I also was inspired by Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal program of the 1930s, which saved capitalism from itself following the Great Depression, and by his vision of a humane, progressive, internationalist America. Four Freedoms Park, at the tree-lined tip of Roosevelt Island, commemorates the universal freedoms FDR proclaimed during World War II: freedom of speech and worship, freedom from want and fear. It’s a picturesque spot with a striking view of the New York skyline. Announcing my candidacy there felt right.
The final few days were a flurry of marking up drafts and rewriting lines with Dan Schwerin, my longtime speechwriter, who had been with me since the Senate. As the campaign went on, he would be joined by Megan Rooney, a wonderful writer who spent four years traveling the world with me at State and then went to the White House to write for President Obama. Despite our best efforts, when the morning of June 13 dawned, I was still not quite satisfied. I turned to the bottom of page 4, the key moment in the speech, when I was supposed to say, “That’s why I’m running for President.” What followed, “to make our economy work for you and for every American,” was true and important. It was the result of deliberation and debate with my senior advisors, culminating a few days before around the table in my dining room in Washington. I had put down a draft in frustration, declared myself finished with all the slogans and sound bites, and said that I was really running for President to make the economy work for everyone, and why didn’t we just say that and be done with it?
But something was missing—emotional lift, a sense that we were setting out on a common mission to secure our shared destiny. I remembered a note that Dan and I had received a few days earlier from Jim Kennedy, a great friend who has a deft way with words. He reflected on a line from Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms” speech: “Our strength is our unity of purpose.” America is a family, Jim noted, and we should have one another’s backs. In that moment, I had no idea that the election would turn into a contest between the divisiveness of Donald Trump and my vision of an America that’s “stronger together.” But it felt right to call for shared purpose, to remind Americans that there is much more that unites us than divides us.
I picked up my ballpoint pen and, playing off Jim’s language, wrote, “We Americans may differ, bicker, stumble, and fall; but we are at our best when we pick each other up, when we have each other’s back. Like any family, our American family is strongest when we cherish what we have in common and fight back against those who would drive us apart.”
A few hours later, I was standing at the podium in the blinding June sun, looking out at the excited faces of cheering supporters. I saw little kids perched on their parents’ shoulders. Friends smiled up at me from the front row. Bill, Chelsea, and Marc were glowing with pride and love. The stage was shaped like our campaign logo: a big blue H with a red arrow cutting across the middle. All around it, a sea of people clapped, hollered, and waved American flags.
I allowed myself a moment to think, “This is really happening. I am going to run for President, and I am going to win.” Then I started to speak. It was hard to read the teleprompter with the sun in my eyes, but I knew the words well by this point. It was a long speech, full of policies and insights developed over the previous months of listening to people such as Pam in New Hampshire. That’s not everyone’s cup of tea. But I thought it was the kind of speech a candidate for the most important job in the world ought to give: serious, substantive, honest about the challenges ahead, and hopeful about our ability to meet them.
I told a couple jokes. “I may not be the youngest candidate in this race,” I said, “but I will be the youngest woman President in the history of the United States.” Little did I know that, in fact, I would end up being the youngest candidate, running against septuagenarians Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump.
I was pleased with how the speech was received. The journalist Jon Allen, who has followed me over the years, declared, “Clinton pretty much nailed the vision thing.” Jared Bernstein, Joe Biden’s former top economic advisor, smartly described it as a “reconnection agenda” (I loved that) that aimed to “reunite economic growth with the prosperity of middle- and low-income families.”
But it was E. J. Dionne, one of my favorite political commentators, who had the most thought-provoking—and, in retrospect, haunting—reaction. “Hillary Clinton is making a bet and issuing a challenge. The bet is that voters will pay more attention to what she can do for them than to what her opponents will say about her,” E. J. wrote. “The challenge is to her Republican adversaries: Can they go beyond low-tax, antigovernment bromides to make credible counteroffers to the nurses, truckers, factory workers, and food servers whom Clinton made the heroes of her Roosevelt Island narrative about grace under pressure?”
We know now that I lost that bet—not because a Republican came along and made a more credible counteroffer to middle-class voters but because Donald Trump did something else: appeal to the ugliest impulses of our national character. He also made false promises about being on the side of working people. As Michael Bloomberg later said at the Democratic National Convention, “I’m a New Yorker, and I know a con when I see one.” Me too.
As I would often do in big moments over the course of the campaign, I closed the speech by talking about my mother, Dorothy, who had passed away in 2011. She lived to be ninety-two years old, and I often thought about all the progress she witnessed over the course of her long life—progress won because generations of Americans kept fighting for what they knew to be right. “I wish my mother could have been with us longer,” I said. “I wish she could have seen Chelsea become a mother herself. I wish she could have met Charlotte. I wish she could have seen the America we’re going to build together.” I looked out at the crowd and up at the New York skyline across the water, smiled, and said, “An America where a father can tell his daughter, yes, you can be anything you want to be—even President of the United States.”
A Day in the Life
Time is the coin of your life. You spend it. Do not allow others to spend it for you.
A presidential campaign is a marathon run at the pace of a sprint. Every day, every hour, every moment counts. But there are so many days—nearly six hundred, in the case of the 2015–2016 campaign—that you have to be careful not to burn out before hitting the finish line.
President Obama drilled this point home when I was getting ready to run. He reminded me that when we faced off in 2008, we would often end up staying at the same hotel in Iowa or New Hampshire. He said his team would be finished with dinner and getting ready to call it a night when we finally got there, completely spent. By the time he woke up the next morning, we’d be long gone. In short, he thought we overdid it. “Hillary,” he said, “you’ve got to pace yourself this time. Work smart, not just hard.” Whenever we saw each other, he’d say it again, and he’d tell John and Huma to remind me.
I tried to follow his advice. After all, he won twice. My approach came down to two words: routine and joy. At the beginning, I put some routines in place to keep my traveling team and me as healthy and productive as possible through one of the hardest things any of us would ever do. And we all tried our best to savor every moment that came our way—to find joy and meaning in the daily grind of campaigning. Not a day went by when we didn’t.