The situation in Flint is still dire. It’s heartbreaking and outrageous. This is not something that should ever happen in America, period. It’s lousy governance and shameful politics at their worst. It took until the end of 2016 for Congress to agree on a relief package. Most of the city’s thirty thousand lead-based water pipes have yet to be replaced, forcing residents to continue to rely on bottled and boiled water. Five state officials, including the head of Michigan’s health department, have been charged with involuntary manslaughter. Meanwhile, the schools are still inadequate, there aren’t enough jobs, and too many children go to bed hungry.
This still infuriates me. But I do take some comfort in the compassion and generosity that many Americans showed when they learned about the crisis. One of the most rewarding parts of running for President was getting to see that spirit up close, in a million ways. For example, one day in September 2015, I held a town hall meeting in Exeter, New Hampshire. One of the residents who stood up to ask a question was a ninth-grade teacher, in the classroom for thirteen years, asking how we can help kids from low-income families find more opportunities for summer enrichment. Then a young woman stood up. She was just back from a year of working in a middle school in the Watts section of Los Angeles, through the AmeriCorps national service program. Next was someone who works with young survivors of commercial sexual exploitation and trafficking. Then a twenty-two-year veteran of the Navy with a son on active duty in the Marine Corps. One after another, these Americans asked me their questions, and each of them had his or her own extraordinary story of service and giving back to the community. That’s part of what I love about America. Those people in Exeter, and everyone who lent a hand to help out in Flint, are examples of how real change happens. Progress comes from rolling up your sleeves and getting to work.
To me, Flint was so much more than something to rail about on the campaign trail, even if outrage is good politics. And in this case, it’s possible that it wasn’t good politics. I don’t know if my advocacy for the heavily African American community of Flint alienated white voters in other parts of Michigan, but it certainly didn’t seem to help, as I lost the state narrowly in both the primary and the general election. Either way, that’s not what it was about for me. There were real live kids to help. Kids like Jaylon. And as I learned from Marian Wright Edelman nearly a half century ago, there’s nothing more important than that.
Marian had one more lesson to teach me. In the dark days immediately following November 8, 2016, when all I wanted to do was curl up in bed and never leave the house again, Marian sent me a message. Come back to CDF, she said. The Children’s Defense Fund was hosting a celebration in Washington for an inspiring group of kids who had beaten the odds, thriving despite poverty, violence, and abandonment. Before the election, Marian had asked me to deliver the keynote. Now she wanted me to know that it was even more important that I come.
It was hard to imagine giving a speech so soon after conceding the election. But if there was anyone who knew how to pick herself up, get back on her feet, and get back to work, it was Marian. She’d been doing it all her life and helping the rest of us do it too. For decades, I’d heard Marian say, “Service is the rent we pay for living.” Well, I decided, you don’t get to stop paying rent just because things don’t go your way.
So there we were, on November 16, together again at the Children’s Defense Fund. Marian stepped to the podium, and talked about our long partnership and all we’d done together to lift up children and families. Then she pointed to her two granddaughters sitting in the audience and said, “Because of all the paths she’s paved for them, one day soon your daughter or my daughter or our granddaughters are going to sit in that Oval Office, and we can thank Hillary Rodham Clinton.” I wanted to cry and curse and cheer all at the same time.
Sweating the Details
To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life breathed easier because you lived. This is to have succeeded.
“The decisions a Commander in Chief makes can have a profound and lasting impact on all Americans, but none more so than the brave men and women who serve, fight, and die for our country.” That was Matt Lauer introducing NBC’s “Commander in Chief Forum” from the deck of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Intrepid on September 7, 2016. I was standing just offstage listening to his introduction, nodding my head.
Lauer promised the forum would be an opportunity to “talk about national security and the complex global issues that face our nation.” That’s exactly what I wanted. With Election Day just two months away, it was time to have a serious discussion about each candidate’s qualifications to be President and how he or she would lead the country. This wouldn’t be a formal debate with me and Donald Trump onstage at the same time. Instead, we’d each do our own thirty-minute session answering questions from Lauer and the audience. I was confident that with a real focus on substance and a clear contrast of our records, Americans would see that I was ready to be Commander in Chief, and Donald Trump was dangerously unprepared.
Plus, I happen to love talking about foreign policy. As Secretary of State, I got to do that pretty much nonstop for four years in 112 countries. But as a candidate for President, I was rarely asked about anything beyond domestic issues. One exception was during a campaign stop in Iowa, when a voter asked a question about the dangers of unexploded bombs from the Vietnam War left behind in Laos. It was so surprising, I nearly dropped the microphone.
Lauer and NBC were promoting this forum as a chance to finally get serious about foreign policy and national security. I was slightly surprised that Trump had agreed to it. He had been tripped up on easy questions about nuclear weapons (he said that more countries could have them, including Saudi Arabia), NATO (he called it obsolete), torture (he was for it), and prisoners of war (he said he prefers soldiers who don’t get captured). He kept lying about opposing the Iraq War even after a recording emerged of him saying he supported it. And he had a penchant for saying absurd things such as “I know more about ISIS than the Generals do, believe me.” Nobody believed him. In fact, more than a hundred senior national security officials from Republican administrations publicly denounced him. Many signed a letter warning that Trump “lacks the character, values, and experience” to be Commander in Chief. They wrote that he would be “the most reckless President in American history,” and would “put at risk our country’s national security and well-being.”
Trump’s campaign signed up for this forum nonetheless. They won a coin toss and chose to go second. So there I was, waiting in the wings for Lauer to call me out to the stage.