Hillary, Bozo and the Bosnian superdelegates

WASHINGTON — Hillary Clinton has proved a relentless, even implacable campaigner, a veritable Inspector Javert among politicians. But it is clear she is coming to the end of her string.

Tomorrow there are primaries in Kentucky and Oregon, then June 1 in Puerto Rico and two days later Montana and South Dakota. That’s it. The math isn’t there and Barack Obama doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who will suddenly appear with a colander on his head to announce he’s an emissary from the Planet Zomba. And even that may win him a niche demographic.

But Clinton is clearly in no mood to quit. She insists she will go on fighting. But where does she go next. The answer is so obvious I’m surprised sidelined strategist Mark Penn didn’t think of it earlier.

Bosnia.

True, Bosnia was the occasion of her most awkward campaign gaffe when she said she landed under sniper fire. The welcome reception on the tarmac had to be cancelled and she had to run with her head down to the car.

No snipers

No one else remembered any snipers and TV coverage of the event showed the first lady being welcomed by a little girl.

But consider. Although Bosnia has more people, in size, geography and economy it is very similar to West Virginia, where she clocked Obama by better than 2 to l. Without getting a lot of grief about it, she could retool her line to “hard working Bosnians, hard working white Bosnians.” And she could make up for her little sojourn into autobiographical fiction.

Her campaign plane could make a steep, corkscrewing descent into Tuzla airport. It’s probably not hard to draw a crowd in Tuzla, a place that doesn’t look over-blessed with entertainment, and I expect she would draw a big happy crowd.

She could pause on the stairway and as she liked to do, point to individual members of the crowd, especially the ones waving signs saying, “Snipers for Hillary.” A big guy with a sheepish grin comes forward and is introduced: “This is Bozo (yes, it’s a real name there). He was the sniper.”

Bozo says he tried to lay down some sniper fire but that he had left his glasses at home that day and succeeded only in hitting a derelict Yugo on the far side of the airfield.

Slivovitz

She invites Bozo to join her motorcade and on the way into town they stop at a working class bar and swap shots of slivovitz. She tells the crowd in the bar that after a hard day at Yale Law School -- puzzled looks but the crowd is with her -- she liked nothing better than to relax with a bottle of slivovitz and a nice plate of grilled chevapi.

After a few more shooters, she tells the patrons how she spent a couple of summers at her great-grandfather’s place up near Banja Luka, working in the local leper colony and shooting the wolves that threatened the flocks. (Oh, yeah? You try to disprove it.)

As she is being helped to the airplane, Clinton promises to heal the divisions between the Bosnia Muslims and the Bosnian Serbs the same way she brought peace to Northern Ireland.

She winds up with all of Bosnia’s delegates and superdelegates, plus a few who slipped in from neighboring Croatia. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Scripps Howard News Service