The most psychologically intriguing possibility regarding Hillary Clinton’s recollection of coming under sniper fire in Bosnia is that, for her, the memory is entirely accurate. Regardless of what the conditions on the ground objectively were, she was frightened about going there and felt apprehensive throughout a tour which she hoped/feared might have to be abandoned because of a violent incursion. Perhaps she feared being taken out by a sniper so intently that she visualised ducking and running if shots were heard.

Such mental projections can become inseparable from memories. This is an entirely logical and honourable response to the adrenaline-shock of a near-miss. An acquaintance of the disgraced British politician and best selling author Jeffrey Archer once argued that he was not a liar in the conventional sense: when he claimed to have been at one school called Wellington rather than another, or switched restaurant dates to create an alibi, the adjusted anecdote became a flashback in his mind.

Clinton’s difficulty is that she can not give the sensible and human explanation because the whole point of the story was to present her as someone who would be cool under fire. But her misspeaking is as revealing as any speech she has made. History suggests politicians are most likely to say silly things in an area of sensitivity. Nervous of being considered a toff, north London lawyer Tony Blair was forced to reach for more stories of boyhood support for Newcastle United soccer club than he strictly had in the cupboard. Ronald Reagan was embarrassed at lacking the war-hero backstory that the character demanded, and so his mind conveniently confused his movies with his memories.

Reagan’s successor, the first President Bush, was then ridiculed for claiming that, while waiting to be rescued after ditching his plane during the second world war, he had reflected on the separation of church and state and the importance of prayer in schools. It seems improbable that a 20-year-old flier really boiled with such issues at this time, but the emergency needlework resulted from the desperate search for a life-experience that might endear him to the religious right of his party. It shows the pathetic accommodations required of political candidates that, in this case, a genuine memory of military heroism had become electorally useless and so had to be turned into a false recollection of Christian zeal.

Clinton’s misspeaking was also caused by defensive invention. Her dilemma is that the only acceptable attack on Barack Obama is the allegation of lacking experience in foreign policy. But her own background in international affairs consists only of having been married to a man who ran America for eight years. Note that the anecdote that exploded in her face came not from her period as Senator Clinton but her spell as Mrs Clinton. So, in misspeaking, she inadvertently spoke the truth: she is someone pretending to have far more governmental experience than she has. — The Guardian