In what Bloomberg says may be her last paid gig before she announces for president, Hillary Clinton told an audience attending a conference sponsored by the American Camp Association that American adults need to have more fun and that adult camps should be set up to help them.

No, really. She said it.

She also bemoaned the lack of comity in Washington and promised to work across party lines to get things done - presumably, things like building camps to teach adults how to have fun.

No, really. She means it.

Hillary Clinton would love to see sleepaway camps for adults and more relationship-building in Washington, she said Thursday at what will likely be her final paid appearance before launching her expected presidential campaign.

"We really need camps for adults,"  the former secretary of state told the American Camp Association of New York and New Jersey’s Tri-State CAMP Conference. "None of the serious stuff ... I think we have a fun deficit in America."

In an hour on stage, Clinton mixed recollections of her own childhood with some discussion of her path forward. As she has hinted, it would include a focus on finding consensus across party lines.

"If you don't build relationships with people and all you do is show up to argue or show up to point fingers, you can't get anything done," she said.

It's a difficult environment, she later added, "where you are under 24/7 scrutiny, where everybody is leaking and talking."

Clinton recalled reaching out to President George W. Bush and the late Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) to get support for New York following the Sept. 11 attacks. She said in that case, personal relationships made the difference. During the Clinton administration, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) "would say the worst things about Bill and sometimes me," but he would still meet with the president on the second floor of the White House to work out compromises.

In the years since, some of that comity has faded as members of Congress face "insatiable pressure" to raise "crazy" amounts of money, Clinton said. "And the Supreme Court made it worse," she added.

Clinton said she mostly reads "mysteries and histories" and has recently been reading a lot of books about the Founding Fathers and George Washington's first term. Governing and politics "has always been hardball," she said, but "we've lost relationship-building and consensus-building."

Regimenting the lives of citizens - even planning what kind of fun they can have - is what totalitarians do. Nazi Germany built two huge cruise ships so that ordinary people could take vacations in luxury. They didn't seem to mind that their days were carefully planned out from sun up to lights out. Of course, the commies had camps, but I wouldn't exactly call them places of merriment.

Clinton talks of a "fun deficit" but what she really means is that only the government can teach us how to have fun. We are incapable of having fun on our own and need the nurturing instruction of the nanny state to fully enjoy life.

What did you expect from a woman who wrote a book about child rearing called "It takes a village"?

As for her wailing about a lack of civility, that's a joke that tells itself. The viscious partisanship of the Clinton White House has been well documented and Hillary was at the center of it.

I'd love to see a policy "white paper" on these camps. It would be interesting to see what Hillary's idea of "fun" might be.