Yes, I saw that. And she certainly did represent the US and gain useful experience while doing it. But she has clearly inflated her resume, overstated her involvement and achievements. And being First Lady doesn’t qualify you to be President.

“Representing the United States around the world is a serious piece of business,” said a former senior State Department official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid alienating friends in both campaigns. “She wasn’t representing the United States as secretary of state, chairman of the Joint Chiefs or U.S. trade representative. But she was representing the United States, and she did have specific assignments.”

Clinton was given the mission of speaking out for women’s rights at a conference in Beijing. She was sent to meet with refugees in forbidding places. She was dispatched to extend friendship to parts of the world where the president did not have time to go. But the former senior official expressed irritation at both sides for mischaracterizing her role. “They made a mistake to exaggerate it,” he said of Clinton’s aides, “and I think it’s a mistake to underappreciate it.”

It’s a mistake to underappreciate it, and it is certainly a valid argument in her favor.

One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning.

Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.

Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.