In his entertaining memoirs, Robert Reich remembered himself being beset by howling partisans and snide journalists. Unfortunately, video of the events he described showed nothing like the drama he described.

At a 1995 press conference, just after President Clinton and Reich have failed to settle the baseball strike, Reich has reporters asking the following questions: “Mr. President, why did you invite the players and owners to the White House in the first place?” “If you can’t even get these parties to agree, what hope do you have in Bosnia?” “Does this mark the nadir of this administration’s influence?” “First it was the minimum wage and now it’s baseball. Why do you and your labor secretary think Washington should be involved in every employment issue in America?”
Those questions certainly help Reich paint a picture of piranha journalists intent on humiliating the administration. But none of the questions, nor any like them, was ever asked. The reporters’ focus was on major-league baseball, not on Reich and Clinton, and their tone was puzzled rather than angry.

It appears California senator Barbara Boxer has the same problem. Talking to a San Francisco newspaper, Boxer recalled an interaction with Condoleezza Rice about Iraq and declared, “I asked her how many people had died and she did not know the answer to that question.” The paper went back to the videotape and found Boxer never asked the question, she just harangued the Secretary of State.

We’re all crusading heroes in our own minds.