Rodham v. Clinton by Al Sikes

“Trust. This is one word that when I asked the class at our rehearsal what it was they wanted me to say for them, everyone came up to me and said ‘Talk about trust, talk about the lack of trust both for us and the way we feel about others. Talk about the trust bust.” Hillary D. Rodham, 1969 Commencement Speech, Wellesley College

In 1969 Hillary D. Rodham would not have voted for Hillary Rodham Clinton. What happened in between? How did ambition and the culture re-shape her sensibilities?
And, in 1969 Donald J. Trump would not have been on any ballot and certainly not as the nominee of the Republican Party. So, most of the Rodham’s of today, will vote for Ms. Clinton, feeling no alternative.

All twenty-year-olds grow up. How they grow up and especially how the most ambitious of any given generation mature is at any given moment an urgent question. We know our children and grandchildren are our legacy and we want it to turn out well.

Hillary Rodham was an earnest idealist; good for her. Winston Churchill famously noted the importance of “heart” at this stage of life. But then idealism for many turned into utopianism and then into large government bureaucracies peddling untested theories for a continental-sized nation.

Four years after Ms. Rodham’s speech, Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun, writing for a divided court (7-2), found the right to an abortion in the 14th Amendment’s due process clause. This abrupt preclusion of state’s rights over abortion ignited a cultural and structural war that has no apparent end. Americans had been organized around the separation of church and state and as the State got into what many regarded as the realm of religion that changed.

As the Seventies evolved, afternoon newspapers began to disappear as people turned to their TV for news. This proved to be the first stage in the cultural and economic forces that changed journalism from print to screen and from understated to overstated. In recent decades the sensational increasingly dominates whether in the headlines, videos, or hosts like Rush Limbaugh. And then digital happened, and serious journalism was increasingly eclipsed by Facebook.

In the meantime America, indeed the developed world, went from labor-intensive production to greater and greater amounts of automation. The Digital Age, in many industries, defeated labor. Little was done to smooth out the transition.

All the while entertainment was on a downhill slope with shows answering to lowest common denominator appetites. In the words of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “defining deviancy down.” Donald Trump would find his own TV opportunity and a platform to launch a nascent political campaign.

The 21st Century, informed by the latter stages of the 20th, now presents us a political choice. Most are not amused. Ms. Rodham would certainly not be and the more thoughtful elements of the Republican Party are aghast.

Voting, of course, has started. Once more we have let our emotions overtake our collective common sense. Some had voted before the first debate between the candidates, and it is said that 17m voted before the latest developments in the email controversy. It should also be noted that tens of millions more have to be spent by the candidates because the ad buys must start earlier and earlier. What about starting voting on the weekend before the final ballots are cast onTuesday (but I digress).

It does not seem to me that Hillary Rodham’s hope expressed in 1972 should be dismissed in what some call the age of cynicism. Perhaps it should be repeated over and over and actually tried. Perhaps truth should be used to measure how programs work. Perhaps it should be used in measuring our public finances. Perhaps truth should reassert itself in how we judge our candidates. Not a bad standard in any age.

Al Sikes is the former Chair of the Federal Communications Commission under George H.W. Bush. Al recently published Culture Leads Leaders Follow published by Koehler Books.