I have decided to support former First Lady, US Senator, and US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton for the Democratic Party’s nomination for President of the United States.
This is an affirmative choice, and not a negative reaction to the other two candidates remaining in the race, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and former Baltimore Mayor and Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley. In the unlikely event either of them were to win the nomination, I would have no trouble supporting them in the general. I am not going to criticize either of them, nor am I interested in comparing and contrasting on specific positions.
I will explain how I came to this decision, which I made at the conclusion of the 2nd Democratic debate, meaning I had seen the three remaining candidates in three events together this cycle — the two debates and in between the forum with Rachel Maddow.
The only candidate I have seen in person this cycle was Sanders, in an event sponsored by my Congressman, Don Beyer.
At Yearly Kos 2007 in Chicago, I chose to go to the breakout session with Clinton, and got to see her from an aisle seat on the 5th row.
I have seen O’Malley up close when he visited the high school where i was teaching.
I know people who have worked closely with each of them, and have a further sense of what they are like from those people, and as a serious political junkie (who did teach AP US Government and Politics for 9 years), I have
absorbed huge amounts of press about each of them.
Let me explain how and why I came to this decision.
As a professional educator, a candidate’s position on issues of public education are important to me. Were I to have serious problems with a candidate’s educational positions, while I might support that candidate in the general election, I would not do so in the primary. In the 2008 cycle I at first was going to support Tom Vilsack, because he had come out against the testing mandates of No Child Left Behind. After he dropped out, one thing that had persuaded me towards Obama was some of the work he had done on education while in the Senate, and the part of his issues where he addressed summer learning loss. I was also encouraged that a principal education adviser was Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford, someone whose work I greatly respect. What I have seen in the two terms of the administration has caused me to be more cautious about what a candidate says.
Even so, over the years I have watched her, there have been several times where I have seen that Secretary Clinton really gets it. Her recent remarks on charter schools is one example. Her recognition of what many of our children bring with them when they come to schools is another.
I also think back to Chicago, when John Edwards grandstanded from the stage and challenged everyone to agree they would not take contributions from lobbyists, and the other candidates agreed, but Hillary Clinton did not. She pointed out that some lobbyists worked on behalf of teachers and nurses. At the time i was standing with an acquaintance who worked on the Clinton campaign, and I said to him I wondered if that meant that Edwards would give me back the $100 I had given his campaign. After all, I often lobbied, although I was not a REGISTERED lobbyist because I did not get paid for my lobbying, it was not my profession, and oh by the way I lobbied precisely on behalf of teachers, and students, and public schools.
I start with the notion that there is no perfect candidate for any office. I have strongly supported people with whom I had strong disagreements on some issues, for example, Jim Webb for Senate even though I strongly disagree with him about guns and about energy. As I have continued to grow older, while I may not have grown wiser, I have come to be more tolerant about some of the areas where I disagree, and try to look more holistically at candidates. Yes there are things that could be disqualifying — for example, someone advocating a religious test — for office, for voting, for entering the country as we are now seeing from some on the other side of the aisle.
I am also less concerned about what some see as gaffes. I can recognize that people sometimes misspeak, and at others say things that blur the truth for political reasons. When Bill Ayers became an issue in the 2008 cycle and Barack Obama tried to describe him as just some English professor in the neighborhood, I knew that was a deliberate misstatement, because the two of them had sat on the board of a foundation dealing with education, Ayers was a distinguished professor of education at University of Illinois Chicago Center and his wife is one of America’s great experts on juvenile justice. Here I must offer full disclosure — I know Bill Ayers, have reviewed several of his books, and I have a chapter in a book in which both he and his wife also have chapters. He is someone whose work in education I greatly admire.
So I am not interested in making my decision about what others see as gaffes, or worry that they will undermine a candidate’s campaign. I can recognize the political impact of some things, and that still does not change my mind on why I support a candidate.
Simply put, of the three remaining candidates for the Democratic nomination, in my mind Hillary Clinton is by far the most ready to be President. I believe she has the deepest and most relevant experience. I believe that she has the judgment.
I have many acquaintances who are committed to other candidates, some who are working for one or the other.
More than a year ago I told my wife that I would be surprised if any other woman entered the primaries against Clinton, and only if one or more did could there be any chance she would lose the nomination.
People underestimate Mrs. Clinton at their own peril. Ask the Republican members of the House Special Committee on Benghazi, for example. Their experience reminded me of how taken aback then Rep. Dick Armey was when she was questioned by a House committee when she was First Lady.
At a time when it is clear that international relationships are going to be critical for the next administration, there is no one in the race in either party with the experience and the contacts that she has developed over decades.
Is she as progressive as I am on some issues? Perhaps not.
Do I disagree with some of the votes she has cast in the past as a Senator, and some of the judgments she made as Secretary of State? Of course.
Unlike some of my progressive friends and most of my Quaker Friends, I agreed with the intervention in Libya because a slaughter was imminent absent the combined efforts of our European allies and ourselves. We can criticize the current situation all we want, but we avoided what would have been a mass slaughter.
I don’t worry about current polling data. I fully expect that Clinton would defeat any Republican currently in the race: it is an electoral college issue. She has strong Hispanic support, she has a strong connection with the African-American community, and I expect she would have a huge gender gap in her favor, because I expect that a lot of women would turn out and vote for her.
But that is NOT why I made this decision.
I watched her in the debates and the forum.
I watched her before the Benghazi committee.
I have watched her being interviewed on various shows.
I saw her cameo on SNL.
I am comfortable trusting her with the Office of the President and the powers and responsibilities thereto.
I am more comfortable thinking about her in that role than I am either of the gentlemen still competing with her for the nomination.
And no, that does NOT mean she is the candidate with whom I would most like to have a beer (although I understand that one one foreign trip she outdid Senator McCain when it came to shots of vodka).
A number of years ago I taught a young man, then 15 years old, who was both co-chairman of the Maryland Youth Commission (appointed by O’Malley) and founder and head of Students for Clinton. He went to Iowa for her in 2008. He got to see her up close. One thing he said to me is that she is an incredibly warm person in small groups, and really connects with people on a personal level.
I have never seen her in such a setting. But from what I have seen of her I can well believe it.
She has been around power and privilege at least since she headed off to Wellesley as an undergraduate.
She has been a high performer respected by her colleagues ever since — remember her classmates picked her as senior speaker for their college graduation.
Even the saints of the church are not perfect, not without their human failings.
I have known some very spiritual men — for ten years my personal spiritual father was the abbot of a monastery on Mount Athos in Greece, where from time to time I would go and spend from two weeks to a month. I was included when he was teaching the monks (with someone translating for me since my Greek is minimal). I remember once remarking that one thing I had learned from my time there was that monks were not angels, they were merely men, and the place cracked up.
People need to be able to laugh at themselves. Hillary Clinton can laugh — at herself, at the silliness of some questions. She is very human.
In short, like my friends in the monastery she is not an angel or a saint, and she knows it. That makes her better prepared in my mind to be in the Oval Office.
I recognize that many here will disagree with me, which is fine.
Some may flame me, which is their right.
Some will try to argue me out of my decision, which is not going to happen.
There is a long time until next November, but absent a serious health issue, I fully expect Hillary Rodham Clinton to
- easily win the Democratic nomination
- easily win the electoral college, with something in excess of 300 electoral votes
- be sworn in as President of the United States in January 2017
But even if none of those were true, I would still support her because I believe of the remaining Democratic candidates she is by far the one best prepared to be President.
And I sure as hell am not going to vote for one of the remaining clowns in the car on the other side.
Peace?