If I wore a hat on this huge Hillary-loathing head of mine, here’s what I’d do.
I’d tip my hat to Hillary Rodham Clinton and say these words:
Of course she’s intelligent, supremely patient, calculating, nobody’s fool. But she doesn’t quit, and it’s the grit that got her here, and because of it, she is the first woman to be nominated for president by a major party.
Hillary Clinton has made history. So acknowledge it and take a moment to think of all the women who’ve dreamed that someday this would happen, all the women born in a time when “it’s a man’s world” was a given in America.
And because of her determination, a woman can stand in Philadelphia and accept the nomination for the most powerful office in the world.
No, hell hasn’t frozen over. I know who Hillary Clinton is and what she’s done, and what she is capable of doing if she gets her hands on the Supreme Court and the presidency.
But today is her day, and I’ll leave that other stuff for another time.
Don’t worry. I haven’t gone mad. Politicians create worlds in which their side is good and the other is pure evil, but I happen to know that politics is not some magical land of Narnia from those C.S. Lewis stories. So I won’t be sitting in Hillary’s lap to be fed Turkish delights.
Establishment Republicans are a different story. Many are eager to sit in her lap. She’s their war hawk now and she’s their protection against anti-establishment Republican Donald Trump.
Conservatives won’t curry her favor; neither will the committed Bernie Bros or those blue-collar workers who were marginalized by the Obama party and pitied by the president as bitter clingers holding fast to their guns and Christianity.
But open your eyes. All I’m suggesting is that if you adore her for her gender alone or loathe her for her history with the truth, step outside your own tribal politics and behold the woman.
She’s remarkable.
Given what she’s gone through over the years, what she’s endured, what she suffered, a tip of the hat isn’t only expected, it’s required, and today it is offered with admiration.
Hillary Clinton is no longer the young mom with the headband, laughing about the “buy one, get one free” presidency of her husband. She’s older now, much older, and the scars of her life with him show in that hard smile of hers.
She’s earned that smile, hasn’t she?
The Goldwater Girl from Park Ridge made choices and set goals.
Ambition compelled her, and she was strengthened by challenges and betrayal, by her own sins. And now she’s on the cusp of the presidency.
So why not acknowledge this amazing woman and look for what’s best in her?
At least see the courage there. See what inspires adoration in her fans and fear in her enemies.
It all starts with Hillary grit.
As a newlywed, she kept her own name, and then was forced to take Bill Clinton’s name to help him regain the governorship of Arkansas.
She made that deal with the slinky devil who once shared her bed, and it caused her humiliation, but that was the price for the chance to stand in Philadelphia years later.
Many women wouldn’t have made that deal with Bill Clinton. Many women would have called a divorce lawyer and kept their honor.
Some women would have thought about taking a bat or a ball peen hammer into the bedroom some night, to wait for the snoring to begin.
And not many would put together a Bimbo Eruption Squad to snuff out Bill’s many sexcapades and keep his path to power clear.
But Hillary did.
She didn’t walk away because she had a plan. And she was disciplined enough to stick to that plan. She wanted something big out of the political life. And she’s paid for it.
That grit showed again just when she was to accept her due in the 2008 presidential campaign and take the party’s nomination. She was once again humiliated.
There was that new kid, the pretty and callow backbencher from the Illinois legislature who became king of the world.
Barack Obama didn’t know much, he was woefully inexperienced, but he played the role written for him, that of political messiah, of a young knight drawing the sword from the stone. The media bought it.
And in the 2008 Democratic primaries, Team Obama played the race card and broke her down.
Imagine the anger in her and the shame that she didn’t foresee it and stop it. She’d played the gender card. He played the race card. Democratic Party politics are identity politics, and she lost.
But she wasn’t defeated, and then President Obama wisely decided to keep her close. He offered her the post of secretary of state.
It was as if he held out his hand for her to kiss. It must have been difficult to take that hand, but she took it and swore fealty, and why?
She knew what she wanted. That takes true grit. And she’s got it. And now she’s the Democratic nominee for president of the United States.
♦ Culled from the Chicago Tribune. Contact John Kass: jskass@chicagotribune.com (Twitter @John_Kass)
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