Voters have a right to ask. Clinton’s camp may pooh-pooh the failure. But a new book profiling her life reveals that it was a big enough deal that she hid the embarrassment from even her closest friends for years.
From another biography, we also now learn that the esteemed senator failed to read the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq before she voted to authorize President Bush to use force in 2002. She now regrets the decision, claiming she was misled by faulty intelligence she never bothered to read.
Turns out Clinton had to be “briefed” by staffers on the details of one of the most important government reports ever printed. What, the smartest woman in the world couldn’t scan a 90-page dossier? She had to get the Cliffs Notes?
These latest revelations make us wonder if Hillary Clinton’s vaunted IQ isn’t just another Clinton fabrication. Is this why she refuses to release her Wellesley and Yale transcripts?
Bush released his Yale transcripts (C student). So did the previous Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry (another Yalie with a C average). What is Clinton hiding?
Here’s why this matters: Voters are supposed to want to elect her because of her smarts and competence (because we all know it’s not her honesty). Her brains are her entire selling point.
But we’re learning she’s not so smart, after all. Voters deserve full disclosure to make an informed choice about her credentials for occupying the highest office in the land. And without seeing her college records, they really can’t make one.
To be sure, Clinton’s no dunce; she got into Wellesley and Yale. But how does a Yale law student bomb the D.C. bar and have to settle for practicing law in Little Rock (where she tried just five cases in her career)?
Did Hillary really “excel” in school? Is she really the smartest woman in the world?
Another biography, published a decade ago by Joyce Milton, suggests Clinton was a mediocre student who didn’t even finish in the top of her high school class. However, she was a hard worker who had a reputation as a “teacher’s pet” and was skilled at making the “right connections” to advance her career, Milton says in “The First Partner: Hillary Rodham Clinton.”
At Wellesley, where she fought for pass-fail grading as student president, Clinton wrote her thesis on radical Saul Alinksy, who staged “fart-ins” to wring concessions from corporations. Life magazine anointed the budding social activist as a voice of her generation, which no doubt sweetened her application to Yale, then a hotbed of radicalism.
Upon graduating, Bill quickly landed a professorship teaching law. But Hillary had no prospects and stayed behind in New Haven,Conn. Eventually, a Yale law professor tapped her to work on the House impeachment staff. Again, she had the right connections. Hitching her wagon to Bill propelled her into the statehouse, then the White House and now the Senate.
“I don’t think she is smarter than Bill, though some people will say that,” said Ellen Brantley, who attended Wellesley with Hillary and later knew both her and Bill in Little Rock.
“Bill was the original thinker, as Hillary was not,” Milton added.
In short, Hillary has always had more ambition than brilliance. Is this why she’s so scripted and relies so heavily on handlers and advisers? Is this why she uses questionable means to beat her “enemies,” perceived and otherwise, hiring private eyes to dig up dirt on them? Or is this why she couldn’t recall anything when questioned by the feds and the press about her various scandals — from the Travel Office purge and cattle futures windfall to the Whitewater sweetheart deal and missing subpoenaed billing records? Is it why she’s let herself be publicly demeaned by a philandering husband? Was he her ticket to political fame and fortune?
The other major revelation from the latest round of tell-all books on Hillary is that she was in charge of putting down what her pal Betsy Wright described as “bimbo eruptions” during her husband’s 1992 campaign. Bimbo? How ironic.
No Compromise When You're Right! 