On April 6, 1993, speaking at the University of Texas on the 75th day of the Clinton presidency, Hillary Clinton invoked Lee Atwater. He was the Republican dirty tricks expert who tutored Karl Rove in gutter politics. Atwater had died of cancer two years earlier, an ordeal which led him to repentance for his repulsive life. From Clinton’s speech:
He said the following: “Long before I was struck with cancer, I felt something stirring in American society. It was a sense among the people of the counry, Republicans and Decmocrats alike, that something was missing from their lives — something crucial. I was trying to position the Republican Party to take advantage of it. But I wasn’t exactly sure what it was. My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society was what missing in me. A little heart, a lot of brotherhood.“The eighties were about acquiring — acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn’t I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn’t I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye-to-eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up with its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime.
“I don’t know who will lead us through the nineties, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society — this tumor of the soul.”
Fifteeen years later Hillary hoped to speak to this vacuum, but Obama spoke better, and there you have it. As the Bible says, The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.
