Smartest Woman on Earth????

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 be-
fore 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 in-
formed 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 Well-
esley and Yale. But how does a Yale law student
bomb the D.C. bar and have to settle for practic-
ing 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 bio-
graphy, 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 corpora-
tions. 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 pro-
fessorship 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 state-
house, 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 question-
ed by the feds and the press about her various
scandals — from the Travel Office purge and
cattle futures windfall to the Whitewater sweet-
heart 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.