Back to School

It was, of course, not the first time Clinton had addressed the school. In 1969, young Hillary Rodham became the first student ever to speak at Wellesley’s graduation, through a series of what with hindsight might be called Clintonian machinations. As she explains in her autobiography, Living History, her close friend Eleanor Acheson, granddaughter of Dean, decided that it was imperative that the school allow a student to speak. Acheson made her demand to Wellesley’s president, Ruth Adams, who refused. Acheson declared “that if the request was denied, she would personally lead an effort to stage a counter-commencement. And, she added, she was confident her grandfather would attend.”

Looking to play peacemaker, Clinton, who was then president of the student government, met with Adams, who said her chief concern was that she didn’t know who the students would choose and whether that person could be trusted to act with decorum. Coincidentally, Clinton explained, the students had already chosen her. Following the grand tradition of college administrators the world over, Adams acquiesced.

Clinton’s speech on May 31, 1969, is the stuff of legend at Wellesley–portions of it were quoted on T-shirts at the rally, and the candidate herself made reference to it several times. She wasn’t quite as polished in those days:

The speech brought her national recognition: television appearances, radio interviews, even notice in Life magazine. The coverage was almost universally fawning.

Clinton’s remarks at Wellesley this time were more on-message. There was the usual anti-Bush diatribe–“[the president] has undermined women’s rights and gay rights and appointed Supreme Court justices who’ve chipped away at reproductive rights, undermined equal pay, and turned back the clock on school integration.” She rang the torture bell, warned about global warming, gave a shout-out to Al Gore, and proclaimed that “If George Bush doesn’t end this war while he is president, when I am president, I will.” It was pretty much the standard fare, though perhaps not as perfectly pro-withdrawal as the crowd might have preferred.

But she still wasn’t entirely coherent. She claimed that “there is no military solution” for Iraq because of the tangle of tribal and sectarian rivalries there. Scarcely a minute later, she promised to commit troops to Darfur and Burma and to “create real consequences for anyone who continues the bloodshed or obstructs the peace process.” The students applauded both sentiments with equal fervor.

Clinton also attacked Bush’s profligate spending, charging that “he’s run up our national debt to $9 trillion so every baby born today starts life with $30,000 dollars of debt on his or her tiny shoulders.” She insisted that we must end this “reckless spending,” but in the course of a brief speech pledged $50 billion for AIDS research, a $1 billion “Green Building Fund,” and universal health care.

The only truly offensive moment came after Hillary lamented that in the wake of 9/11, President Bush asked Americans to go shopping. She talked about how America’s youth had stepped up to the plate anyhow, with applications to Teach for America, AmeriCorps, and the Peace Corps soaring.She then mentioned a student-created sustainable food initiative at one local college, a benefit concert for Darfur put on at another, and a nearby university’s attempt to cut water usage. Not mentioned were those who chose to actually fight for our nation by enlisting in the armed forces.

The revealing moment came late. “My generation,” she admitted, “is in danger of being the first ever to leave America worse off than when we found it.” Wellesley is certainly worse off than it was before the Class of ’69 with its president, Hillary Rodham. Wellesley, like other serious, upper-crust women’s colleges, used to be in the business of supervising its students both intellectually and socially. It had a core curriculum and rules of decorum–curfews, no boys in the dorms except on Sundays and, on those occasions, two out of four feet were to be kept on the floor with the door left open a crack. As Clinton explained in Living History, “We pressured the college administration to remove the in loco parentis regulations, which they finally did when I was college government President. That change coincided with the elimination of a required curriculum that students also deemed oppressive.”

The result is a college where today girls can major in Peace and Justice Studies or Women’s Studies. And the less said about the culture of sexual permissiveness that has been fostered at Wellesley and elsewhere, the better. Even Clinton seems to understand that her accomplishments at Wellesley might have had unpleasant, unintended consequences. “I’m not so sure that eliminating both course requirements and quasi-parental supervision represented unmitigated progress,” she wrote in Living History. On Thursday, she played the overturning of the “two-foot rule” for laughs: “It’s a rule that I and many of my classmates became actually nostalgic forwhen we had college-aged children of our own.” In other words, she wants to take credit for being a student radical while at the same time hinting that as president she won’t do for America what she did for Wellesley.

It’s the same circle she’s trying to square in her campaign: to convince liberal Democrats that she’s one of them while she reassures moderates that she understands how the real world works. So far, both groups seem to believe her.

Jonathan V. Last is a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.