In the 60s, as an undergraduate at Wellesley, she exhibited an academic fascination with the Left and radicalism;

wrote her senior thesis on the radical Chicago community-organizer Saul Alinsky

and then, during the 1992 presidential campaign and White House years, insured that the thesis was locked up in the Wellesley archives and unavailable to reporters

worked in the most important radical law firm of the day

which represented the Communist Party and defended the Panthers

One of Hillary Clinton's most winning attributes -- and Bill Clinton's too -- has always been their understanding of the complexity of American politics, and the danger of ideological demagoguery

The resort by Hillary and her campaign to guilt-by-association

is, even for some of her most steadfast advocates, particularly dismaying.

Like Gov. Bill Richardson and Senator Christopher Dodd, among others who have abandoned the Clintons, many old Clinton hands had hoped

that she -- and Bill -- had left behind such tactics