On My Mind: Long Live Hillary
Jan. 7, 2001 -- Hillary Rodham Clinton has been on my mind a lot the past year. I finally decided to write about her after watching her being sworn in last week as the junior senator from New York.
It was a striking portrait on the television set. Her peacock blue outfit stole attention away from her fellow dark-suited senators as they strode to the podium in the Senate chambers to take the oath of office. That bright pantsuit seemed symbolic that with her presence now there, the august body would never be quite the same.
I thought back to March of 1999, a month after the Senate impeachment trial, I was among a small group of reporters who accompanied Mrs. Clinton and Chelsea on a 12-day trip of North Africa with visits to Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco. It was her first foreign trip after the impeachment scandal.
She was very leery of us reporters, and in the early days kept her distance from us. But before we had left the States, there had been rumors and we were dying for her to answer the major question on all our minds: Will you run for retiring Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s seat? All we got was, variations on this theme: “Some people want me to think about it, and I am.”
Popular Worldwide
During the trip I was amazed to see firsthand what I had heard about, her worldwide popularity. Whether in Cairo or some remote village in Tunisia, people turned out in large numbers to see the “American first lady.” You would have thought she was Madonna. People shouted “Hee-lary, Hee-lary!” They wanted to touch her and her to touch them.
She embraced the poor, the dirty, the homeless, the sick. She delivered unpopular messages to the leaders of Muslim countries, against female circumcision, and equal rights for women. She promoted child and maternal health, education for girls, and marital and inheritance rights for wives and mothers.
As she became more comfortable with her traveling press corps, she invited us one night to have dinner with her in an elegant restaurant in Marrakesh. It was to be off the record. The perfect time we thought — since we couldn’t report it — to feel her out on the Senate run.
To Run or Not to Run
It turned out to be a discussion among the reporters on whether she could do more good on the international stage speaking on behalf of women and children or becoming a New York senator and concern herself with mundane things like highway funds.
She smiled listening to us and finally wondered out loud, why she couldn’t do both as a senator. Ah-hah! When she said that it seemed a foregone conclusion that she would seek the Senate seat. But of course, it wasn’t official until she finally announced her candidacy three months later in New York. And of course, the criticism mounted again. She was accused of being a carpetbagger with no knowledge of the state of New York.
But as she put it during her victory speech, Nov. 7, “Sixty-two counties, 16 months, three debates, two opponents and six black pantsuits later, because of you, we are here.” She had beaten Rep. Rick Lazio handily, 55 percent to 43 percent. And while there had been fears women had turned on her, she won 60 percent of their vote, 55 percent of the Jewish vote and even 55 percent of the conservative upstate vote. Expectedly African-Americans and Latinos voted between 80 and 90 percent for Clinton.
Hillary’s Ordeal
So last week, as she smiled with her right hand in the air, I recalled all that she had been through. This was the woman who, for the entire eight years of her husband’s presidency, was the object of cruel jokes. Yes, she could be aloof, demanding, tough, and arrogant. But she didn’t seem to deserve all the derision, investigations, scorn, nasty gossip she was subjected to. And worst of all she suffered the humiliation and embarrassment of caused by her husband’s sexual dalliances with a White House intern, under her and daughter Chelsea’s very noses.
What an exhilarating moment it must have been for her — the first first lady in history to be elected to public office. There, for all the nay-sayers to see, was the woman who had finally come into her own, free at last to be smart, outspoken, independent, and provocative, all qualities she had been forced as first lady, to “hide under a bushel.” Still she was voted one of America’s most admired woman. Just wait. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.