The American public will tolerate a certain level of embellishment by politicians because, quite frankly, we all know we do it ourselves every time we apply for a job. It's human nature to try and make our accomplishments seem more important than they are (or were at the time). Running for president is no different, and every candidate does a bit of resume polishing when they're applying for the biggest job in the world.

But there is a line you can't cross and, this being truly the first YouTube election, we now have video evidence that Hillary Clinton not only crossed it but appears to have left that line just a tiny speck in her rear view mirror. Voters won't react kindly to the revelation that Clinton tried to take them for a ride about the circumstances of her trip to Bosnia, and saying she "misspoke" ain't gonna do the trick.

It may not hurt as much as Rev. Wright hurt Obama, but this hurts Clinton. She already faces questions with the public about her honesty and trustworthiness, and this episode taps directly into a vein of the most unpleasant aspects of her political life. On a more direct level, it undermines her claim of superior experience, an argument that appears to have been paying dividends against Obama over the last few weeks.

Clinton had put herself out there as the person who could answer that 3am call because of her experience as first lady and because she claimed to have been in the kind of tough and dangerous situations that had steeled her for the "red phone moment."

We now know those claims, at least with respect to Bosnia, were untrue. Instead of a simple "embellishment," her account of the Bosnia trip looks to be severely fictionalized.

That's an issue for Clinton - and it's made more serious by the fact that it was completely unnecessary. One option is that she's come to believe that's what really happened in Bosnia 12 years ago. Another is that she purposefully distorted the truth for political gain assuming no one would ever know the difference. Either way, it's a problem.