CANDIDATE REALITY CHECK: CLINTON'S 35 YEARS OF CHANGE

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MATT STEARNS, MCCLATCHY NEWSPAPERS -  To hear Hillary Clinton talk,
she's spent her entire career putting her Yale Law School degree to work
for the common good. She routinely tells voters that she's "been working
to bring positive change to people's lives for 35 years." She told a
voter in New Hampshire: "I've spent so much of my life in the nonprofit
sector." Speaking in South Carolina, Bill Clinton said his wife "could
have taken a job with a firm ... Instead she went to work with Marian
Wright Edelman at the Children's Defense Fund."
The overall portrait is of a lifelong, selfless do-gooder. The whole
story is more complicated - and less flattering.

Clinton worked at the Children's Defense Fund for less than a year, and
that's the only full-time job in the nonprofit sector she's ever had.
She also worked briefly as a law professor.

Clinton spent the bulk of her career - 15 of those 35 years - at one of
Arkansas' most prestigious corporate law firms, where she represented
big companies and served on corporate boards. Neither she nor her
surrogates, however, ever mention that on the campaign trail. Her
campaign Web site biography devotes six paragraphs to her pro bono legal
work for the poor but sums up the bulk of her experience in one
sentence: "She also continued her legal career as a partner in a law
firm.". . .

Clinton did a great deal of public service work during her time at the
Rose Law Firm in Little Rock. She served on the board of the Legal
Services Corp. during the Carter administration and for a time was its
chair. She helped found a child advocacy system in Arkansas and took on
several tasks as the state's first lady, such as revisions of the
state's education system and rural health care delivery. She also served
on the board of directors of the Children's Defense Fund, and on the
board of a children's hospital. . .

She also served on corporate boards, including that of retail giant
Wal-Mart from 1986-1992, frozen yogurt purveyor TCBY from 1985-1992 and
cement manufacturer LaFarge from 1990-1992. She earned tens of thousands
of dollars in fees from each.

Clinton's firm represented Wal-Mart and TCBY while she sat on their
boards, a cozy practice that corporate governance experts frown upon
because of the potential for conflicts of interest.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/26377.html

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