Unwitting Self-Parody

Mrs. Clinton may have meant to mock Barack Obama's latest foreign policy self-promotion, but I don't think she escaped the PR blast zone:

Hillary Rodham Clinton ridiculed Democratic rival Barack Obama on Tuesday for his contention that living in a foreign country as a child helped give him a better understanding of the foreign policy challenges facing the U.S.

"Voters will have to judge if living in a foreign country at the age of ten prepares one to face the big, complex international challenges the next president will face," Clinton said. "I think we need a president with more experience than that, someone the rest of the world knows, looks up to and has confidence in."

I must admit to being slack-jawed at this comment. I had no idea that Mrs. Clinton was going to be endorsing the eventual Republican nominee for president. This is major, page one, above-the-fold news.

What's that? She was referring to herself? As having "more experience," global notoriety, respect, and confidence? Hillary Clinton?

Well, I'll buy the notoriety part, though that didn't come from foreign policy expertise, but from shenanigans like this:

The Securities and Exchange Commission has launched an investigation into InfoUSA, a Nebraska company that used corporate funds to fly Hillary Rodham Clinton around the country, and one of only two companies to put Bill Clinton on its payroll after he left the White House.

The firm, a major provider of database-processing services, disclosed little about the nature of the probe in a filing to shareholders released yesterday.

The two-sentence filing said only that InfoUSA received a letter last week "informing the Company that the SEC is conducting an informal investigation . . . and is requesting the voluntary production of documents relating to related party transactions, expense reimbursement, other corporate expenditures and certain trading in the Company's securities." ...

Two sources familiar with the company's troubles suggested that investigators would focus their attention on executives' use of company money to feather their own nests. Gupta has been a major financial supporter of the Clintons since he met the president in the mid-1990s. Gupta and his company donated $1 million to help underwrite a lavish year 2000 New Year's Eve celebration at the White House and on the Mall.

He paid the former president $200,000 to deliver a speech to InfoUSA executives in Papillion, Nebraska, and signed the former president to a $3.3 million consulting deal. For the past four years, both Clintons have used Gupta's corporate plane, flying to Switzerland, Hawaii, Jamaica and Mexico - about $900,000 worth of travel, the Post reported in May.

Another set of Clintonoids gets caught with their hands in the proverbial cookie jar. Another gaggle of FOBs (and FOHs) comes under federal investigation for criminal wrong-doing. Another PR headache for the Clintons themselves.

Yawn.

Naturally, this won't have any real, much less lasting, impact on Hillary's presidential blitzkrieg itself. Even if it might have, the ponderosity of the SEC's investigation of InfoUSA - no doubt deliberately designed to the following end - won't hit any kind of paydirt until after Hillary is safely elected a year from now, after which she will order it shut down.

Y'see, being the Great Escape Artists, the Houdinis of American political scandal, is also something for which Bill & Hillary are well known the planet over. What else explains the fact that the wife of former French president Black Jacques Chirac has offered her endorsement of the once and future Queen?

U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton won surprise backing from the wife of former French President Jacques Chirac on Thursday, together with a pledge to join her on the campaign trail.

The Chiracs' political affiliations are at the opposite end of the spectrum from the Clintons', but the former French first lady said she had always thought Democratic candidate Clinton had the makings of a U.S. president.

"She's a woman who is not liked by everybody. But she's strong and she has convictions," Bernadette Chirac, well-known for a forceful character of her own, told the weekly Le Figaro magazine.

She's also a woman whose husband is NOT coming under formal criminal investigation for his past serial malfeasances. And who appears less than bashful about public expressions of admiration for successful ongoing, organized criminal enterprises. Indeed, she wants to campaign with Hillary next year and even get a speaking slot at the Donk convention.

Given general left-wing affinity for French corruption (and socialism, not to be redudant) and the Clintonoids' fondness for meddling in the domestic politics of friendly nations, I wouldn't be surprised to see Mrs. Clinton take Mrs. Chirac up on her offer. Certainly she won't lift a finger to disassociate herself from it.

But if there's little in it for Hillary directly, there is the old axiom of imitation being the sincerest form of flattery. If current French President Nicolas Sarkozy (who just kicked the asses of French unionists in classic Reagan fashion) is the Gallic George W. Bush, perhaps Bernadette Chirac will become the personification of French Leftist revenge.

You can certainly see Presidentress Chirac's first state visit a few years from now, cantcha? Talk about "girls night out" - as well as a bigger legacy than Mr. Bill ever dreamed of.