I have spent a good deal of time and energy — not to mention gobbling up cyberspace — on this blog trashing Donald J. Trump, the Republican nominee for president of the United States.
You can look all of it up on https://highplainsblogger.com/ … if you’re so inclined. It’s all there.
I want to spend a bit of time here talking about Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic nominee.
Is she a fault-free choice for president? No. She has her flaws. They’ve been chronicled ad infinitum — if not ad nauseam — for, oh, three decades or so. Would I have preferred someone else? Yeah. I was hoping Vice President Joe Biden would take the leap.
Clinton, though, presents a dramatically better choice for voters than Trump. Yes, despite the flaws, the blemishes, the inauthentic reputation, Clinton is the better candidate for president between the two major-party nominees.
She has experience in government at many levels.
Clinton served several terms as Arkansas’ first lady. She then became the nation’s first lady in 1993. New York voters elected her to the Senate in 2000, where she served for eight years. Clinton then ran for president in 2008; she lost the primary fight to Sen. Barack Obama, who then appointed her secretary of state.
Clinton has a demonstrated commitment to children’s well-being.
One of Clinton’s early government mentors was Marian Wright Edelman, who ran the Children’s Defense Fund. She learned there about the plight of children not just in America, but around the world. She lobbied hard for legislation aimed at preventing the exploitation of children.
Hillary used her first lady office as a bully pulpit.
The year was 1995. Clinton traveled to China to attend an international conference on women. It was there that she declared in front of the world — in a country that had imposed a harsh restriction on the number of children women could bring into the world — that women’s rights were a cause for human rights. She elevated the issue of women’s rights to the international stage.
Clinton knows how to legislate.
It wasn’t long after she became a U.S. senator that the nation was shaken to its core by the 9/11 attacks. Working with her New York colleague Sen. Chuck Schumer, Clinton was able to push through legislation that brought aid to victims of that terrible attack. Those victims included the first responders who suffered severe medical effects from the choking, toxic dust that enveloped New York City.
She developed alliances with Republicans, such as Sen. John McCain, with whom she served on the Senate Armed Services Committee. Indeed, McCain became one of her closer friends in the Senate, although one is hard-pressed today to get McCain to acknowledge that friendship.
Clinton has been at the center of international crises.
Hillary Clinton never will be one to say she knows “more than the generals” about the Islamic State or any other terrorist organization. She’s been in the Situation Room, counseling with the national security team on how to fight the bad guys.
Her years at the State Department were not without some tragedy and mistakes. Nor were they lacking in success. She kept the channels of communication open between our nation and our allies. She helped strengthen alliances in the fight against radical Islamists. Clinton has been privy intense national security briefings and has been central to many key decisions — such as the commando raid that killed Osama bin Laden in May 2011.
Hillary Clinton isn’t the perfect candidate for president.
However, given the major-party choices facing Americans in the next few weeks, she presents a clear choice.
Do we really want to entrust the nation’s future in someone whose only experience involves business dealings that themselves have been called into question?
I believe we need to consider the public service records of both these candidates. One of them has a lengthy — and largely successful — record of such service. The other has none.