<p>Many people fail the bar exam first time around, and a few of them are even very smart people. I am not a huge Hilary supporter; I am reserving judgement on all 16 (?!) candidates at this early date. </p>
<p>I just find this whole thread…trivial.</p>
<p>dadx, when did Hilary comment on how many times anyone has been “fooled”?</p>
<p>edited to ask 1sokkermom, what was the context that she said she was in favor of keeping troops in Iraq indefinitely? I have not heard her say anything remotely like that, nor have I read it.</p>
<p>Perhaps her chief foreign affairs advisor is John Kerry??? I remember having the same sense of confusion pertaining to his position in the lead up to the war. Every other day he would contradict himself until he finally voted for the war.</p>
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Did you find John Conyer’s questioning of Monica Goodling trivial as well when he asked her about the percent of her law school who passed the bar on their first attempt in an effort to discredit her credentials? Never mind that she, herself, passed on her first attempt. I find this defense of Hillary’s failure quite comical. Had it been determined that Rudy had failed his bar exam, the Dems would be howling with delight.</p>
<p>alwaysmom:
It was during the vote on funding. She was in favor of keeping “residual” troops there.
I don’t have time to find the article.</p>
<p>This may have some flip flopping: <a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/washington/15clinton.html?ei=5124&en=36e4135d90243ded&ex=1331697600&partner=digg&exprod=digg&pagewanted=print[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/washington/15clinton.html?ei=5124&en=36e4135d90243ded&ex=1331697600&partner=digg&exprod=digg&pagewanted=print</a></p>
<p>Well, I think you’ll find that all of the candidates, and also those in the general public, who want to bring the troops home, are intelligent enough to realize that it isn’t going to happen overnight. Allowing for the possibility of a timed redeployment which would keep “residual” troops there should not be a surprise, nor should it be interpreted as a flip flop in ideology in reference to wanting to be out of this horrendous war.</p>
<p>…But during the debate she made it clear that troops would be gone from Iraq in her first 100 days in office. She blurted it out loud and clearly. :D</p>
<p>NH Democrats are very anti-war, and she was playing the audience.</p>
<p>well, it appears I misread something above…maybe I’m getting too old and slow to keep up.</p>
<p>1sokkermom, I think you’re being a little disingenuous. What she ‘blurted’ out, was that she would bring the troops home. She never said that troops would be gone from Iraq in her first 100 days in office. And again, I think everyone knows that bringing the troops home is not something that happens overnight. She has had a stated plan for quite some time now on this issue that involves a timeline for redeployment, a cap on troop levels, and a structuring of residual forces for a period of time. She has always been very clearly against permanent bases in Iraq.</p>
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<p>No need to expect accountability from Washington, folks. The American people are just supposed to say, ho-hum, as our national security dwindles, because a Republican can imagine that an imaginary Democratic president might be just as bad?</p>
<p>Isn’t the AEI’s imagination what got us into this in the first place? They imagined that it would take less troops to stabilize Iraq than to despose Saddam. They imagined that we’d be greeted as liberators and all the soldiers would be home in six months. They imagined that there would be no sectarian violence.</p>
<p>Enough of their over-active imaginations. Time to put realists back at the helm.</p>
<p>Post #1 made me think not of Marilyn vos Savant, but of Kathleen Sullivan, someone with a better claim to “smartest woman in the world” than either Marilyn or Hillary (not that Hillary ever made such a ridiculous claim). Sullivan left a tenured post at Harvard Law to become dean of Stanford Law, but when she decided to leave academia this year for private practice…you guessed it. She flunked the California bar. Which, IMHO, says a lot more about the silliness of the bar exam than the skills of Kathleen Sullivan. If I were in trouble, I’d leap at the chance to hire her over any of the thousands of young lawyers who passed the day she failed.</p>
<p>Studying for two July bar exams simultaneously, if that’s what Hillary did, is outrageously ambitious. To give you some idea of just how ambitious it is, I have never met a single person coming out of Harvard Law who tried it…that includes classmates who became Supreme Court clerks and others who are now professors. If one can say anything negative about this Hillary scenario, it’s that you would almost have to believe you were invincible to try it, and I think it’s no surprise to learn that Hillary is a woman of high confidence.</p>
<p>(Today, you can take the bar in any state and waive into the DC bar if your score is high enough, but maybe that wasn’t true back then.)</p>
<p>Just so you know that I don’t have a dog in either part of this race, I passed on the first try (albeit in an easy state), and Hillary would be my reluctant fifth choice, at best, for the D nomination.</p>
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<p>Yup! Yup!</p>
<p>Smartest Woman on Earth?</p>
<p>Just who does this publication think it is using this sarcastic title to discuss such a trivial subject in a mud-slinging attempt to smear HRH? “Voters have a right to ask.” ? What planet do they live on, anyway? Haven’t they gotten the memo that this question in forbidden because it doesn’t focus on the issues?</p>
<p>There oughta’ be a law! (And probably will be, come January 2009.) :p</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=266023226928898[/url]”>http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=266023226928898</a></p>
<p>Just couldn’t resist.</p>
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<p>It’s well known that Hillary Clinton volunteered for the Goldwater campaign in 1964. Quoting Goldwater is certainly nothing new she’s pulled out for this campaign.</p>
<p>As for FF’s question as to why it was relevant for Goodling to be questioned about the dismal bar passing rates at her alma mater, it’s because she broke civil service law to run her own little affirmative action program for graduates of that 4th tier law school. Previously career civil service hires were all from top shelf schools. Anytime someone breaks the law to do something, it’s fair to question their motives and thought processes. Had she been able to show that the graduates of Regents were well qualified, it might have been exculpating. Additionally, given that she claims to have broken the law without “mean[ing]” to, it’s a fair question, how well does she know the law? How do you call people’s job references to ask if they’re “really” Republicans before making a job offer (perhaps as many as 50 times or more), or go online to see how much they donated to Republicans, without “meaning to”? It just slips out?</p>
<p>New poster here, wanting to weigh in on “passing the bar”. I went to law school at a UC school in the mid-70’s and took the California bar right away after graduation. The year I took (1974) it the pass rate was 51%. It was hard to pass but with good preparation quite possible. The low pass overall pass rate was due mostly to the fact that there were many unaccredited law schools in CA and thousands of students from these schools take the CA bar at every sitting (twice yearly). My school had a 79% first time pass rate.</p>
<p>About a year after I began working in San Francisco I transferred to a firm in DC, and took the DC bar prep. The DC bar pass rate had remained stable for about 10 years during the 70’s at about 65-68% pass rate. If you got a 70 orabove on the multistate portion of the bar exam anywhere in the US, you could automatically transfer that portion to the DC bar exam without retaking it. The DC bar consisted of a multistate multiple choice section of about 200 questions, AND an essay section which was 20 very short essays, about 2-3 paragraphs apiece. I was fortunate to have passed the CA bar so I only had to study for the essay portion; however, the DC bar prep course (which Hillary would have taken) covered both. At the time I took the DC bar (1975) it was considered “a piece of cake”. The DC bar essay questions were very straightforward and only required the writer to have a passable knowledge of basic subjects that you learn in law school. It would have been difficult for a person with decent reading and writing skills not to pass the essay section of the DC bar. Georgetown and GW law schools at the time had pass rates in the high 80 percentiles. Other schools like Howard University and Catholic University had a much lower pass rate in the 30’s and 40’s respectively.</p>
<p>My spouse, who is also a lawyer was as floored as I upon learning that Mrs. Clinton, a Yale graduate, did not pass the DC bar in 1973. It just was not that difficult. Perhaps she choked during the test or did not know enough of the basic “hornbook” law to get a score of 70% on the objective, or multistate, portion. I am sure that this was a totally humiliating blow to her ego and I suppose it is understandable that she would want to keep this information from the public. However, now she is in the public eye as a presidential candidate and her entire background is subject to scrutiny. That includes her fitness to judge, evaluate and analyze. Our lawyer friends in DC are amazed at this revelation and most agree that she was either poor lawyer material or too flustered to pass a relatively easy bar exam. Arkansas was and still is one of the easiest bar exams to pass in the nation. Hillary would not have been offered a job in DC, so she went to Arkansas and in due course was offered her first “real” legal job, with the Rose Law firm, the day that Bill became Attorney General (nice coincidence).</p>
<p>Many people do not know that Al Gore withdrew from both law school and divinity school. He found law school to be too challenging and left after his first year. He has been awarded many honorary degrees but the fact remains that he does not have a postgraduate degree. And George Bush, who sounds like an uneducated hick, went all the way though Harvard business school and became a fairly successful businessman. Too bad he did not learn to speak English correctly. But stupid people just do not graduate from Harvard business school–never did, and never will.</p>
<p>So IS Hillary the smartest woman in the world? It may be, but her legal background does not provide evidence of that fact. She insulates herself from<br>
the kind of give and take that most lawyers would be happy to engage in. She will not go to unscripted press conferences or speak off the cuff at events.
She “doesn’t recall” the work she did for the Rose Law firm but billed hundreds of thousands of dollars for the work. Something is terribly amiss here. Perhaps she just chose the wrong profession. But all these questions bear upon her fitness to be our president, and as I said before, her background is fair game. And if you think I am biased, know that I did not vote Republican in the last national election.</p>
<p>Not to comment on HRC’s politics, character, or fitness for the presidency, but I was under the impression that she’d revealed in her memoir that she had failed the bar exams, owing to missing Bill. This may or may not be a good enough explanation, but she has not kept it hidden. As well, she has not dubbed herself the smartest woman in the world, or even the US.</p>
<p>Yes, she revealed it in her autobiography, at which time it got little to no coverage in the national media–as opposed to now, which is why people are presently expressing their surprise. </p>
<p>The Investors Business Daily editorial I linked to points out that though she may not have dubbed herself the “smartest women in the world,” in fact, her entire reputation hinges on that impression, which she has done nothing to correct. It may, indeed, be further from the truth than we thought. For instance, is it true she has refused to release her Wellesley transcript? If it is, it would raise more questions in this area in my mind.</p>
<p>Thanks for your interesting commentary, mciver. I most certainly agree that if there’s a possibility Hill and Bill will be in the White House running our country for a grand total of 16 years (an unprecedented scenario), then every detail about her background is more than fair game for sure.</p>
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<p>Is it a standard practice for candidates to release their college transcripts? Although both Bush and Kerry have released their transcripts, I was under the impression that this was a depature from the norm. </p>
<p>I think it’s dishonest to pretend this is some sinister sign that indicates she might not have done well as an undergraduate. It reminds me of all the bunk your side was trying to sell about the Clintons having people killed. </p>
<p>The woman graduated Wellesley with departmental honors and was accepted into Yale Law without having the kind of connections that got Bush into Yale. Her mother was a housewife and her father was a second generation immigrant who owned a small textile company. </p>
<p>Do you really think Wellesley awards departmental honors to students who aren’t doing well? </p>
<p>What’s next? Baptismal certificates? Dental records? Hey, maybe Dobson was right; Fred Thompson isn’t a Christian after all; he hasn’t released his baptismal certificate.</p>
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<p>I think your OP here was relevant because it was a curious factoid. An interesting piece of trivia. Perhaps, for those who want to make it relevant to her today, it offered an insight into the relatively secretive nature of this (now intentionally) public person. Stretching it to the point where an alarm is sounding requires the application of a super super-elastic compound.</p>
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<p>I’m not sure that my threshold for wanting to be as fully informed as possible is if a person will approach 16 years in the White House. I’m thinking it’s closer to one day. That’s when I want to know all I can know…that’s relevant. I’m really not so concerned with her Wellesley transcript as it’s both quite remote and there’s certainly nothing in it that would preclude her from, say, attending Yale Law School.</p>
<p>Frankly, I thought the 2004 election focus on the Vietnam War records of both candidates was a bit of a sideshow. Each moment spent considering those distant actions was a moment not spent focusing on their more recent and more relevant records. If one is going to be overly suspicious, the better question might be to ask why is so much attention being given to ancient history instead of facts and positions that we really ought to know more about. </p>
<p>Obtaining relevant information is the key. Her bar exam track record is not more than a curiosity. Cocktail party trivia. For instance, I’d much rather hear Clinton answer a couple hypotheticals than see her disclose her school transcripts. If I’m going to scratch my head and wonder what is she up to now, it will occur when she trots out those transcripts.</p>
<p>Well, judging from this thread, one thing is for sure: Sen. Clinton is a larger-than-life figure on the US political scene.</p>
<p>As for comments about “electability”, if you read the “internals” of the recent polling, Clinton would be a formidable candidate. She polls extremely high on “experience”, “toughness”, “leadership”, and “ability to handle a crisis”.</p>
<p>IMO, Edwards has blown himself out of the water with his “the war on terror is just a slogan” riff. While I understand his point, the Republicans will eviscerate him. The TV ads will be a montage of 9/11 footage followed by Edwards saying “there’s no war on terror”. He’s finished.</p>
<p>Obama’s big problem is overcoming the lack of experience. The last poll I saw showed that only 9% of respondents rated him highly on “experience to be President”. He’s sort of the guy you want to “date”, but not necessarily the guy you want to “marry” at this point.</p>
<p>It’s impossible to handicap the Republican field at this point. I think Rudy would probably be the toughest candidate in a general election. Fred Thompson is Dick Cheney’s twin brother politically…as neocon as they come. I don’t see him as a particular effective campaigner. Romney would get hammered as a flip-flopper by an effective general election opponent. Not to mention major gaffes like saying the other night that we wouldn’t have invaded Iraq if Saddaam had allowed weapons inspectors in 2002-2003.</p>