I admire Hillary Clinton for her extraordinary competence, for her grit and for the dedication she has shown in fighting tirelessly for good causes all her life.
I didn't know much about Clinton until recently, when I began reading her life story. Of course I knew she had been first lady, then senator and then secretary of state, but I didn't really know what makes her tick.
Now that I know more about her, I am mightily impressed. I am impressed, for example, with the way she has worked, since she was a college student, on behalf of children's issues. Clearly her commitment to this cause was not part of a selfish political calculation, but came from her belief that we need to do much more to protect and provide for our nation's youngest citizens.
But here's the rub: Media coverage never highlights this side of her. Instead, it invariably emphasizes her "baggage." Here's what I think is behind this: The idea that Clinton carries "baggage" is mainly a result of bad timing on her part. She became first lady _ and a very politically involved first lady _ in the 1990s, just when the fiercest demons of partisan warfare were being unleashed.
Democrats and Republicans have always clashed, but in the mid-1990s, these clashes exploded into bitter, unrelenting, take-no-prisoners combat. For the first time, members of Congress began to socialize only with members of their own party. Washington's bars, previously hosts to bipartisan friendships, began to divide into Republican watering holes and Democratic ones.
Both sides participated in this new partisan hostility, but one of the most telling documents of this era is a memo distributed by then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. This memo offered a list of negative terms that Republicans were instructed to always use in referring to Democrats, words including "cheat," "lie" and "steal."
The first lady suddenly found herself in a hurricane of hostility. To make matters worse, in 1995 the Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress. This allowed them to conjure up Clinton's baggage, simply by using congressional hearings against her: Vince Foster's death, Whitewater, Travelgate and so on. The fact that she was cleared in all of these investigations is not as well remembered as the fact that she was investigated.
Of course she has had her missteps. Clinton has acknowledged, for example, her mistake in using a private email server. But this mishandling of emails does not justify the 21 years of relentless attacks on her character that she has had to face.
Something good might come from this onslaught, because I expect that as president, Clinton would dial down the harsh partisan warfare. In fact, she did just this when she was a senator, and she earned the respect of many Republican colleagues for doing so. After all, she knows better than most that partisan hostility, when carried to an extreme, destroys individuals, poisons political discourse and undermines our ability to govern ourselves.
These struggles reveal one of Clinton's most promising qualities: her grit. She simply never gives up. Friends and foes alike recognize her toughness, and this toughness will serve her well in the face of terrorist threats and in her determination to improve the lives and incomes of working Americans.
Finally, Clinton offers a striking contrast to Donald Trump, both in her temperament and in her thoughtful policies. She has mastered international relations. She does not believe NATO should be weakened. She understands how the Islamic State is being slowly crushed through our cooperation with Muslim governments.
She does not believe that putting America's credit rating in jeopardy would be a smart way to boost the economy. She will not risk American jobs by starting a reckless trade war. She does not want to keep the minimum wage so low that working families can barely feed themselves. And she does not think American political debates should include childish nicknames and bullying bluster.
America would be well served with a president like her in the White House.
