Ka Leo O Hawaii

Issue date: 9/12/07 Section: Commentary

Media Credit: Courtesy of Wellesley College Hillary Rodham Clinton, graduating with honors from Wellesley College with a BA in political science, speaks at the commencement in 1969.

In 1996, the highly respected Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that the three words Americans used most often to describe Hillary Rodham Clinton were "intelligent," "smart" and a third word that "rhymes with rich." Clinton's evolution as a college student at Wellesley College in the late 1960s indicates that she is now, as she was then, not only knowledgeable, but thoughtful; not only intelligent, but compassionate.

Hillary Rodham was, in fact, much like many students here at UH - increasingly aware of the painful inequalities in America, conscious of their complexity, yet dissatisfied with passing the less fortunate on the other side.

The nation needs thoughtfulness like hers in 2008. Faced with problems as complex as Iraq and global terrorism, we don't need someone who claims to have all the answers, because no one has all the answers. Instead, we need a president who asks the right questions; whomever he or she is, the next president must ask the right questions.

Hillary Rodham started college a passionate supporter of conservative Republican candidate Barry Goldwater. His book was shelved in her dorm room, and her first involvement in college politics was in the Young Republicans.

However, through the influence of her hometown Methodist minister and her friends, Rodham moved to the left of center of the GOP, while becoming a leader in student government.

Through these years, Rodham was torn between her values and her devotion to those of her father and his Republican Party. In early 1968, she campaigned for antiwar Democrat Gene McCarthy. Yet, that spring, she helped moderate Republican Nelson Rockefeller try to deny Richard Nixon the presidential nomination. That summer, she interned for the House Republican Conference in Washington, D.C.

When Martin Luther King was killed in April 1968, first she cried, and then she called her friend who headed the black student organization on campus. Facing demands to shut down the school in protest, she persuaded students to instead organize to recruit more black students and professors (then totaling zero).

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