Hillary Clinton Cannot Cry Again

1. Eight years ago, when she had just won the New Hampshire primaries by a small margin, Hillary Clinton, thus a candidate for the White House, let a few tears fall when faced by a perfectly innocuous question from a journalist. How can you manage to always keep yourself like this, coifed, well-kept, serene? What could Hillary have said? What was the person hoping from her, from the fact that she was a woman?*

Perhaps at that moment, beyond her being a woman, the story of her life had passed through her mind; nothing had ever been given to her on a silver platter. On that cold day in January, she had already intuited that, contrary to all expectations, the road toward the Democratic Convention would be, in the end, a road full of obstacles. The Obama phenomenon, which few people saw coming, had shown itself in all its dimensions, two months before in the Iowa caucus, a state mostly white, conservative and cold, when Obama came in first place. Hillary presented herself as a candidate of transition between the disasters of Bush and a return to normalcy. She did not see, at that time, that Americans really wanted change. She thought her candidature would be invincible and that the long history of the partnership of “Bill and Hillary” would be sufficient for a last chapter of “Hillary and Bill.” She bet that that because of her “experience,” “competence,” and enormous world recognition, her place as first lady was reserved for her.

Jonathan Alter wrote at that time in Newsweek that American elections always jog back and forth between fear and hope. She bet on fear. Bill had bet on hope. Obama did the same. The history of both (Bill and Hillary) was always that way. For Bill everything would seem easy. For her, everything had to be achieved at the cost of an enormous effort. When she arrived back from school with a report card of straight A’s, she heard her father say to her that school must be very undemanding. She gave up a lot to get Bill to become governor of Arkansas and afterwards to the White House. The former president used to say that the voters “got two for the price of one.” But she did not give up her status as an independent woman in a partnership of equals. She faced the scandals of her husband with super-human serenity. Some [allegations] true and others false, fed by a hoard of Republicans who hated the generation the Clintons represented: those who were against the war in Vietnam, for women’s liberation, for equality between the sexes.

2. In 2008, after two terms of Bush, which ended with a brutal financial crisis and with the destruction of America’s image in the world, I thought the moment had arrived when she would finally achieve what she merited. We already know the rest of the story. No one managed to resist Obama. She herself was, during his first term, a loyal and competent secretary of state, helping mold a new foreign policy, much more based on cooperating with allies and on the concept that she herself created of “smart power.” It was she who executed a pivot toward Asia, who re-opened negotiations with Moscow, who restored relations of familiarity with Europe. Sometimes, her positions diverged from those of the president, but this was never a problem. If Obama gave his more luminous side back to America, Hillary completed the work on the ground. In dealing with China, her firmness was always combined “with grace and without unnecessary provocativeness,” said Michael O’Hanlon, of the Brookings [Institute].

She went against the president, perhaps for the only time, on a visit to Beijing, when she managed to win a difficult battle for the liberation of a blind dissident, who wanted her to take him with her. “Some of the president’s advisers were concerned with the fact that it represented a destruction of relations with China. But no one was prepared to be responsible for letting him decide his destiny,” she wrote in her memoir, “Hard Choices.”**

3. In 2014, Hillary Clinton decided to try at her last opportunity. Forty years of public exposure and political activity left her deeply scarred, feeding the distrust of many American voters, who think she is too arrogant and part of the “political royalty” that dominates Washington and with whom they are fed up. Even her supporters have accused her of not being able to give emotion and heat to her campaign. She doesn’t have the charisma of either Obama or Bill. She wanted to reconstruct her political image with a campaign of greater closeness to voters, offering them the leading role. The three-minute video with which she started the race summarizes her program: “The heroes are the families of all colors and shape.” She hoped to be seen as a fighter for the middle class, whom she wishes to compensate. But, once again, history was against her, requiring an insane amount of work to even arrive at the convention. No one ever thought that Bernie Sanders, who wants to make a “revolution” and dares to declare himself a socialist, would arrive where he has arrived, in a constant war of attrition against her candidature. Just as no one could have predicted that Donald Trump was preparing to win the Republican primaries. When Trump began, he was seen as an entertainment, even if unpleasant. It was thought that Jeb Bush, also from political royalty, would be the moderate candidate, with some concessions to the tea party, as the populist movement was no longer dominating the party. Neither she nor anyone else anticipated what happened the following months. There are enormous differences between Sanders and Trump; but also much in common: the protectionism against globalization, the disinvestment in foreign policy and in the alliances on which it rests, of Asia and Europe, and an unbridled war on the Washington system. This America always existed, but was never sufficiently strong (at least since World War II) to determine America’s relation with the world. Today, it seems a threat. Even though these are elections of fear, the fear could end up helping Hillary.

4. The problem is that no one now can discard with mathematical certainty a Trump victory in November, which would be a nightmare for America and a nightmare for the world. In the last two decades, the world twice suffered the impact from a change of American foreign policy, due to two occurrences that no one anticipated. The first was Sept. 11. After that came the fall of Lehman Brothers, which brought the global economy into a great recession. Recently in an interview with PUBLICO, Anne Marie Le Gloennac pointed out that the election of Trump could function as a “black swan,” something totally unexpected, which would launch the world into enormous uncertainty and insecurity. Hillary is today the only obstacle to this descent into hell. In 2008, with Obama or John McCain (despite Palin), the results of the presidential election would never have undermined the essential role of the United States in the world. That is the frightening novelty of this election and its enormous importance. Only Hillary will keep away a scenario that no one wants and that no one even wants to think about. This time, she can only weep for happiness.

Furthermore, after a black president, the time has come to break the last glass ceiling, giving a woman the place of “the most powerful in the world.”

* Translator's Note: My understanding is that questioner was actually a woman and Clinton admirer in the audience, not a male journalist, and this question was made in the spirit of a compliment. See here and here for additional information.

**Translator's Note: I have not been able to verify the exact wording of this quote from her memoirs.

From the Translator: In the title, I believe the author means that Clinton cannot or must not have a reason to cry again due to losing to Donald Trump in the fall election.