Newspaper articles and TV specials have made most people familiar with the psychiatric disorder called Munchausen-By-Proxy, in which a person (usually a woman) or a parent (usually the mother) makes herself or her child sick – by poison, overmedication, smothering, etc. – and then reports the dire symptoms to authorities, thereby garnering the attention and sympathy she craves, as well as heroine status for "saving” herself or her child.

 

When this bizarre pattern of behavior is observed over time – by family members, friends, psychiatric professionals – and they confront her with evidence of her pathological behavior, she invariably has one response: They are lying! Sound familiar?

 

Then there is the psychiatric disorder known as pathological lying, which is the compulsion of disturbed people to resort to lies rather than truth, the better to compensate for their feelings of inferiority. Some of the stories they make up may have a grain of truth, which allows them – or in the case of politicians, their surrogates or the media – to "spin” them to advantage. Their lies are always designed to put them in a good light and to resonate with people who also feel like victims. Sound familiar?

 

Yet another psychiatric disorder is masochism, in which either sexual or ego satisfaction is derived primarily from experiencing physical or psychological pain. This is particularly prominent in abused women who remain with their abusers because they rationalize that either the brutes "love” them or that – somehow, someday – they will gain enough power over their batterers to wreak their own vengeance. Sound familiar? I have spelled this out in this article and also in this one.

 

Diagnosis?

As the presidential campaign on the Democrat side evolves – or, in my opinion, devolves – there is ample evidence that Hillary has a few screws loose, if not a few bolts.

 

We all know that during her drive for the nomination, Hillary and her surrogates have continually played the racist card, in effect creating a media firestorm of accusation toward the ongoing blight of racism in the Democrat party. In true Munchausen form, Hillary has accused the media of causing the "illness” of her plummeting popularity, poll numbers, and electability. She hasn’t done this – they have!

 

Then there is the serial lying. As Bill Clinton’s public-relations mastermind Dick Morris has now documented, Hillary has the equivalent of a doctorate in not telling the truth. He lists the lies she has admitted to:

 

▪ Hillary’s daughter, Chelsea, was jogging around the Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. (She was in bed watching it on TV.)

 

▪ Hillary was named after Sir Edmund Hillary. (He climbed Mt. Everest five years after her birth.)

 

▪ Hillary was under sniper fire in Bosnia. (A girl presented her with flowers at the foot of the ramp.)

 

▪ Hillary learned in The Wall Street Journal how to make a killing in the futures market. (The WSJ didn't cover the market back then.)

 

Morris documents other lies that Hillary has not confessed to:

 

▪ Hillary didn't know about the FALN pardons.

 

▪ Hillary didn't know that her brothers were being paid to get pardons that Clinton granted.

 

▪ Hillary taking White House gifts was a clerical error.

 

▪Hillary didn't know that her staff would fire the travel office staff after she told them to do so.

 

▪ Hillary didn't know that the Peter Paul fundraiser in Hollywood in 2000 cost $700,000 more than she reported it had. Read this for further documentation.

 

▪ Hillary supported NAFTA but now opposes it.

 

▪ Hillary was instrumental in the Irish peace process.

 

▪ Hillary urged Bill to intervene in Rwanda.

 

▪ Hillary played a role in the '90s economic recovery.

 

▪ Hillary’s billing records showed up on their own.

 

▪ Hillary thought Bill was innocent when the Monica scandal broke.

 

▪ Hillary was always a Yankees fan.

 

▪ Hillary had nothing to do with the New Square Hasidic pardons (after they voted for her 1,400-12 and she attended a meeting at the White House about the pardons).

 

▪ Hillary negotiated for the release of refugees in Macedonia (who were released the day before she got there).

 

And then there is the central role Hillary claimed she played in the Irish peace process, yet another lie intended to convince the public of her fitness for the presidency, but which she mysteriously omitted from her autobiography.

 

The Problem of Character
Millions of people around the world have been treated successfully – in psychotherapy and by psychotropic medications – for psychiatric disorders that seem to fit Hillary.

 

With enough time and patience, therapists sometimes succeed in helping their patients gain insight into their insecurities, self-hatred, rage, self-destructive behaviors, fantasies of vengeance, and delusions of grandeur.

 

Then again, there is the category known as "hopeless cases.” There is a good reason why the adage, "Show me a mean young lady and I’ll show you a mean old lady,” has enduring truth. Essential character traits are largely immutable.

 

While Democrats, as well as the leftwing media, have for decades papered over Hillary’s character flaws, over-weaning ambition, destroy-people-at-all-cost strategies, and blaring, glaring lies, it is only since they’ve found a new liberal to lionize – in the form of one Barack Obama – that they’ve started abandoning the USS Clinton and "remembering” the weird, chameleon-like behavior that has always characterized the 3am-red-phone lady.

 

First there was her conversion from a rah-rah conservative Goldwater girl to the fervent acolyte of Marxist Saul Alinsky. Then the goodie-two-shoes governor’s wife turned defender of everything prurient and excessive. There was the corporate lawyer turned Whitewater-cattle-futures-billing records scandal queen. And then the "transparency” president’s wife who shrouded herself and the process of healthcare reform in secrecy. There was the woman who spoke the King’s English in the northeast but became a holy-rolling southern-drawling good-ole-girl in the Deep South. And the woman who voted for the Iraq War and supported NAFTA but then – surprise! – became Ms. Anti-War incarnate and against the trade agreement. The list goes on and on and on and on and on.

 

Why? Is this the case of a person fixated in adolescence who finds it impossible to stop having identity crises – even into her sixties? Is it the onset of an insidious memory disorder that compels Hillary to create out of whole cloth experiences she never had (think Tuzla, think Ireland) and then to attribute her wild claims to "misspeaking”? Or is it simply a case of bad – immutably bad – character?

 

The End Is Nigh
Hillary’s recent extravagant whopper about being flown into Bosnia and having to dodge sniper fire seems to have finally brought about her undoing. As radio personality Mark Simone has asked, what kind of insane mother would let her daughter off a plane in the face of sniper fire?

 

Faced with round-the-clock coverage of the people who were present on the trip, including a comedian, a pop singer, and the pilot – who all categorically denied her version of events – and endless footage of Hillary and Chelsea strolling the tarmac with sun-shiny smiles, the Revolt began, not only of longtime media loyalists but also of Party flaks, and even super-delegates who ran gleefully into the arms of Obama.

 

Writer Kimberley A. Strassel says that ignoring the Bosnia story:

 

"…would have been to deny the press, the pundits, Democrats, and even Barack Obama, the catharsis of finally – finally! – getting a chance to confront the Clintons' questionable mores. Hillary's and Bill's scandals have been the elephant in the primary room ever since she first signaled a run. Yet up to now everyone has been too scared, or too loyal, or too weary to touch the ugly past. Her Bosnia misspeak is now serving as proxy for all the truths about the Clintons' non-truths, allowing even liberals to break free from their Clinton dependence.

 

"And how liberating it is! The real beauty of Mrs. Clinton's Tuzla torture is that it's self-inflicted… No more apologizing. Now comes the euphoria, the liberation, the freedom of…Bosnian snipers! Suddenly, liberals all over are remembering that they never really liked the Clintons…suddenly, they can sidle into a discussion about Mrs. Clinton's ethics…suddenly, they can break free of the Clintons, much as New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson did earlier this week, with a look of ecstasy, as he ran toward the daylight and endorsed Mr. Obama.

 

"Which is why it is no surprise that this week also saw the beginning of a tide of Democrats, many of them one-time Clinton defenders, calling on her to abandon her bid, laying out the reasons for why she cannot win this race, and telling her to let go for the good of the party. Mrs. Clinton, being a Clinton, may well ignore them. But what is clear is that questions about her character and honesty are no longer verboten.”

 

Of the media, journalist and author Peggy Noonan remarked: "…it sours life to have a person whose character you feel you cannot admire play such a large daily role in your work…at this point [they] feel such a lack of faith in Mrs. Clinton's words and ways that it amounts to an aversion.”

 

Columnist Rich Lowry remarked that Hillary has "exhibited a grandiosity verging on delusion,” that she is suffering from "a rare disorder to which vaultingly ambitious formerly front-running presidential candidates are prone.”

 

But it is international journalist Mark Steyn who has captured what is sure to be the style of Hillary’s unpretty exodus and the base motives that have driven her all of her life: "But on she staggers. Even if she can’t win, she can deny victory to Obama, and to her party. As they say in show business, it’s not important for me to succeed, only for my friends to fail.”