One last thought on the did-Hillary-really-try-to-join-the-Marines controversy…

I went back and re-read Michael Crowley’s cover piece on Hillary Clinton and her views of military force. I think that the senator’s answer to his query about her visit to the recruiter is a bit more revealing in light of the recent discussion of women who would go to recruiting stations, not because they really wanted to join the Marines, but simply to “test” the inclusiveness and the recruiters’ attitudes towards women.

Crowley had been granted very limited interview time, walking with Senator Clinton from a press conference to an elevator to a waiting car outside. I hope Crowley won’t mind if I quote one paragraph from his piece:

Then we were on the street. Clinton’s black sedan was waiting with an open door. Though she was starting to look impatient, I wedged in my second question: What should people make of the fact that she had briefly tried to enlist in the military? At this her eyes narrowed and she threw me a glare of mistrust. “I have very deep and quite broad relationships with people in the military,” she said. As for the meaning of the recruiting visit, “I can’t tell you,” she said with a dismissive wave. “You go look at that.” And at that, the door shut, and she was gone, a faint silhouette behind tinted windows.

Even by Clinton standards, doesn’t that seem like an oddly standoffish, paranoid, and/or brusque response?

Does that seem like the reaction of someone who knows that her attempt to join way back when was simply to measure the Marines’ reaction to a woman, not an expression of genuine interest in the Marines, and that the less said about it, the better?

Does she realize that the timing is truly bizarre (sometime after moving to Little Rock to be with Bill, but before their wedding, while they were both teaching law, and while Bill was gearing up to run for state attorney general) and that the story just doesn’t pass the smell test?