On June 3, 1966, Richard Nixon delivered the commencement address at the University of Rochester. On that day, three days before the 22nd anniversary of D-Day, whose wartime leader later became America’s peacetime president, Nixon spoke neither of the 34th president of the United States nor his own role as the nation’s 36th vice president. He spoke neither of Dwight D. Eisenhower nor his own attempt to succeed the great man. He spoke, instead, of academic freedom—of four academic freedoms—rather than free-associating about his loss to John F. Kennedy.
He spoke about criticism of the Vietnam War, without criticizing the legacy of Kennedy or the leadership of Lyndon Johnson. He neither trafficked in innuendo about a stolen election nor used the rostrum to repeat rumors about voter fraud in Chicago and Texas. He spoke more as a patriot than a partisan, defending the right to oppose the government, not overthrow it, while distinguishing between what is just versus what is legal.
Compare Nixon’s address with Hillary Clinton’s Class Day speech at Yale. Despite her concession to Donald Trump, she has since retracted her words and revised her remarks. She has gone from “Living History” to rewriting it, until an outcome she disdains is the result of collusion by people she deems deplorable.
Never before has a commencement ceremony devolved into a group therapy session, where Clinton said: “No, I’m not over it. I still think about the 2016 election.”
She does not merely think about it—she obsesses about it. She admits to having made mistakes, which were not errors of judgment, but erroneous beliefs in the integrity of our democratic values and our republican virtues.
She has gone from her “listening tour” in 2000, to refusing to listen to anyone but her enablers in 2018.
She seems to have forgotten the motto of Yale, “Light and Truth,” while never having bothered to learn the University of Rochester’s concept of “Ever better.”
Mrs. Clinton has enriched herself, though she has done little to better the nation and the world, thus proving the worth of a Yale degree and a sore loser’s education.