Today David Brooks knocked it out of the park. His article in today's NYTimes reveals how hopeless the Clinton fight is and accurately predicts the negative impact it will have on whomever is the Democratic nominee in November, most likely Obama. But one bit Brooks leftout was the added fodder that HRC's Bosnian misspeak will give to the Republican canon this fall if she manages to wrest the nomination from Obama. Sure, the misspeak reveals HRC's tendency to exaggerate her achievements as though she's holding court at a cocktail party surrounded by a captive audiece of tipsy people eager to hang on to an intimate story (albeit false) told by a former First Lady. But more than that, her fake story is a story that will pale in comparision to any "war tale" that McCain cares to share in the fall. In January I visited the famous Hanoi Hilton. I walked away with a tremendous amount of respect for John McCain, even though I would never vote for him for the same reasons I would never vote for HRC: the Iraq War Resolution. Their votes were the same yet there is a difference between their motives. As I was standing in the Hanoi Hilton looking into windowless cells that were smaller than the average American walk-in closet, a concrete bed on either side with irons at the foot to keep a prisoner in place, I couldn't help but wonder about John McCain's funny looking jaw that was perhaps broken during interrogation and poorly mended, or the limited mobility of his shoulders as a result of the beatings he withstood. I admired his survival even though I strongly disagree with his war views, war vote, and practically every other political view he has. But unlike HRC's vote I can understand where McCain forged his politics and why he cast his vote that way. He's a cold warrior. For HRC the war vote was just another version of the Bosnia sniper fantasy. She took a calculated political risk that the Iraq war would go well enough that she would end up looking "tough enough"' to be president, just like she took a calculated risk that the Wright story last week would provide adequate media cover for her to slip this Bosnia falsehood into voter's minds. Hers is a life of political calculation, not principle.

While Obama will face McCain as a man who has never seen war (or Europe for that matter), there are a majority of Americans who do not agree with the Iraq adventure and McCains support of it. Obama has the best chance of winning the war argument and the economic disaster it is for our country.  Even if McCain tries to portray him as inexperienced Obama will not have to explain away a falehood and can rightly claim the high-ground on judgement.   Afterall the 4000 fallen soldiers are a reminder of how bad their judgement really was.  For HRC she will be left to defend a calculated vote, not unlike the calculated statement on Bosnia.

As Brooks describes, HRC's politics were forged through a lifetime of self-serving political maneuvering first for her husband and then for herself. The recent revelation that her opposition to NAFTA was rooted in the 'timing' of its passage ahead of her healthcare initiative rather than in the 'substance' of the treaty itself once more spotlights her habit of revising history to suit her purposes. Again the facts reveal the same unflattering truth; no cause is as important as her cause. and her personal quest is rooted in nothing more substantive than her own ambition. The nomination is now her "cause du jour" and is a must win even if it means the real "cause du jour", e.g. bringing an end to Republican rule of our country, fails.

It's all about her.