Do you believe this story?
BETSY'S PAGE BLOG
One factor that Hillary Clinton will have to overcome in her path to the presidency is the questions people still have about veracity, both from her and her husband. Perhaps people have forgotten the details of the Rose Law Firm's billing records or the firing of the White House Travel Office, but there is still that aura of dishonest hanging over the couple. Polls continually show that people think that Hillary Clinton is not a sincere person and that she would say whatever it takes to sell herself to the American people.
With that in mind, how likely is it that people will believe her story that, in 1975, after the Vietnam War and right before she got married to Bill Clinton, that she popped into an Arkansas Marines Recruiting Office with an honest desire to find out about enlisting in the Marines? Jim Geraghty reports that the New Republic repeats this tale in their (subscription only) story on Mrs. Clinton and the Iraq War. The story smelled when she first trotted it out in 1994 and the reporter for the New York Times who covered Mrs. Clinton's tale was none other than a somewhat skeptical Maureen Dowd.
"But, even given the fact that the nation has become accustomed to Mrs. Clinton's intriguing shape-shifting -- from liberal do-gooder to high-risk commodities trader, from power lawyer to cookie baker, from health care czar to housewife supervising the menu for the state dinner for the Emperor and Empress of Japan -- the latest one is still jarring. Macho Contrast to Clinton
First, it presented a macho contrast to a President who had just visited England, where news reports recalled the letter he wrote from there to a representative of the Reserve Officers Training Corps at the University of Arkansas, explaining why many members of his generation loved their country but still found themselves "loathing" the military.
And it did not seem to fit in with the First Lady's own persona. After all, Hillary Rodham was an up-and-coming legal star involved with an up-and-coming political star. She had made a celebrated appearance in Life magazine as an anti-establishment commencement speaker at Wellesley College, where, as president of the student government, she had organized teach-ins on her opposition to the Vietnam War.
She was a Yale law school graduate who had worked on the anti-war Presidential campaigns of Eugene J. McCarthy and George McGovern.
Mrs. Clinton told friends that she had moved to Arkansas for only one reason: to be with Bill Clinton. Years later, she would tell Vanity Fair that she had stayed because "I didn't see anything out there that I thought was more exciting or challenging than what I had in front of me."
She and Mr. Clinton married on Oct. 11, 1975 in Fayetteville.
So, if she was talking to a Marine recruiter in 1975 before the marriage, was she briefly considering joining the few, the proud and the brave of the corps as an alternative to life with Mr. Clinton, who was already being widely touted as a sure thing for Arkansas Attorney General?"
Geraghty reprints a letter from a military recruiter in 1975 who casts some more doubt on Hillary's story that she was immediately given the brush-off from the Marines recruiter due to her age and eyesight. Perhaps the story is true that Hillary had a whim to sign up for the Marines right before she married Bill Clinton. I don't believe it, but there are many who would give her the benefit of the doubt. But I somehow suspect that the question will remain in the air - why would she tell such a story and what does the waiting 20 years later to trot out the anecdote say about her? Doesn't it just add to that whole air about her that she and her husband would say anything if they thought it would win them a few votes or some favorable press coverage? betsyspage.blogspot.com |
