The Hillary Experience

Sooner or later, we as women all have to go through this. No matter how beautiful we are, or how smart, or funny or athletic or 'pert near perfect we are...sooner or later we're going to have to let go of something that we knew for sure was ours.

It's official, Barrack Obama is the Democratic nominee for president, but Hillary Clinton still won't end her campaign. The papers today are full of details and analysis about how Clinton, a virtual shoe-in, lost the nomination anyway. And everyone has accepted it except Hillary.

I have to tell you that I can relate to this. I know what it is to be the perfect candidate, to have everyone supporting me, and to be the assumed heir only to lose anyway. Not in an election, but in love and romance. In fact, I am learning at almost the exact same rate she is. But unlike her I have a great example to watch. I have a bird's eye view of the fact that despite her perfection, Barrack Obama is in fact the perfect candidate right now. There's no disputing it. I like to think that the Universe always works this way. Yes, I may have been right, but I'm not right now. So my job changes from proving how perfect I am, to exiting the stage with grace and dignity and supporting the true winner.

Hillary, my dear, I am sorry you are having to learn this lesson so late in life. The fact that you can live to be 50-some-odd years old and not have the sense to know how and when to bow out gracefully makes me feel blessed that I am learning it right now. The universe is a wonderful instructor. In what I have come to call "the Hillary experience" it is showing me just how carried away one can get with the concept that determination, hard work, and desire will get you there.

The reason Hillary lost the nomination can be debated by the experts, but I can tell you exactly why, in my humble opinion, she is not the right candidate right now. It's because she's myopic. The fact that she's so doggedly determined to stay on a course when it has so obviously failed is evidence that she is disturbingly similar to her predecessor, president Bush. I'm afraid that under her we would have had 4 more years of going full speed ahead in the wrong direction, even if it is in the opposite direction.

What has touched me most about all of this? How gently and patiently and respectfully the rest of the Democratic party has handled her, refusing to push her out or to criticize her. Even if she hasn't behaved with dignity, they have certainly treated her with some. It encourages me that there is still decency and a sense of respect for her intelligence and her abilities, for her position as a former first lady, and for the historical significance of what she was trying to accomplish and it reminds me of a time when honor and respect still existed in government.