authorize the first nuclear strike on Moscow?” …. a dazed First Lady President slaps the side of her head, like trying to get water out of her ear and says, “I obviously just had a lapse.”)
Clinton appeared to the tune of the champion underdog movie of all time, “Rocky,” but looked more punch drunk than Sylvester Stallone after being whacked around by Apollo Creed. (Cut to a woozy Hillary … Yo! Bill, it’s me, Hillary!”)
Europeans are following, with bemusement and bewilderment, the never-ending US Presidential sideshow Democratic contest between Clinton (not to be confused with her husband, Bill, who was reportedly a former president) and the freshman US Senator from Illinois Barack Obama, who was still a state legislator when Hillary was the US Shadow President during her husband’s reign. She said she is better positioned in foreign policy, which matters to the European Union, because she voted for the war in Iraq, which she now opposes, but maybe she had a lapse then, and now, when she didn’t push to cut off funding, which would end it.
Americans are used to their president ruling the planet, but you know European leaders are licking their chops hoping it will be Clinton or Obama, because the Republican likely nominee, US Senator John McCain, was a prisoner of war in Vietnam for six years and knows where Europe is, having just been there.
Clinton has almost managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of certain victory, finding a way to fumble away the nomination she couldn’t have lost even if she had been found in bed with Monica Lewinsky. How did this happen? Even she must be wondering because she’s fallen faster in the polls than a European leader who admits he doesn’t have a mistress.
There are 10 Democratic nominating contests left and Obama leads Clinton in the popular vote and delegate count, but neither is positioned to have enough delegates to get the 2,025 needed to become the party’s nominee. That would put the decision at the August convention in the hands of Democratic leaders known as “super-delegates,” who can vote any way they want. Party rules don’t allow them to have a conscience, so Obama had better have a back-up plan ready, because Bill Clinton will pull out all the stops and call in all the favours he has owed him to maneuver a back-stage coup to give his spouse the nod. If the nomination is stolen from Obama at the convention, he could threaten to run as an Independent, which means he wouldn’t win, but neither would she. But then, that could put him under sniper fire.