Her nomination always seemed inevitable.
At a holiday meal in 2007, I remember saying as much to family members who were excited about this newcomer, Barack Obama. I wasn’t as excited about the prospect of Hillary being the first woman to serve as our party’s presidential nominee, but I was resigned to it.
I was one of the millions who said, yes, we need a woman in the Oval Office, just not this one. I resented her success, which appeared to be built on the reputation of her husband. I wanted a woman like Barbara Boxer or Nancy Pelosi, one who had earned her place among the ranks of the powerful.
I tried not to admire her for her cracks-in-the-glass-ceiling speech and for the work, the hard work, she did to get Obama elected. And when the President-elect asked her to serve as his Secretary of State, it was my faith in his wisdom, not her abilities, that allowed me to to accept that decision with equanimity.
As time went on, I found that I liked her as our Secretary of State. As she buzzed around the world cleaning up the mess that eight years of a bellicose administration had left behind, my respect for her grew. And every time the Republicans investigated her actions, every time they critiqued her behavior, my admiration for her grew stronger. Her October appearance before the Benghazi witch hunters, during which she completely befuddled them, established her forever in my heart as a bona fide American hero.
It was probably that appearance that started pushing me into her column. It took me a while still to commit to her as my choice. It is so easy to get caught up in the flaws of a candidate. To remember each and every thing that she did or said that I disagreed with, or felt was wrong. It was easy to allow my reservations to keep me on the fence.
But I never felt she was inherently dishonest or corrupt. She may be, but the twenty-five year campaign that the “vast right wing conspiracy” conducted filled me less with belief than with a certainty that they were lying. That they always had been using the politics of personal destruction to disarm her before she had the chance to do open battle with them on the electoral stage. They feared her. With good cause.
As a woman who once competed with men for position and advancement in an era that only allowed exceptional women any opportunity at all, I am able to relate to what Hillary Clinton has had to accomplish. I know that for every job, every promotion that I got, I did have to be far superior to my male competition. I could never be just as good as. I knew that. I had to work harder, learn more, in order to simply be considered equal. In order to be promoted, I had to work harder still. So yes, as women, we had to be twice as good to get half as far. It was never fair, but it was the only way we could open those doors, knowing that if we were successful, if we did the job well, it would be just a little easier for the women that would follow.
That is the same era that Hillary Clinton grew up in. She faced the same obstacles and fought the same battles. There is no question that President Obama was correct when he called her the most qualified candidate for President. She has always had to be twice as good as any man, she has had to be more thoroughly prepared and willing to work longer than anyone else. She is a woman. Those have always been the rules.
And she has had to do it all, not just backwards and in heels, but with a style that was both supportive and aggressive, both competitive and nurturing, strong and soft, easy going and determined. A feminist without flaunting it in the face of the male egos that surrounded her. She did it all without a net.
So yes, I have grown to respect and admire this exceptional woman, this lifelong public servant, and firmly believe that she will make a great President.
During the convention, many people spoke about how Hillary Clinton listened to them, of how when they talked to her about their issues, she really listened. And that she followed up after returning to Washington. How she remembered their hopes and their conversations. I have never spoken to her, have never seen her speak in person, but when she walked out onto that stage Thursday night wearing the white of a suffragette I understood what they meant. It felt like she was speaking to all of the suffragettes that still haunt our history and our progress. That she was not willing to forget that her presence on that stage, her acceptance of that nomination, was due in part to all of the women who have fought hard, have even gone to prison, over so many years, decades and generations for our equality.
Her presence is the reward that we can claim, because each woman who tried to surmount the barriers, those who succeeded and those who failed, made it possible for her to accept that nomination. And she hasn’t forgotten us. She wore white.