I think at this point we have all seen it, read about it or heard about it…many times. Clinton put out an ad asking the American people who they wanted answering a call in the White House at 3am. This was part of her experience and ‘ready on day one’ campaign that was intended to plant a little fear in the mind’s of voters as to whether her opponent, Senator Obama, is capable of making the crucial decisions a President has to make.

And, it appears the ad had some effect. Some people did rally to her cause and a critical onslaught visited Obama’s campaign with questions about how prepared he really is. Apparently some US voters felt that if the phone in the White House rang they were more comfortable with Hillary picking it up and saying ‘hello.’

Recently though, we all were treated to Hillary’s Bosnia SNAFU. Here at TNH, we have had fun with her horrific war story, the tenuous landing, the sniper fire and Sinbad and Sheryl Crow saving the day. It was absurd that her recounting of the story became as dramatic as it did and now it is an embarassing smudge on Hillary’s resume of experience. She juiced her resume, just like Barry Bonds did his arms. Now her list of ahcievements will have the little asterisk beside them, just like those of Bonds.

But when she began to explain how she could make such a terrific error in her retelling of her adventure is when my ears really perked up. She attributed her bad decision making, that led to the perpetuating of this untruth, to a lack of sleep. She was tired and so she fabricated a story, loosely based on real-life events.

I understand being tired and making mistakes. I have been tired when meeting with a client and said ‘Kansas’ when I meant ‘Missouri.’ That is understandable. I have not, however, been so tired as to fabricate an entire story, loosely based on real-life events.

So, going back to the ad…it is early in the morning in the nation’s capital and the phone is ringing in the White House. President Hillary Clinton has had a very busy day and is extremely tired when she is awakened to take the phone call. She gets on the phone with the same sleep deprived and mistake-prone mental faculties she fingered as the cause of her Bosnia fabrication.

What kind of blunder does she make this time? At 3am? When the entire nation’s security is on the line?

The Bosnia gaffe is disturbing for its stark lack of veracity but does not perhaps constitute a major blunder in the minds of many voters. So, what would?

Considering one of a President’s most prominent powers is appointing people to cabinet positions, ambassador roles and other strategic posts, one might think that a candidate’s ability to find and engage good people to help with the campaign would be a good indicator of how they might perform in office.

The Clinton Campaign’s latest blunder has to do with former Chief Strategist Mark Penn meeting with the Colombian government to secure congressional approval of a trade agreement. This was a trade agreement Hillary claims to oppose, but her chief strategist meets with the government in a direct conflict of interest of her campaign. Who is running the show in Camp Clinton? How can communication lines be so severed as to result in another publicly embarassing spectacle for Hillary?

Is the choice of Penn as her chief strategist another example of her experienced decision-making abilities? Was she tired when she hired him? Was ‘blue collar‘ Hillary, hero to the lunch pail Democrats, too sleepy to realize that the man she appointed as the brains of her campaign specialized in busting up unions?

How does that kind of mistake happen?

What is even more troublesome for Clintonistas is that this is not the first time her campaign has looked like a big group of unprepared neophytes. This isn’t even the first time she has had to endure a messy shake-up in her campaign management! For the seasoned political veteran she wants us to believe she is, she has made quite a few mistakes in this campaign alone.

I am going to repeat some of a post I made back in February, but it is worth revisiting her mistakes. She is running a campaign than did not plan for anything after Feb 5. Her strategy was to position herself as the inevitable nominee and now we all know that she is not inevitable. What kind of strategy is that? Do we want a leader who so grievously underestimated her primary opponents? She has had ongoing money problems with the campaign. Now we want to put her in charge of our national budget? Does that make sense? And through all her mistakes, she has undergone a series of transformations trying to reinvent herself in the middle of her campaign. Some of these ‘transformations’ are undoubtedly knee-jerk panic reactions, but we have seen several iterations of her over the last few months. Do we want a leader who is forced into knee-jerk reactions because they could not put forth an effective plan?

Hillary Clinton has clearly demonstrated that she is not the person I want answering the phone at 3am whether it be due to her tendency to fib, her inability to appoint competent people around her, her lack of budgeting skills or her apparent disdain of making sound strategic plans.

The phone is ringing America. Please keep Senator Clinton away.