Among the leading contenders for the Democratic nomination none are as vulnerable on the charge of deceiving the public as is Hillary Clinton: she is a liar and there is plenty of evidence to confirm this. It is a wonder her Democratic challengers have not yet made use of the widely-reported incidences of her fabrications and distortions—but it is certain, if she wins the nomination, her Republican opponents will savage her already shaky credibility.

One of the most egregious examples of Hillary’s ability to lie without batting an eyelid is her account of the whereabouts of her daughter on 9/11. Hillary told Katie Couric on the Today show that Chelsea was going out for a jog that day around the Twin Towers. Chelsea stopped at a nearby coffee shop when she heard the planes hit the towers. Yet, in a written account to Talk magazine, Chelsea provided a completely different version. She related that on 9/11 she was in an apartment far from the scene when she received a phone call informing her of the incident: she then watched the event unfold on television. Hillary lied to a national audience in order to appear more empathic—more able to relate to the enormity of the tragedy on a personal level because her daughter had been so close to the scene.

She also lied about the origins of her name. In a 1995 visit to Tibet, she claimed that her mother called her Hillary after the first man to climb Mount Everest, Sir Edmund Hillary. When she met the explorer she told him that her mother had read an article about his adventures and had therefore been inspired to name her daughter after him. Yet, Sir Edmund Hillary was an unknown beekeeper when Hillary was born in 1947, did not embark upon his first trek in the Himalayas until 1951 and climbed Mount Everest in 1953—when Hillary was already six years old. Thus, Hillary lied in order to cloak the origins of her name in drama and mystique. In 2006, her campaign spokeswoman at last admitted Hillary was not named after the great explorer; in another obvious lie to cover the original gaffe, the spokeswoman blamed Hillary’s mother for the error. "It was a sweet family story her mother shared to inspire greatness in her daughter, to great results I might add." Why, one might add, did it take 11 years to set the record straight if this was simply a story Hillary’s mother had made up for her daughter?

Hillary has been caught lying not only on rather trivial matters but on grave issues as well. In her memoir, “Living History,” she concealed the extent to which Bill Clinton was complicit in Roger Clinton’s drug problem. Roger Clinton was arrested in 1984 on drug charges and imprisoned. Hillary recounted: “Bill and I berated ourselves for not seeing the signs of Roger’s abuse and taking some kind of action.” Yet, there have been numerous reports by those who participated in cocaine parties that Bill and Roger took drugs together. Arkansas state troopers also testified that the brothers regularly engaged in drug use. Roger himself was videotaped during the sting which led to his arrest as saying: “I’ve got to get some for my brother, he has a nose like a vacuum cleaner.” Thus, Bill certainly did not object to Roger’s drug use, nor berate himself, since he was equally active in taking cocaine.

The most obvious series of Hillary’s dishonesty pertains to Bill’s womanizing. Since Bill was governor of Arkansas, Hillary has been aware of his ceaseless pursuit of women. It has been confirmed by a number of eye-witnesses that although Hillary was often furious at her husband for his reckless behavior, she nonetheless repeatedly assisted him to cover up evidence of his deeds. She plotted with her husband to discredit women that came forward—even though she knew they were telling the truth. She hired private investigators to dig up dirt on these women. Moreover, contrary to her claim in her memoir that she believed her husband when he first denied his affair with Monica Lewinsky, she knew that this was accurate and helped him, as she had done so many times before, to deceive the public.

Hillary has presented herself as the aggrieved spouse—yet she too is a lascivious adulteress. She has tried to conceal the fact, for example, that she had an on-again, off again affair with Vince Foster. Foster was her partner at the Rose Law Firm in Arkansas and served as deputy White House counsel. His body was found in Fort Marcy Park in July 1993. The death was deemed a suicide. Hillary has not addressed reports by Arkansas state troopers she had a longstanding affair with Foster. She has also remained reticent on the reports she had a lesbian relationship while in college and has had numerous lesbian lovers throughout her marriage.

There is also a long list of lies pertaining to her abuse of power. In 1996, a Democrat dirty trickster, Craig Livingstone, was apprehended with more than nine hundred FBI security files on past Republican aides. Hillary claimed not to know anything about this: witnesses have testified under oath that she was adamant to employ Livingstone despite his bad reputation.  Like her husband she had no qualms about lying under oath during the Travelgate scandal in which non-political employees at the White House travel office were fired. And Hillary and Bill both gave false testimony during the Whitewater investigation. Hillary claims in her memoirs that all the investigations led to exonerating her and Bill from wrongdoing. Yet the reports by prosecutors paint a wretched picture of Bill and Hillary. They have thus far escaped criminal convictions but their reputation for truth-telling and respect for the law has been badly damaged—and will be even more so once a national campaign gets underway.

Hillary falsely believes all of this is “old hat” and she will be able to weather such criticisms by arguing personal attacks are not as important as the issues and she and Bill have repeatedly been unfairly maligned by their political opponents. Yet, the public is not quite convinced. Her overall negatives are extremely high: in a Gallup poll conducted in April, 42 percent of the American people gave her an unfavorable rating. Consider how badly Al Gore was damaged in the 2000 campaign as a result of claims he was the father of the Internet; it will therefore not take too much work by opponents running forceful ads to paint Hillary as a liar.

Hillary, the celebrity, has not yet quite understood that people in democracies regularly get whipped into a frenzy of enthusiasm. She is now enjoying a brief respite of goodwill in a career that has largely been dominated by the public’s suspicion, rejection and detestation of her. Hillary, the politician, is about to discover that the same democratic frenzies that have recently propped her up will just as quickly and savagely tear her down once she is stigmatized in the public mind as an incorrigible liar.

- Washington Watch is a weekly column published in Insight (www.insightmag.com).