The XX Factor: Slate women blog about politics, etc...

Experience?

One of Hillary Clinton's rationales for staying in the race when she was getting battered in a string of defeats was that she was so much more experienced than Barack Obama, that over time his inexperience would cause him to stumble. That would leave Clinton, having been so gruelingly tested over so many years, ultimately victorious. But isn't it ironic that now a central Clinton claim on the presidency—her experience—is making her look foolish. There have been her embarrassing, exaggerated claims that as first lady she helped bring peace to Northern Ireland and risked her life in Bosnia. And now the Boston Globe has effectively taken apart one of her oft-repeated accomplishments: that she created the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Turns out, according to the legislators who did create it, that she had virtually nothing to do with it, and that the (Bill) Clinton administration initially opposed it.