It is one of the oldest inspirational mantras American parents recite to their children: No matter who you are, no matter how humble your origins, you can grow up to be president. Small wonder, then, that Barack Obama's kindergarten teacher told reporters that about 40 years ago her 5-year-old charge said in an essay that he wanted to grow up to be president. Bravo for Barack!
And boos - plus more than a few guffaws - were heard when the humorless Clintonistas seized on Hillary's rival's childish idealism as proof positive that the Illinois senator has been scheming for most of his life to achieve the ultimate high national office.
Longtime lust for the Oval Office would seem to be the last thing Bill and Hill ought to be accusing someone else of having, however amusing it is that the pair, almost caricatures of self-absorbed baby boomers, are so eager to impute to others the same overweening ambition and sense of entitlement they clearly feel. And it's dispiritingly symbolic of the corrosive cynicism that seems to dominate politics today.
About the same time the Clintons' hired hands were mocking a kindergartner's dream, Michelle Obama, Barack's wife, was bringing her practiced message of optimism and hope to an overflow crowd who'd braved icy roads to make their way to an old renovated mill building in Peterborough.
For close to 45 minutes, without notes, the tall, slender mother of two spoke easily and passionately about her life and her husband's and of their hopes for their family and for their country. And through the whole talk she held her audience, from bright-eyed 7-year-old girls to old men with walkers, spellbound. When she was through, she got a standing ovation.
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Hillary was once where Michelle is now, working and advocating for her husband, even as the powers-that-be scoffed at their youth and idealism.
And the two couples are, superficially at least, remarkably similar. Bill and Barack were both largely shaped by devoted single mothers and nurturing grandparents. Hillary and Michelle were reared in more conventional two-parent families. Most important, all four were imbued with a fierce respect for education and self-improvement.
All had spectacularly good educations. Michelle is a graduate of Princeton, Hillary of Wellesley, Barack of Columbia and Bill of Georgetown. The four went on to law degrees from the crème de la crème of law schools - Harvard for Michelle and Barack, Yale for Bill and Hillary.
And, decades apart, the two couples began their careers not in Washington, scrambling up the entitlement ladder, but back in the hinterlands, devoting their political and educational skills at least partially to public service. Many years ago, Bill and Hillary Clinton spoke to what Abraham Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature." As are Barack and Michelle Obama today, they were the idealists, challenging the establishment.
Of course they succeeded wildly. Today the Clintons are the establishment. They lead lives of extraordinary power and privilege, cosseted by legions of acolytes. They have become creatures of caution. Hillary Clinton, who once joined her husband in brashly challenging the status quo, has run a campaign bereft of spontaneity, her every utterance seemingly poll driven and focus group tested.
After several decades of trench warfare, she seems -
despite the fact that overwhelming numbers of voters lament that today's poisonous political partisanship is tearing our national civic fabric asunder - disquietingly eager to continue the old battles. Her husband is loudly in her corner.
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Now it's Barack and Michelle Obama who are speaking to those "better angels of our nature" and threatening to kick the Clintons into a well-earned retirement from running the world. And it's Hillary and Bill who are hell-bent on stopping their seemingly natural heirs.
Much has been made of the extraordinary choices Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton present to voters - one potentially the nation's first black president, the other its first woman chief executive.
But voters will confront another choice when they pick Democratic ballots on January 8: Do they opt for a past that they perhaps remember more rosily than realistically? Or do they choose the future with its uncertainty and promise? It's a question that, years ago, Bill and Hillary Clinton might well have posed themselves.
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