Hillary Clinton's Wellesley classmates once wrote a song about her

(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

published 26 August 2016

Way before she ran for U.S. president, Senate, or even by association as first lady, Hillary Clinton had big political dreams. In a sprawling new piece for Politico, Michael Kruse painstakingly details Clinton's rise through the student government ranks at Wellesley College in Massachusetts en route to her term as student body president in 1968-1969.

Clinton's transition from Republican to Democrat during her four years at Wellesley is well-documented, but by Kruse's chronology, the change was gradual, deliberate, and not without its confusions. At one point, Clinton wrote a letter to her youth pastor in the Illinois suburb where she grew up, asking: "Can one be a mind conservative and a heart liberal?" But by the time she was campaigning for student body president during her junior year, Clinton had built a steady reputation as a mediator who could get things done and marshal differing opinions — to the point where a group of freshmen published a laudatory song about her in the college newspaper:

Her role as the chair of the Vil Juniors … allowed her to meet, talk with, and be known by students who now were potential voters in campus elections. Two dozen of them had written a song for her their first year on campus, and now they printed it in a letter to the editor in the [Wellesley News]. The lyrics included the lines: "… so Hillary's solving problems" and "… if everything else goes wrong, our faith in Hillary still is strong …" Rodham didn't rest. She spent three weeks walking the halls of dorms asking for votes. [Politico]

The song was to be sung to the tune of "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" from the play My Fair Lady. For more on how Clinton the student became Clinton the politician — including the time she sat for a painted portrait, and how she was a "consensus person" with a reputation for moderation even then — read Kruse's entire account at Politico.