Deep breath. Feel the air fill my lungs. This is the right thing to do. The country needs to see that our democracy still works, no matter how painful this is. Breathe out. Scream later.
I’m standing just inside the door at the top of the steps leading down to the inaugural platform, waiting for the announcer to call Bill and me to our seats. I’m imagining that I’m anywhere but here. Bali maybe? Bali would be good.
It’s tradition for Bill and me, as a former President and First Lady, to attend the swearing-in of the new President. I had struggled for weeks with whether or not to go. John Lewis wasn’t going. The civil rights hero and Congressman said that the President Elect was not legitimate because of the mounting evidence of Russian interference in the election. Other members of Congress were joining him in boycotting a President Elect they saw as divisive. A lot of my supporters and close friends urged me to stay home, too.
My friends understood how painful it would be to sit on the platform and watch Donald Trump sworn in as our next Commander in Chief. I had campaigned relentlessly to make sure that never happened. I was convinced he represented a clear and present danger to the country and the world. Now the worst had happened, and he was going to take the oath of office.
Plus, after the mean-spirited campaign Trump ran, there was a decent chance I’d get booed or be met with “Lock her up!” chants if I went.
Still, I felt a responsibility to be there. The peaceful transfer of power is one of our country’s most important traditions. I had touted it around the world as Secretary of State, hoping that more countries would follow our example. If I really believed in it, I had to put my feelings aside and go.
Bill and I checked with the Bushes and the Carters to see what they were thinking. George W. and Jimmy had been among the first to call me after the election, which meant a lot to me. George actually called just minutes after I finished my concession speech, and graciously waited on the line while I hugged my team and supporters one last time. When we talked, he suggested we find time to get burgers together. I think that’s Texan for “I feel your pain.” Both he and Jimmy knew what it felt like to put yourself on the line in front of the whole country, and Jimmy knew the sting of rejection. He and I commiserated over that a bit. (“Jimmy, this is the worst.” “Yes, Hillary, it is.”) It was no secret that these former Presidents weren’t fans of Donald Trump. He had been absolutely vicious to George’s brother Jeb in particular. But were they going to the inauguration? Yes.
That gave me the push I needed. Bill and I would go.
That’s how I ended up right inside the door of the Capitol on January 20, waiting to be announced. It had been such a long journey to get here. Now I just had to take a few more steps. I took Bill’s arm and squeezed it, grateful to have him by my side. I took a deep breath and walked out the door with as big a smile as I could muster.
On the platform, we sat next to the Bushes. The four of us had caught up inside a few minutes earlier, trading updates about our daughters and grandchildren. We chatted like it was any other day. George and Laura gave us the latest news about the health of George’s parents, former President George H. W. and Barbara, both of whom had been in the hospital recently but, happily, were now on the mend.
As we sat waiting for the President Elect to arrive, my mind wandered back to that incredible day twenty-four years earlier when Bill took the oath of office for the first time. It could not have been easy for George H. W. and Barbara to watch, but they had been extraordinarily gracious to us. The outgoing President left a letter for Bill in the Oval Office that is one of the most decent and patriotic things I’ve ever read. “Your success now is our country’s success. I am rooting hard for you,” he wrote. We did our best to show the same graciousness to George W. and Laura eight years later. At this moment, I was trying to summon a similar attitude about the incoming President. As I had said in my concession speech, he deserved an open mind and the chance to lead.
I also thought about Al Gore, who in 2001 sat stoically through George W.’s inauguration despite having won more votes. Five members of the Supreme Court decided that election. That must have been awful to bear. I realized I was inventing a new pastime: imagining the pain of past electoral losses. John Adams, our second Commander in Chief, suffered the indignity of being the first President ever voted out of office, losing to Thomas Jefferson in 1800, but he got a measure of revenge twenty-five years later when his son John Quincy was elected. In 1972, George McGovern lost forty-nine out of fifty states to Richard Nixon—Bill and I worked hard on McGovern’s campaign and have indelible memories of that defeat. And let’s not forget William Howard Taft, whom Teddy Roosevelt had groomed to succeed him. Four years later, in 1912, Teddy decided Taft wasn’t doing a good enough job as President, so he ran as a third-party candidate, split the electorate, and Woodrow Wilson won. That had to hurt.
Then Bill touched my elbow, and I snapped back to the present.
The Obamas and the Bidens were in front of us. I imagined President Obama riding over in the presidential limo with a man who had risen to prominence partly by lying about Barack’s birthplace and accusing him of not being an American. At some point in the day’s proceedings, Michelle and I shared a rueful look. It said, “Can you believe this?” Eight years before, on the bitterly cold day when Barack was sworn in, our heads were full of plans and possibilities. Today was just about putting on a game face and getting through it.
The President Elect finally arrived. I had known Donald Trump for years, but never imagined he’d be standing on the steps of the Capitol taking the oath of office as President of the United States. He was a fixture of the New York scene when I was a Senator—like a lot of big-shot real estate guys in the city, only more flamboyant and self-promoting. In 2005, he invited us to his wedding to Melania in Palm Beach, Florida. We weren’t friends, so I assumed he wanted as much star power as he could get. Bill happened to be speaking in the area that weekend, so we decided to go. Why not? I thought it would be a fun, gaudy, over-the-top spectacle, and I was right. I attended the ceremony, then met Bill for the reception at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. We had our photo taken with the bride and groom and left.
The next year, Trump joined other prominent New Yorkers in a video spoof prepared for the Legislative Correspondents Association dinner in Albany, which is the state version of the more famous White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. The idea was that the wax figure of me at the Madame Tussauds museum in Times Square had been stolen, so I had to stand in and pretend to be a statue while various famous people walked by and said things to me. New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg said I was doing a great job as Senator—then joked about running for President in 2008 as a self-funder. When Trump appeared, he said, “You look really great. Unbelievable. I’ve never seen anything like it. The hair is magnificent. The face is beautiful. You know, I really think you’d make a great President. Nobody could come close.” The camera pulled back to reveal he wasn’t talking to me after all but to his own wax statue. It was funny at the time.
When Trump declared his candidacy for real in 2015, I thought it was another joke, like a lot of people did. By then, he’d remade himself from tabloid scoundrel into right-wing crank, with his long, offensive, quixotic obsession with President Obama’s birth certificate. He’d flirted with politics for decades, but it was hard to take him seriously. He reminded me of one of those old men ranting on about how the country was going to hell in a handbasket unless people started listening to him.