Those of us who have supported Sen. Clinton have been faced with two troubling recent situations where the word "lie" has been employed by the press and by her accusers.

First off, I think LIE is a word that has become devalued by overuse - like "awesome" or "superstar", to use a couple of other examples. It used to mean a very specific, very perjorative thing: The conscious, pre-meditated act of speaking deliberate falsehood to gain unwarranted advantage (I distinguish it here from its more acceptable cousin, the "white lie" - the one we all use to avoid telling a friend that their ugly hat actually IS an ugly hat).  That narrow, peculiar meaning has  been expanded to cover every conceivable variety of perceived mis-rendering of literal facts for whatever reason, and has thereby cost the word a good deal of its original punch.

That said, let me offer few observations about the 2 recent matters where Sen. Clinton lied (I use that word easily in our current context, because it doesn't actually MEAN what it used to mean, as I said. In its classic definiton, I'm very reluctant to use it at all. Where people are physically adjacent to each other in my part of the country, a lot of fights get started that way. It is a basic impugning of one's honor that has literally gotten people killed.):

(1)I think the "hospital" story is both explainable and defensible in any number of reasonable ways. It would most likely not even have made the news, if there were not a calculated effort under way to piggyback it to the "Tuzla" story to create the appearance of a pattern.

Why such an effort? Simple. Obama's people saw the 2000 election. They saw what ruthless experts could make of  Gore's natural tendency to mild hyperbole and overstatement. They saw a variation of the same strategy employed against Kerry in 2004, with equal success. Sen. Obama and President Bush may not be on the same team, but that isn't keeping them from running some of the same plays.

(2)Tuzla is more troubling. Even an honest Clinton supporter cannot square what she said about that with the conflicting visual and anecdotal evidence.

What to make of it? Some alternatives:

(a)She flat LIED, in the classic, most deeply perjorative sense of the word. In the full face of known evidence to the contrary, she just stood there and did it anyway. I don't believe this.

(b)A more likely and mildly exculpatory explanation: Thru telling and re-telling over time, an event involving a degree of genuine fear and  threat to personal safety expanded to become the story she told. She came to half-believe that something along the lines she described DID in fact happen that day.

This is what I accept to be the case. She shouldn't have done it, it has justifiably caused her and her supporters a share of embarrassment, but it is NOT a lie in the classic sense of the word.

Rather, it is a more conspicuous form of the kind of embellishment we all employ every day (How many times have you been in "the worst rain storm I've EVER seen!" Once or twice a year? It is a more conspicuous form of a malady that may be described as the occupational affliction of political people, ALL of whom are more or less in the business of shading facts to their favor (including her 2 immediate opponents, and the man in the White House now) .

Call it a "fish story", a "war story", or a "tall tale". Take your pick,  or find your own.  American vernacular is full of colloquial expressions to describe that very American trait.

(3)Let me close with this, so you won't get the impression I'm letting myself off the hook:  Even if I truly believed option (a) above, I do NOT consider that by itself as overtly disqualifying.   In THIS earthly world, we deal with imperfect choices in just about everything we do. Mature politics demands that we understand the practical requirement of compromise with some of our highest ideals. That is not a weakness, that is a peculiar AMERICAN strength. We weigh the best and worst of one candidate against the best and worst of the others, and make our best pragmatic guess as to who stands better in the end.
 
I would not allow even a proven tangential lie on a matter of dubious relevance to force me to vote for someone that I personally feel on balance is less qualified. I don't suggest that others do that, either.