Young Hillary Rodham answered that challenge the next year as the 17-year-old class president at Maine East High School in the Chicago suburbs. She described herself in her memoirs as "an active Young Republican" and "a Goldwater girl, right down to my cowgirl outfit." As a politically attuned honor student, she must have known that Goldwater was one of only six Republican senators who joined Southern Democratic segregationists opposing the historic voting rights act of 1964 inspired by King.
Hillary headed the Young Republicans at Wellesley College as a freshman before defecting to the Democrats there. But when in 1969 at age 22 she was the first Wellesley student to deliver the commencement address, she did not place civil rights first. She talked about a demonstration in Founder's parking lot at the college that "protested against the rigid academic distribution requirement" and supported "a pass-fail system" and "a say" in "academic decision making." That was not quite Martin Luther King's agenda.
While Clinton was re-inventing her past, her campaign was shaken by the first serious, public internal Democratic criticism of the Clintons since the 1992 presidential campaign. The sharp rebuke of Hollywood producer David Geffen, the erstwhile Clinton friend now backing Obama, was approved unanimously by a campaign conference call presided over by consultant Mark Penn. Bill Clinton was not on that call. But the former president, described by Democratic sources as "incandescent" over Geffen's remarks, recommended the harsh response.
Hillary Clinton's road to the White House is not going as planned. Instead of a steady procession to coronation at the Denver convention, she is involved in a real struggle against credible opponents led by Obama. No wonder she and her handler were tempted to imply the existence long ago of a teen-ager in Chicago's suburbs who never really existed.