Hillaryous.

• Author: Hazlett, Thomas W.

My query: When a member of the female species rises to political prominence and begins to seriously influence government policies and, soon thereafter, our lives, is the polite response:

(a) to examine the prospects for progressive change under the proposed reforms?

(b) to debate the merits, pro and con, of alternate options?

(c) to research the history of similar ideas and to chart, as the evidence will allow, how they measured up to their promises?

(d) to gush about the amazing prospect that a woman could offer up any detail-laden proposal to begin with?

A good thing this wasn't an SAT question, because using the trusted process-of-elimination multiple-guess method, I had actually discarded just one of the possible answers--(d)--only to find that according to all the people who count (at least enough to be on TV before anyone else is awake on Sunday morning) that it is absolutely the correct answer. In fact, none of the others is even theoretically feasible!

Hence, one tuned into the tough, hard-hitting political dissection of Hillary's testimony on the health care plan before the relevant congressional committees--only to be greeted with Tim Russert of NBC's Meet the Press oozing: "Moms are smart, too!" Well this certainly implies that one had reason to suspect that mama wasn't quite bright enough to figure out all that complicated Big Issues stuff, and I am truly shocked and amazed at the premise. I long ago discovered what anyone paying the slightest attention had already: that women possess what, under the antitrust laws, would be considered a per se monopoly share of certain forms of the highest and most valued intelligence known (on rare occasions) to man. Hence, the widespread astonishment at the revelation that they can know and/or remember lots of little details about health care reform reveals a bizarre take on the human experience.

But there it was for all the world to gag on. The Democrats swelled with pride as their little lady spewed forth on the Health Care Plan. Republicans, not daring to be caught in the press's sexist-seeking cross-hairs, competed to out-praise the "remarkably well-informed First Lady." The fawning over Mrs. Rodham-Clinton was the most undiluted form of chivalry witnessed since the Pleistocene epoch.

It all comes down to sexism--Bill and Hillary's. They are the ones who have, with great care, scripted the subtext: Any criticism of Clinton's health care proposal meets with the quick and certain, "You...