Hillary Rodham Clinton is supposed to be smart. But how smart is it for a woman with such a bad reputation for truthfulness and veracity to put those character traits at the center of the campaign?

The irony of her potshots at Barack Obama's character has hardly gone unnoticed. Nor has the idiocy of her Dec. 2 press release breathlessly revealing that “in kindergarten, Senator Obama wrote an essay titled 'I Want to Become President.' ” This, the Clinton release explained, gives the lie to Obama's claim that he is “not running to fulfill some long-held plans” to become president. Hillary was not, it appears, joking.

At a campaign stop the same day, Clinton added: “I have been, for months, on the receiving end of rather consistent attacks. Well, now the fun part starts.” Indeed.

I will not excavate Clinton's own kindergarten confessions. Nor will I compare the honesty quotient of her campaign-trail spin with the dreadful drivel dutifully uttered by Obama and other candidates to pander to their fevered primary electorates.

Instead, let's take a trip down memory lane – from the tawdriness of the 1992 presidential campaign through the mendacity of the ensuing years – to revisit a sampling of why so many of us came to think that Hillary's first instinct when in an embarrassing spot is to lie.

Gennifer and Monica. Former lounge singer Gennifer Flowers surfaced in early 1992 with claims – corroborated by tapes of phone calls – that she had had a long affair with then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, who had arranged a state job for her. Bill Clinton told the media, falsely, that the woman's “story is untrue.”