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“In the spring of 1971 I met a girl.”
“The
first time I saw her we were, appropriately enough, in a class on
political and civil rights. She had thick blond hair, big glasses, wore
no makeup, and she had a sense of strength and self—possession that I
found magnetic.”
“I
just went ahead and asked her to take a walk down to the art museum.
We’ve been walking and talking and laughing together ever since. And
we’ve done it in good times and bad, through joy and heartbreak.”
“I
asked her to marry me and she said ‘I can’t do it.’ So the second time I
tried a different tack. I said ‘I really want you to marry me, but you
shouldn’t do it.’ And she smiled and looked at me, like, what is this
boy up to? She said ‘that is not a very good sales pitch.’ I said ‘I
know, but it’s true.’ And I meant it, it was true.”
“We
were married in that little house on October the 11th, 1975. I married
my best friend. I was still in awe after more than four years of being
around her at how smart and strong and loving and caring she was. And I
really hoped that her choosing me and rejecting my advice to pursue her
own career was a decision she would never regret.”
“A
little over a year later we moved to Little Rock when I became attorney
general, and she joined the oldest law firm west of the Mississippi.
Soon after, she started a group called the Arkansas Advocates for
Families and Children.”
“On
February 27th, 1980, 15 minutes after I got home from the National
Governors Conference in Washington, Hillary’s water broke and off we
went to the hospital. Chelsea was born just before midnight. And it was
the greatest moment of my life. The miracle of a new beginning. The hole
it filled for me because my own father died before I was born, and the
absolute conviction that my daughter had the best mother in the whole
world.”
“Through
nursery school, Montessori, kindergarten, through T-ball, softball,
soccer, volleyball and her passion for ballet, through sleepovers,
summer camps, family vacations and Chelsea’s own very ambitious
excursions, from Halloween parties in the neighborhood, to a Viennese
waltz gala in the White House, Hillary first and foremost was a mother.”
“She
became, as she often said, our family’s designated worrier, born with
an extra responsibility gene. The truth is we rarely disagreed on
parenting, although she did believe that I had gone a little over the
top when I took a couple of days off with Chelsea to watch all six
‘Police Academy’ movies back-to-back.”
“The
rest of the decade sort of flew by as our lives settled into a rhythm
of family and work and friends. In 1983, Hillary chaired a committee to
recommend new education standards for us as a part of and in response to
a court order to equalize school funding and a report by a national
expert that said our woefully underfunded schools were the worst in
America.”
“Well,
by the time I ran for president nine years later, the same expert who
said that we had the worst schools in America said that our state was
one of the two most improved states in America. And that’s because of
those standards that Hillary developed.”
“When
I became president with a commitment to reform health care, Hillary was
a natural to head the health care task force. … In 1997, Congress
passed the Children’s Health Insurance Program, still an important part
of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. It insures more than 8 million
kids. There are a lot of other things in that bill that she got done
piece by piece, pushing that rock up the hill.”
“If
you were sitting where I’m sitting—and you heard what I have heard at
every dinner conversation, every lunch conversation, on every lone
walk—you would say this woman has never been satisfied with the status
quo in anything. She always wants to move the ball forward. That is just
who she is.”
“I’ve lived a long, full, blessed life. It really took off when I met and fell in love with that girl in the spring of 1971.”
“If
she wins, she is coming back for you to take you along on the ride to
America’s future. Hillary will make us stronger together. You know it
because she’s spent a lifetime doing it. I hope you will do it. I hope
you will elect her.”
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