In 1998 I wrote a Letter to Hillary Clinton

And she wrote back. I just wish I knew what I'd said to her.

Photo source: Library of Congress

Note: I’m cross-posting this piece from Constant Commoner, my sister blog here at Substack. If you subscribe to both, thank you! I’m sorry for the duplication. I do this sometimes when I think the topic fits in both places.

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It’s June, the air is cool, the windows are open, and I’m deep cleaning the shelves behind my office door. There are things back there I haven’t seen or opened in 25 years—Notebooks and file folders and stacks of things that must have been important at one time or another. It’s rare that I dig in like this, mainly because it’s an all-day job, what with having to look at everything again, sorting and then remembering and then going off on a tangent because one thing leads to another and another and maybe I’ll do something with this some day! And almost all of it goes back.

But this time I realized I have a new fancy file cabinet and much of this stuff could go in there. Brilliant! I hauled out a stack of folders and began to go through them. Within a few minutes I found an envelope that stopped me cold. In the upper left corner it said, “The White House”.

I thought maybe it was a Christmas card. We used to get them from Jimmy and Roslyn when they were in the White House. But the envelope is dated June 22, 1998 and it’s addressed to me.

Inside is a thank you letter, a very nice thank you letter from Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I have to believe it’s authentic, and her signature looks right, but I can’t for the life of me remember sending her a letter that would have prompted such a response. I have completely forgotten ever writing a letter to Hillary Clinton.

I can’t find a copy or a draft of what I might have written. I’m usually a stickler for keeping copies of letters I send out—especially ones of this magnitude (Who am I kidding? This is actually the first of this magnitude.), but it was 25 years ago and apparently I do clean out my shit sometimes.

Looking for clues, I went back to see what was happening around the time I decided to write to the then First Lady. In June 1998 her husband, Bill Clinton, was serving his second term as president and the Monica Lewinsky scandal was in full swing. I hated that phony, politically motivated scandal and I was furious at the president, who, knowing how many enemies were in the bushes just waiting for him to mess up, took a chance and fooled around and then got caught.

I couldn’t imagine what Hillary must have been going through, but I also can’t imagine the scandal was what I was writing about. Would I really have done that?

Looks like I did—maybe a little.

“Your words of encouragement and support…”.

In May of that year all hell was breaking loose. Ken Starr was on the scene. A judge had struck down Clinton’s request for executive privilege and 30 Democratic House members voted with the Republicans to force him to release what were no doubt incriminating documents. That would have been a month before I received the letter from the White House; time enough for my letter to have been scanned and approved and put on Hillary’s desk, where, miracle of miracles, she answered it.

She goes on to talk about “individuals who share a vision of a better life for all Americans”, so it must have been broader than the scandal. I hope.

And it looks like I shared some ‘thoughts and ideas’. I would give anything to know what they were. Were they good ideas? Just okay? Did I embarrass myself and Hillary was just being nice?

How could I have forgotten I had this amazing letter? Didn’t I spend those months after the 2016 primary pushing for and supporting Hillary for President? I did. Wasn’t she on my mind for what seemed like years? She was.

But here’s the truth, and it makes this find even more baffling. In the years between 1998 and Hillary’s run for president in 2015-16, I wasn’t always on her side. I supported Barack Obama over Hillary in 2008, for example, with no reservations at all, though I would have loved to see a woman in the White House.

I confessed all in a blog I wrote in June, 2016—the post called “When Hillary Cracks the Glass Ceiling for Some of Us It’s Personal”, the gist of which was to explain my decision to support her:

 During the 2008 presidential election, I supported Barack Obama over Hillary. My initial image of Hillary was as the embattled First Lady who messed up our chances at universal health care, and as the woman who said she would never just stand by her man like Tammy Wynette, but then, when Bill’s philandering became a reason for impeachment, she did. I had heard enough about her to believe she wasn't trustworthy, she wasn't real, she wasn't ready or fit to be president. I barely remember the arguments for her. I vividly remember the arguments against her. They’re the same arguments we're seeing this time, updated to include her time as Secretary of State, adding another seven years' worth of grievances.

What?? Had I completely forgotten that I’d written an encouraging letter to that very same Hillary Clinton in June 1998, at around the very time she was, in fact, standing by her man?

I had completely forgotten. So now the mystery deepens. Why did I feel compelled to write that letter to Hillary? I don’t know. And I’ll never know. My memory gets worse, not better, and there’s almost no chance any of it will come rushing back to me.

All I know is, whatever it was it became water under the bridge when she won the 2016 primary and had to go up against Donald Trump. I wanted Hillary to break that glass ceiling and open up the sky to the rest of us, I wanted her to show Trump and those other misogynistic jackals what big-time losing looks like, but more than that I wanted her to prove herself as the top dog in a country that never wanted to give her a chance.

By that time, I had no doubt she could handle it. I’d read more of her history from people who knew her through her good works. Whatever reservations I’d had before meant I was wrong. Dreadfully, stupidly wrong. I tried to make up for it by writing things like this:

I've been thinking for a long time about the ways Hillary Clinton might possibly appease the press and get them to look at her as a living, breathing whole person and not just Bad Hillary. I think I've finally got it.

She needs to stop being who she is and be someone else.  She could change her name to--I don't know--Mother Teresa or Mother Jones or Jo Schmo from Kokomo.  It's clear she can't go on as Hillary Clinton.

The Hillary she has lived with all her life has to go. The private Hillary can no longer compete with the public Hillary whose persona, crafted over more than 25 years by people who don't even know her, has now become a caricature. It's incredibly difficult to run for president as a caricature, even with an opponent as cartoonish as Donald Trump.

I worked and worried to get her elected, I cried bitter tears when she lost, I've marveled at her intelligence and her grace in the years since, and I’m on Hillary’s side for good. I’m not surprised that she’s seen now as a level-headed senior stateswoman, a lifelong feminist and advocate for the people, a keen observer of those things the Republicans and the press have missed when it comes to Donald Trump.

She stops just short of “I told you so”, and if anyone has a right to say it, she does.

I’ll treasure this letter now. Better late than never, I know, but it’ll go to my granddaughter when I’m gone. My granddaughter, whose very first vote went to Hillary.

I want her to know her grandmother said something that caused Hillary Rodham Clinton to write back when she didn’t really have to.

It would have been so much better if I could only remember what it was.

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