How One of the Greatest Presidents in History Never Became a Reality

Let’s look at the issues facing our nation in 2017. America was in full recovery from a near depression caused by a Republican president between 2001 and 2009. However, challenges remained for the next person to sit behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, including the improvement of healthcare, the opioid crisis, the high cost of college education, immigration reform, income inequality, fair taxation, the rights of women and the LGBTQ communities, among others.

In July of 2016, both parties held their conventions and selected their nominees for President of the United States.

Among Republicans was a long list of men and women who were woefully unqualified to lead a nation of 330 million people. Scott Walker, Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Chris Christie, Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, and John Kasich. Only the last two, Bush, and Kasich, had any qualifications which might have made them viable candidates.

Remember, this was the Republican convention, so it was no surprise that the least qualified candidate in history became their nominee, a failed businessman, a sexual predator, and a lifelong racist, Donald John Trump.

Trump’s life had no record of a single accomplishment. His business interests had been saved at least twice by two foreign nations, the Saudi Royal Family and Russian oligarchs. He knew nothing about government at any level and had an enormous ego, placing himself as his only concern. He never once showed any interest in serving others. When he left office in January 2021, he proved that old, white men never change. He did nothing for the majority of four long years.

Hillary Clinton was the most qualified presidential candidate in history.

Hillary Rodham, a Republican, like her parents, worked for the Barry Goldwater campaign in 1964. A year later, she enrolled in Wellesley College, and her political views began to change. The murders of Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Kennedy impacted her life, and she switched to the Democratic Party, working for Eugene McCarthy, the anti-war candidate.

In 1969 Hillary entered Yale Law School, where she met Marian Wright Edelman, a lawyer and children’s rights advocate. Children and family law became her lifelong passion.

Hillary Rodham met Bill Clinton at Yale, but after graduating in 1973, they went their own ways: Bill went back to Arkansas and Hillary to Boston, where she worked for the Children’s Defense Fund. In 1974, she was part of the Watergate investigation, planning the impeachment of Richard Nixon. Her assignment ended with Nixon’s resignation. She moved to Arkansas and taught at the University of Arkansas School of Law. After their marriage in 1975, she joined the Rose Law Firm in Little Rock, where she later made partner.

Hillary continued with her career after Bill’s election as the Governor of Arkansas in 1978. During her husband’s time as Arkansas’s governor, 1979-1981 and 1983-1992, she continued to work with agencies involving children.

When Bill Clinton became America’s 42nd president in 1993, she became the most active First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt in the 1930s and 1940s. It was she who became the primary advocate for Universal Healthcare.

Difficulties haunted Clinton’s marriage throughout Bill’s presidency. Accusations of infidelity and the Monica Lewinsky scandal undoubtedly affected her personally, but her public life never waivered from the direction she chose back in Law School.

In 1999 she embarked on a new direction when she announced her intention to run for the Senate seat from New York vacated by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. She was elected by a wide margin in 2000.

She was easily reelected in 2006, and the following year she declared her candidacy for the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party in 2008.

After Barrack Obama defeated her in the primaries and won the Presidential election in 2008, she was nominated and easily confirmed for the position of Secretary of State. She was praised for her work by her peers as she improved America’s relationships around the world.

In 2015 she once again declared her intention to become our nation’s first woman president. The remainder is history.

The 2016 election will forever remain one of the two most controversial presidential elections in history. Combined with the interference of Russian President Vladimir Putin, James Comey’s last-minute announcement of a new investigation into Hillary’s use of a private e-mail server, and the fact that the mainstream media gave Trump five times more coverage than all other candidates combined, her huge lead in the polls disappeared on November 8, 2016, and although she won the popular vote by more than three million ballots, Trump was gifted the Electoral College.

The events over the four-year period between 2017 and 2021 would have been far different if the most qualified candidate in history had returned to the White House in 2017. Our nation would have moved forward and not backward. The issues which faced our nation would have been addressed and solutions found.

While Trump failed to lead our nation through a national crisis as Covid-19 began taking lives, Hillary would have been out front of the situation in late 2019. January 6, 2021, would never have happened, and our nation would have been more unified and far less divided.

Mistakes happen, but this was the biggest of all time. Some of the damage done to our nation by a man who hated his own country will never be repaired.

Op-ed by James Turnage, Novelist

Sources:

Pew Research Center: Top voting issues in 2016 election
Politifact: Hillary Clinton’s top 10 campaign promises; by Lauren Carroll
Britannica: Secretary of state and 2016 presidential candidate

Featured and Top Image Courtesy of Gage Skidmore’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License
Inset Image Courtesy of Michael Vandon’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License