Hillary Clinton: Engaging the Powers

My take on Hillary Clinton, as I posted in Hillary Clinton: Character Formation, is as follows.

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My take on the real Hillary Clinton is as a warm-hearted, passionate defender of and advocate for those cast to the margins of society, whose ‘theology of ministry’ recognizes that one must be willing to trade some amount of personal, moral, purity to get something done in this fallen world, and whose introverted (as compared to her husband) personality comes across as guarded and reserved and whose sometimes self-defeating defensiveness shows the scars she’s received through more than a quarter century of vicious attacks on her character suffered at the hands of political enemies advocating for the rich and powerful while she has continued, nonetheless, to persevere in her work.
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I reviewed her early development and believe that the foundation of her character and early influences are consistent with that take and are, in fact, consistent with my own experiences growing up in a center-right family, the public school system of a largely white, middle class, suburb, and various extracurricular activities.

The chief difference between us (aside from gender :-) ) is that she apparently was focused, ambitious, and a hard-worker. Few of my family or friends would find those words jumping to the top of the list if asked to describe me.

I went through her early development in some detail because I believed most people were unaware of it. Rather than continue into her college and grad school experiences I will point folks toward the Wellesley College years and Yale Law School and postgraduate studies sections of the same source: the Wikipedia article on Hillary Clinton.

Reading those sections, I didn’t find much to surprise me. Her movement into the adult world seems to continue trajectories from her youth and young adult years: a commitment to the marginalized, an interest in political action (where she transitioned from Republican to Democrat), academic excellence resulting in a law degree and postgraduate work at Yale, and paid and volunteer assignments working face-to-face advocacy for the marginalized. There seems to be a real connection between her academic work and her field work.

She was very ambitious and followed a strategy of working within the system to nudge the system in the right direction. Following law school her postgraduate studies on children and medicine at Yale helped further develop a continuing interest in child welfare, on the one hand, and the healthcare system, on the other.

I invite folks to read those sections and consider the sheer volume of her involvement in progressive issues. [For those looking for something a bit scandalous, it DOES mention that during one summer internship she worked at at law firm “well known for its support of constitutional rights, civil liberties, and radical causes (two of its four partners were current or former Communist Party members); Rodham worked on child custody and other cases.” :-) ]

This is really as far as I need to go, biographically. At about this point she began dating Bill Clinton, determined to follow him to Arkansas without abandoning her own political ambitions and then all hell broke loose. :-) 

I’m not engaging Clinton Scandology because, frankly, I believe that - whatever help either Clinton may have contributed to that corpus due to their own human failings - the entire right-wing pursuit has largely been a right-wing witch hunt, funded by our tax dollars, that - to my knowledge - has not resulted in either Clinton being indicted for any crime.

I will gladly admit that there’s been a great deal of smoke over more than a quarter century of these political shenanigans, helped in large part through Clintonian moral failings and public relations blunders.

But there simply is nothing in Hillary’s background that disqualifies her from the presidency. We’re not comparing her to St. Augustine or Gandhi. We’re comparing her to the legions of flawed politicos that have - in the midst of affairs, lack of transparency, and a willingness to color outside the lines on occasion.

Smoke. Yes.

But no fire.

And a candidate who has been thoroughly consistent in her trajectories and commitments through life.

NEXT: Hillary Clinton: Economic Policy & Credibility

RESOURCE

Hillary Clinton (Wikipedia)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton