How can anyone say that they believe Hillary?

At least with respect to her more incredible stories. She turned $1,000 into $100,000 without any artifice or scheme being employed on her behalf? (Remarkable) She didn't suspect - or know - that her husband was trysting with an intern despite the press coverage, the FBI taking DNA samples and his many past indiscretions?" (Incredible) Father Rob Johansen offers an explanation.

As fascinating as Hillary's behavior is, more fascinating is the fact that she thoroughly expects everyone else to swallow her fantastic explanations. More amazing is that her followers do. Repeatedly. Shamelessly. I've seen this phenomena in action on the History News Network comment boards on the reasons for "Clinton hatred." Read the thread under "Clinton followers fuel antipathy" where I have an exchange about the most likely explanation for Hillary's profits from the futures market. Weed out the name-calling, semantic hair-splitting and incoherence and reflect on the amazing suspension of disbelief that fuels the belief that (a) Hillary's behavior was entirely unsuspicious and (b) anyone raising questions is mendacious.

Now, we all engage in a "willing suspension of disbelief." I've suspended my disbelief on the question of WMDs in Iraq. It's called trust and it's a vital element in a system of representative democracy. But there is something pathological in the Hillary phenomena. Her supporters affirm and disaffirm at the same time. Hillary is one of the smartest people in America, but she didn't even suspect Bill was up to his old tricks. Hillary is a committed feminist, but she doesn't care about the sexual exploitation of a female in one of the most significant examples of workplace power imbalances in the known world. Hillary should be trusted to be President, but she doesn't have the discretion to judge Bill's candor or the resolve to follow up on her representation that she would be that woman in a Tammy Wynette song.

Support for Hillary is fine. But, frankly, more Democrats ought to be expressing even the moderate skepticism voiced bySusan Estrich:

Like her or not, there's no denying that Hillary Clinton is a smart woman. When she wrote this book, she had to know that the passages that would get the attention would be the ones about her husband's relationship with Monica Lewinsky. For a supposedly private person, she gave chapter and verse: the scene in the bedroom; the marriage on the brink; sleeping arrangements on vacation; and how her decision to run for Senate brought them back together, which I'm sure is true.

As for the rest, who knows?

Was Hillary really the last to know? Sometimes the wife is.

I've known Bill Clinton for years, and I never doubted for a minute that he had an "inappropriate sexual relationship" (that's what I called it, when I talked to him) with Monica Lewinsky. I laughed when one White House aide suggested that I deny it. The president himself all but acknowledged it to me when I asked him, in the course of giving him advice. But maybe Hillary never asked; maybe he lied to her and she believed it, notwithstanding everything that had gone before.

Estrich is skeptical of Hillary's claim that she didn't know Bill was lying until two days before his Grand Jury testimony. She is also skeptical of Hillary's motives in releasing the book during a time when Democratic presidential nominees are clawing for public attention. Estrich favorably impresses by the fact that she dares to express even moderate skepticism.