The Secret of Hillary’s Staying Power

The Secret of Hillary’s Staying Power

Against all odds, Hillary Clinton has fought on – and she has made a remarkable comeback in the Pennsylvania primary. The iron lady of America is persuasive with her absolute will to carry on. A look into Hillary’s family history shows where this characteristic originates.

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s father, Hugh Rodham, was a man with whom it was advisable to be on good terms. If his children forgot to put the cap back onto a tube of toothpaste, he would throw the toothpaste out the window and make the children go outside to look for it. As the toothpaste inspector, the 6 foot 3 inch former baseball player had to get up out of his armchair whenever he was aggravated. Because Hugh Rodham had damaged his knee playing sports, the armchair was his command post. Hillary’s father paid someone from the manufacturer to deliver his armchair, but he offered no allowance money to his children. Those like him, who had hopped onto a freight train to Chicago to start a new life, began making money while saving and saving and working hard. He forbade Hillary from taking dancing lessons. He called this “character building.”

Whoever looks for the reasons for Clinton’s iron determination, not simply in being knocked around in the race for the White House, will find her parents as one possible explanation. Hugh Rodham, who founded a curtain factory, was someone who had to work for everything, just like it is for today’s voters. He often kept his thoughts to himself and then suddenly, all out of the blue, would turn peaceful and friendly or harsh and angry. There are Americans who would say that Hillary had always wanted to pacify her father and that she inherited from him some of the traits she shows today – never giving up, a penchant for secrecy, and if necessary, not telling the truth. This happened recently when she began to describe to voters how she supposedly landed in Bosnia in 1995 in the midst of sniper fire. She was revealed to be a liar because the children greeting her had another version of this story.

Hillary Rodham’s career, at any rate, matches the hypothesis that she had wanted to please her father. Hugh Rodham was a Republican, and Hillary became a textbook Republican. When the young people of America were behind Democrat John F. Kennedy in the 1960 campaign, just like they are today for Obama, Hillary was promoting Richard Nixon. He was reserved and politically seasoned, seemed broodingly melancholy like her father, and had worked his way up from nothing. Kennedy was the ostensibly bright newcomer – exactly like Obama is now.

The Kennedy Era left Hillary completely unaffected. In 1964, she supported the gruff Republican Barry Goldwater. After Goldwater lost the election to Kennedy’s successor Lyndon Johnson, Hillary still remained an unwavering Republican until she started college just before turning 18. Hillary Rodham was a sensible, intelligent student who worried about many things. Her letters to a minister and a teacher from the time show this. Nevertheless, she was totally unreceptive to Kennedy’s luster and lofty rhetoric. This is a characteristic which shapes her campaign today. She is from all appearances stone-cold reserved like her father from whom she inherited her large searching eyes. In college, she first turned liberal, then occasionally left, and at the same time emancipated herself from her father. She wondered about aimlessly through the political landscape at the same time. Her letters show confusion about the disorderly search for new ideas. She never turned into a dreamer like so many of her generation. She always went for concrete improvements. Her mother also played a roll in this process.

“Americans don’t give up and they don’t want a President who gives up either.”

Hillary’s mother Dorothy Rodham had a difficult childhood. Her parents disowned their children when Hillary’s mother was eight years old and her sister even younger. They simply put the children on a train going to California, all alone and without return tickets. The children were supposed to be raised by their grandparents. They were apparently sadistic because Hillary’s mother ran away at age 14, never to return again. She struggled alone doing housekeeping work. She visited her mother one day to reconcile with her, but her mother didn’t want anything to do with her.

Dorothy Rodham explained all of this to her daughter only after Hillary was already in college. The reserved daughter was apparently of the opinion that Flower Power and rock concerts on Woodstock’s muddy fields offered no solace from her family life. After college, she found her first job at a newly founded Children’s Defense Fund outside Boston. Dorothy Rodham had suffered under the wrath of her husband, but she wanted to keep the family as a family to spare her children of her own experiences. Her daughter Hillary, later as First Lady, wrote a book about the importance of family as the basis of all social improvement. And it is no coincidence in what she says today regarding her candidacy, “Americans don’t give up and they don’t want a President who gives up either.” It is also no accident that she is calling for a gathering in Washington on the night of May 7th to “celebrate the women in our lives, who like Hillary never give up.” That’s how the invitation reads. That is vintage Hillary.

The United States is a country of sports. In football and baseball, no one gives up when their team is behind. There was a legendary game years ago which appeared to be over with two minutes remaining. The TV network ended its coverage of the game before it was over, and millions of fans missed a fantastic comeback and upset of the favored team. Afterwards, the fans flooded the network with angry calls. Ever since then, networks have not ended coverage of a game before the final whistle. Clinton sees the primaries exactly this way. It’s a sport with two teams playing for a trophy, and no one is giving up until the final whistle is blown at the Democratic National Convention in late August.