Title: "Bill and Hillary Clinton;
What if Hillary Becomes President in 2016?" By Franklin and Betty J. Parker, bfparker@frontiernet.net,
Dialogue Given at Uplands Village, Pleasant Hill, TN, Monday, June 17, 2013.
FRANK: Hold onto your seat folks; it's going
to be a bumpy, sexy story about Bill and Hillary Clinton. We chose to review William H. Chafe, Bill
and Hillary: The Politics of the Personal, published in 2012, because the Clintons are, in our time,
what FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt were in the 1930s-40s: a powerful,
controversial, talented political team.
BETTY: Conservative Republicans have disliked
the Clintons' efforts to uplift low income "have-nots" at the expense
of middle- and upper-class "haves." Hostile critics see the Clintons as manipulative
politicians--Bill as sexually immoral, Hillary as an unscrupulous shrew.
FRANK:
Recall that in late 1998-early 1999 the Republican-dominated U.S. House of
Representatives impeached President Clinton on charges of perjury; that is,
lying about having sex with Monica Lewinsky, and obstruction of justice by
withholding evidence.
BETTY: The U.S. Senate rejected the House
impeachment vote. Charges were
dropped. Hillary won
sympathy and respect by backing and saving Bill from impeachment shame.
FRANK: Note that Bill, born 1946, and Hillary,
1947, were the first post-WW II baby boomer political team to reach political
heights through Bill's elections, at a young age, as: Arkansas Attorney General (1976-78), 2 years; Arkansas Governor
(1978-80; 1982-92), 12 years; U.S. President (1993-2001), 8 years.
BETTY: Add Hillary's 8 years as New York's U. S. Senator (2001-09); and
4 years as U.S. Secretary of State (2009-13); 34 years of combined public
service. Hillary's many
friends are now urging her to run in 2016 to become the first woman U.S. president.
FRANK:
Bill's early motives and ambitions were shaped by his unusual mother, Virginia Dell Cassidy (1923-94), and her unusual parents.
BETTY: Born in small town Hope, Arkansas,
Virginia Cassidy had four husbands.1
FRANK: Fun-loving Virginia, later a nurse
anesthetist, and her mother, Edith Grisham Cassidy (1901-68), a strict
self-taught nurse, both raised
little Bill.
BETTY: Virginia's
father, Bill's grandpa James Eldridge Cassidy (1898-1957), had a grocery store
in a poor African-American neighborhood.
His fair treatment and generous credit for African Americans endeared
him to all.
FRANK: Flirtatious Virginia Cassidy first trained
as a nurse in a Shreveport, LA, hospital.
There she met and married an equally flirtatious William Jefferson
Blythe, Jr. (1918-46).2
BETTY: The Blythes moved to Chicago for better
jobs. Virginia, pregnant,
went home to Hope, Ark., to have her baby. Her husband Bill Blythe, driving from Chicago to be
with her, died in a car crash 3 months before Virginia gave birth to William
Jefferson Blythe, III (Aug. 19, 1946), called "Billy," who never knew
his biological father. 3
FRANK:
Billy was age 2 when his widowed mother Virginia, needing to earn more money,
moved to New Orleans to train as a nurse anesthetist. Billy, living with his grandparents, loved playing in
grandpa's store with African Americans.
The family's lack of prejudice was rare.
BETTY:
In New Orleans, the attractive widow Virginia Cassidy Blythe met Roger
Clinton (1908-67), a car dealer, married him in 1950 when Billy was age 4,
against her parents' warning that Roger Clinton was twice divorced, a gambler,
and abusive when drunk.
FRANK: The Clintons moved to the thriving
resort city of Hot Springs, Ark.
During Roger Clinton's drunken sprees he did abuse Virginia. Virginia gave birth to Roger's son,
Roger Clinton, Jr. (July 25, 1956), that's
Billy's half brother, when Billy was age 10. In his early teens, Billy, big and
burly, physically confronted his stepfather and stopped Roger from abusing his
mother. Bill urged his mother
Virginia to divorce Roger Clinton.
She did so, but feeling sorry, remarried him to give him a home. Bill, still in high school, now
the family protector, with his mother's approval, through the family lawyer,
legally changed his name to William Jefferson Clinton.
BETTY: Intelligent, affable, and ambitious,
Bill Clinton as a Hot Springs high school junior was one of only two Arkansas
students chosen to go to the annual summer American Legion-sponsored Boys
Nations in Washington, D.C.
In July 1963, in the White House Rose Garden, after Pres. John F. Kennedy's
welcoming speech, a pushy 6' 3" 17-year-old Bill Clinton was, as he had
planned, photographed shaking Pres. Kennedy's hand.
FRANK: Bill Clinton's early ambition for high
public service was thus shaped by:
1: his flashy adoring mother telling him often: you are important and
will be the president of the United States.
BETTY: 2: Secrets to be kept included his
drunken abusive stepfather and his own uncertainty about his actual
father. To overcome secret shame
and redeem family honor, Bill Clinton determined he must rise high, become
important.
FRANK: 3: His Grandpa James Eldridge Cassidy's
generous uplifting of have-not African Americans, plus Bill's outreach to his
drink-dependent stepfather inspired Bill to want to uplift the needy.
BETTY: 4: Bill's drive for public service,
heightened by JFK's handshake, was confirmed when Bill read, then memorized
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I
Have A Dream" speech (Aug. 28, 1963).
FRANK: 5: the family's move to Hot Springs,
Ark., got Bill into better schools which led him on to Washington, D.C.'s Georgetown
University, then a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, and Yale Law School. In thriving Hot Springs Bill gained
worldly sophistication and a sense of mission to someday lift Arkansas up high
from near bottom in education and income.
BETTY: Thus motivated, blessed with a
brilliant mind, charm, and drive--Bill excelled in his studies, in
extracurricular activities, in election to high student offices, and in winning many honors.
FRANK: On his high school counselor's
advice, with scholarships and his mother's support, Bill attended highly
regarded Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, Washington, D.C.
(1964-68).
BETTY: There Bill was president of his
freshman and sophomore classes.
He carried away with him Georgetown history Prof. Carroll Quigley's
(1910-77) teaching that the future will be better only if the present
generation sacrifices to make it happen.4
FRANK: Bill worked during summer 1967 for
Arkansas's U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright's (1905-95) Foreign Relations
Committee. Bill shared Fulbright's
conviction that the Vietnam War (1955-75) was immoral.
BETTY: Encouraged by Sen. Fulbright, himself a
former Rhodes Scholar (1926-28), Bill, on graduation, was chosen to be a Rhodes
Scholar at Oxford University, England.
FRANK: While in England Bill was subject to
the Vietnam War draft. He actively
protested the war, agonized over his friends killed in Vietnam, and maneuvered
himself out of the draft.
BETTY: Called a draft dodger during his
1992 Presidential campaign, Bill was less than honest about how he had evaded
the draft. 5
FRANK: After Oxford, Bill enrolled at Yale
University Law School (19, Juris Doctor),
where he met Hillary Diane Rodham.
BETTY: Hillary Rodham grew up in Chicago's
lily white, upwardly mobile suburb of Park Ridge. Her father Hugh Rodham (1911–93), textile wholesaler,
staunch Republican, had been a tough WW II Navy drill master. His barked commands had to be
obeyed; his opinion never challenged.
FRANK: When
Hillary's mother, Dorothy Howell Rodham (1919-2011) contradicted her husband,
gruff, authoritarian Hugh Rodham's
sarcastic put downs were
variations of: "How would you know!" If ashamed in company she decided to leave the room,
he would say: "Don't let the
closing door knob hit you in the fanny."
BETTY:
Hillary and her two younger brothers loved both parents. They knew their mother had been an
abandoned child of divorced parents, became a housekeeper and nanny for a
family who raised her, taught her to read, encouraged her to become a Chicago
secretary where she met and married Hugh Rodham.
FRANK:
Mother Dorothy Rodham, a devout Methodist, taught Hillary and her two younger
brothers to love and help one another and others. Mother Rodham (died 2011) lived to see Hillary become U.S.
First Lady, U.S. Senator from New York, the near winner in the 2008
presidential campaign, and U.S. Secretary of State. 6
BETTY: Hillary's key shaping forces were: 1: From her drill-master father came
her iron will, boldness, strength of convictions, determination to
stay-the-course-no-matter-what.
Her obstinacy later caused trouble as Bill's unofficial co-president.
FRANK: 2: From Hillary's mother came her
Methodist faith, the sanctity of marriage, the sacredness of family bonds, no
divorce whatever the provocation.
BETTY: 3: From her Methodist youth minister,
Donald G. Jones (1922-2009), came the urgency of social justice. When Hillary was age 14 in the 9th
grade, Don Jones took Hillary and her Methodist youth group to see Chicago's ghetto
poor and mingle with deprived inner city youth. In April 1962
he took them to hear Martin Luther King, Jr., preach and to shake his hand. Hillary sought spiritual counseling and
advice from her Methodist mentor Dr. Don Jones (later a Drew University social
ethics professor) until his 2009 death.
7
FRANK: 4: At exclusive Wellesley College for
women (1965-69) Hillary became less Republican, more Democratic, and a campus
leader. She wrote her senior
thesis on Chicago's labor union radical Saul Alinsky's (1909-72), insistence
that true reform requires community action. Hillary agreed, but added that community reforms had to be
done within the system and backed with federal funds.
BETTY: Hillary, as student body president at
graduation made national news and Life magazine as Wellesley's first student
Co-Commencement speaker, 1969. She
challenged the main speaker, distinguished black Republican U.S. Senator from
Massachusetts Edward Brooke (1919-), who criticized student activists' use of
violence. Hillary, at the lectern,
leaving her script, boldly faced and told Senator Brooke: We protesting
students are righting the wrongs leaders like you let happen and have done
nothing to solve.
FRANK: At Yale University Law School
(1971? J.D.) Hillary and Bill first met
in the law school library.
Sparks flew. Love
flowed. A political partnership
was in the making.
BETTY: Each stopped dating others, sensing
that joining their abilities would strengthen their drive to right American
wrongs and ease the world's woes.
They married (1975); both
taught for a time at the
University of Arkansas Law School.
Their only child, daughter Chelsea Victoria, was born February 27, 1980.
FRANK: While at Yale Law School Bill was
active in Connecticut politics. Both Hillary and Bill campaigned in 1972 for Democratic
U.S. Senator George McGovern's (1922-2012) run against incumbent President
Richard M. Nixon (1913-94), who was
reelected.
BETTY: In 1974 Hillary served in Washington, D.C. on the U.S. Congressional
legal team for the Watergate investigation of Republican President Nixon.
FRANK: In 1977 Bill was elected Arkansas Attorney General. Hillary became a member and soon
partner of Arkansas's most prestigious Rose Law Firm.
BETTY: In 1978, Bill at age 31 was
elected Arkansas Governor. His
highway rebuilding project as a first step toward improving the economy was fine but paying for it with higher
auto license plate fees hurt most workers and farmers. It was a mistake. Bill
was defeated in 1980 for re-election.
FRANK: Stunned, realizing his mistake, Bill
campaigned again in 1982 to regain the governorship. He apologized for his mistake, said he would check with
voters every step of the way as he raised Arkansas higher and higher. Result: Arkansans re-elected him, 1982 to 1990. Recovering from setbacks Bill Clinton
lived up to his reputation as: "The Come-Back Kid."
BETTY: Bill became an outstanding leader among
U.S. governors: president of the National Governors Association, chairman of a
mainly southern moderate Democratic group called the Democratic Leadership
Conference. He was a major speaker
at national Democratic Conventions of 1980, '84, and '88. With Hillary as his
"Co-Everything" he entered the 1992 race for the U.S. presidency.
FRANK: Bill won the three contestant 1992
Presidential election against Republican incumbent George H.W. Bush [the
father] and Independent billionaire Ross Perot. Bill and Hillary were now in the media spotlight, probed by
reporters and challenged to
explain every past questionable action, first Whitewater. What was Whitewater?
(See end under: Added Sources).
BETTY:
Whitewater was a planned resort in beautiful western Arkansas. Bill and Hillary were invited to invest
in the venture by co-signing a bank loan, urged by close friends James McDougal
(1940-98) and wife Susan (1955-).
The get-rich scheme failed.
McDougal was bailed out with a federal loan. Whitewater was considered a swindle.
FRANK: Reporters unearthed Troopergate, some
Arkansas State Troopers whom Governor Clinton arranged to supply him with
consenting sex partners.
Reporters questioned a secretary Paula Jones who claimed that Bill
initiated a long time sexual connection.
She brought suit in court for financial redress.
BETTY: Reporters also faulted Hillary Clinton,
too, for using her state government connection to receive lucrative legal fees
at Rose Law Firm.
FRANK: To satisfy public concern Bill asked
his U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno (1938) to name a special counsel (lawyer)
to investigate the basis of the incriminating charges. Janet Reno first named fair-minded
Republican Robert Fiske (1930-), soon replaced by antagonistic Republican
Kenneth W. Starr (1946-), who relentlessly sought to bring impeachable charges
against Pres. Clinton.
BETTY: Was there an extremist Republican plot
to tarnish and impeach Pres. Clinton? Was the plotters' intent to replace a weaker successor
Vice President Al Gore by a Republican president in the 2000 election?
FRANK: Yes, wrote David Brock in his
2002 book, Blinded by the Right; The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative. Brock
admitted to being one of several right wing investigative writers paid to print
all the dirt possible about the Clintons.
BETTY:
Despite critical media and Republican congressional impeachment pressure, Bill
Clinton as U.S. President did the country's business exceedingly well. He turned predecessor Pres. George H.
W. Bush's large federal budget deficit into a $200 billion budget surplus,
oversaw creation of over 20 million new jobs, improved Social Security and
Medicare, and achieved a 10% increase in youths entering college. 8
FRANK: After the April 1995 Oklahoma City
Federal Building bombing (167 died), Pres. Clinton ministered to the bereaved
and to a grieving nation. His
approval rating rose to 60%.
President Clinton reshaped welfare from a "handout" to a
"hand up" with time limits on welfare time and incentives to find
work. 9
BETTY: In foreign affairs Pres. Clinton nearly
created Middle East Israeli-Palestinian peace. At Camp David he secured mutual concessions from the
moderate Israeli prime minister and Arafat, but Arafat backed out, fearing
assassination from his own extremists.
FRANK: Hillary Clinton made bad political
mistakes in the first two years of the Clinton presidency: 1-She insisted that her offices be in
the White House West Wing, the policymaking area, traditionally reserved for
the President, Vice President, and press.
She threw out the press and evoked much resentment. 2-She favored secrecy and failed to
cooperate with the press. 3-She
micro-managed the Clinton health care package, would not compromise, and thus
unwittingly encouraged enemies of universal health insurance who killed the
bill in Congress. 4-She fired
White House travel managers, replaced them with incompetent political
appointees, a mistake critics called "Travelgate." 5-Refusing access to her Rose Law Firm
records by reporters from the Washington Post, New York Times, and by counsel Ken Starr only created more
suspicion of wrong doing.
BETTY:
Hillary Clinton as U.S. First Lady quickly became unpopular. Bill's advisory staff and hers were
antagonistic toward each other.
The press and the Washington establishment despised her. Her mistakes strengthened the
Republicans who won majorities in both houses in the November 1994 midterm
election. A chastened Hillary moved out of the West Wing, stepped out of the role of
co-president, turned inward, sought spiritual renewal from understanding
friends, her pastor at her Washington, D.C. Methodist Church, and her girlhood
mentor Don Jones.
FRANK: From early Yale Law School years
Hillary had worked to improve the lives of women and children. She resumed that cause in her 1996
book, It Takes a Village, about family
values in a just society. She
backed, with Bill's help, significant legislation to help children and
families. She traveled to foreign
countries as a good will ambassador.
In summer 1995 her speech at the Beijing Fourth World Conference on
Women won world-wide praise.
Hillary felt restored, reinvigorated, seeing that her influence for good
far outweighed narrow minded hate groups who plagued her during her first two
years in Washington.
BETTY: In 1999, embarrassed by impeachment
publicity, pained over Monica Lewinsky (1973-) and other bitter disclosures,
Hillary nonetheless resolved to stand by Bill and save his presidency. This decision actually freed her to
become the person her own mother and others had taught her to be. Now she could step out on her own, run
for the U.S. Senate from N.Y. State.
As a Senator, instead of earlier arrogance, she listened to what her
constituents wanted. No longer
judgmental, she reached across the aisle, befriending and cooperating with both
Republican and Democratic colleagues.
She easily won a second U.S. Senate term in 2006, was popular,
successful.
FRANK: Hillary almost defeated Barack Obama as
Democratic nominee for President in 2008.
She then put their campaign differences behind her, so that when he asked her to become Secretary
of State, she said yes, visited and met leaders, created good will everywhere
she went.
BETTY: Bill Clinton after leaving office, 2000, wrote his memoir, My Life (2004), and Giving:
How Each of Us Can Change the World
(2007). He had built the William
J. Clinton Presidential Library and Park, 2004; created the William J. Clinton
Foundation to fund humanitarian causes; and took on United Nations and U.S.
special assignments to promote peace, disaster relief, and justice.
FRANK: Bill Clinton, a skillful speaker, at the 2012
Democratic National Convention, brilliantly nominated Barack
Obama, practically assuring Obama's later presidential win over Mitt Romney.
BETTY: How will future historians judge
President Bill Clinton? Was he in
a class with Franklin Delano Roosevelt?
FRANK: Sadly, no, although some historians see
him as the greatest political talent since Lyndon Baines Johnson. Bill Clinton saw the political troubles
Hillary's obstinacy was bringing to them both but would not confront her
because he owed her a special
debt.
BETTY: What did he owe her and why? Why didn't he confront and correct her?
FRANK: She saved him from becoming a political goner over the 1992
Gennifer Flowers (1950-) sexual harassment charge which exploded on the media. Bill's standing in the polls fell very
low. He was in despair. Then Hillary appeared with him in an hour-long TV Sixty
Minutes confessional
(January 26, 1992). She assured
millions of viewers that their marriage was rock solid. He owed her, would not confront
her, and her obstinacy hurt them both.
10
BETTY: Universal health care was Bill's first
goal as president. Its passage
would have assured Bill’s place among the greatest U.S. presidents. Instead, because of Hillary’s
mishandling universal health care failed.
Author Chafe believes that if he had confronted her and taken charge,
Bill with his political genius would have gained its passage, perhaps without
including all he wanted, but with the beginnings necessary to build a
substantial health care system.
FRANK: Betty, what are your final words?
BETTY: My final words: Author William Chafe described how Bill
and Hillary at Yale were, from the first, powerfully attracted to each other. Hillary fell in love with Bill because
of his brilliance, his sincere wish to improve life in his home state of
Arkansas, his already demonstrated political talents. Bill primed his Yale housemates to help him make a good
impression on Hillary. Bill, a
ladies' man with many girl friends, fell in love with Hillary because she was
different: intelligent, self-confident, determined to make a difference in the
world. He moved in to live with
her and eventually persuaded her to marry him. Today, in 2013, admiration for Hillary and Bill Clinton far
outweighs carping critics. Its wait and see if Hillary in the next
presidential election becomes our first woman President. Frank, your final words.
FRANK: I have three final words:
1-Admiration: I admire the
Clintons' effort to improve the USA and
the world. Shouldn't we all
be doing just that? 2-Hope:
I hope--we all would hope--that a wiser, more experienced possible President
Hillary Clinton can find ways to bring together contending -Americans,
-nations, -forces, in cooperation,
to uplift all, everywhere, no exceptions.
Pie in the sky? Doesn't
hope spring eternal? 3-Cooperation
is the key problem-solving mechanism for a President Hillary Clinton or any
leader to achieve. Again, pie in
the sky? Impossible? Remember this: when we humans
came down from the trees, out of
the forest, the concept that made us master of the Earth, builders of
Nations, makers of Constitutions was cooperation in the hunt for food, for
welfare, a place for everyone, an ever better life for all, no exceptions.
Thank you
for being here, for listening, for reading this paper.
Footnotes:
1Bill
Clinton's mother's husbands:
William Jefferson Blythe, during 1943-46; Roger Clinton, Sr., 1950-67; Jeff
Dwire (1969-74; and Richard Kelley (1982-94). See: http://www.spokeo.com/Virginia+Clinton+Kelley+1
2http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jefferson_Blythe,_Jr.
and http://www.spokeo.com/William+Jefferson+Blythe+Jr+1
3For
unusual speculation about Bill Clinton's ancestry, see: http://tinyurl.com/m5cuhuc
4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carroll_Quigley.
5Bill
Cllinton called a draft dodger during his 1992 Presidential campaign by former University of Arkansas ROTC
director: "I was informed by the draft board that it was of interest to
Senator Fulbright's office that Bill Clinton, a Rhodes Scholar, should be
admitted to the ROTC
program ... I believe that he purposely deceived me, using the possibility
of joining the ROTC as a ploy to work with the draft board to delay his
induction and get a new draft classification." The ROTC director was a WW
II decorated Army Col. Eugene Holmes (died 2005), http://tinyurl.com/proh4fg
and:
http://tinyurl.com/pznnzz3
8Chafe,
245.
9Chafe,
pp. 259-62.
10Chafe,
p. 337.
Added
Sources:
1--About
Clintons, Bill and Hillary, for all related topics, see: http://www.encyclopediaofarkansas.net/
2--For Best
Books On or By the Clintons, see: http://tinyurl.com/n4ey72d
3--About
Bill Clinton's, Impeachment, see: http://tinyurl.com/lu2gq7q
4-About the
Clintons' and Whitewater, see: http://tinyurl.com/ocbph34
5--About
the known women in Bill Clinton's life, see:
http://tinyurl.com/kcnwerx
Four
Books Extensively Used:
BETTY: 1-William Chafe, author of Bill and
Hillary: The Politics of the
Possible (2012), is Duke
University historian. His Clinton
book is a highly readable, thorough, and psychological interpretation based on the research of
best earlier Clinton books, heavy reliance on the psychology behind the
Clintons' choices and behavior.
FRANK: 2-Carl Bernstein, A Woman in Charge (2007), is excellent on Hillary Clinton by Washington
Post reporter and
co-author with Bob Woodward of All the President's Men, about Watergate.
3-David
Brock, Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative (2002),
details the conservative extremists, money men, researchers, journals,
publishers determined to besmirch,
oust, and supplant Pres.
Bill Clinton with a conservative Republican president.
4-David
Maraniss, First in His Class: A Biography of Bill Clinton (1995), excellently researched early life of Bill
Clinton through October 1991 when he announced his candidacy for presidency of
the United States. END.
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