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In the summer she “clerk[ed] at Treuhaft, Walker, and Burnstein, a small law firm in Oakland. . . . I spent most of my time working for Mal Burnstein.”

She does not tell us that Robert Treuhaft—an engaging person, according to his recent British obituaries—was until 1958 an activist in the Communist Party, and that she befriended his like-minded wife, Jessica Mitford.

Clemenceau famously observed that he would disown his son if he were not a Communist at twenty-five or were still one at thirty, a principle running in favor of daughters also.

Mrs. Clinton was no Communist, but her involvement with the Old Left was deep and prolonged; it is she who chooses to present her career as a seamless web.

She proceeded to work on George McGovern’s presidential campaign, helped Edelman to foster the federal special education law, with its adverse effect on school discipline, and sought to curtail the tax exemptions of Southern private schools.