Conversation with Hillary Rodham Clinton at Rutgers University

you [Music] you you [Applause] welcome everybody welcome [Applause] it's a good afternoon and it is my privilege to welcome our students faculty and staff as well as a very special welcome to our alumni and the very many friends of Rutgers who have joined us today thank you for coming thank you for being with us on this special occasion a conversation with Hillary Rodham Clinton a woman of incredible accomplishments and a legacy of breaking through grass ceilings and blazing new trails at Rutgers University in New Brunswick which is a public land-grant institution not only are we engaged in research on government politics and public service but through events like these we shaped the national conversation with a view towards strengthening our democracy and our society the event this afternoon helps us continue in this tradition of public service and let us not forget that amongst our students in this audience our future leaders of the nation [Applause] here at Rutgers just within the last two years we have had visits from to name a few Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor David from speechwriter for President George W Bush we had congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis Vice President Joe Biden [Applause] and of course President Barack Obama [Applause] the event today that brings Secretary Clinton to campus has been organized by Eagleton Institute of Politics for more than 60 years for more than 60 years Eagleton through high quality research education and public service has linked the study of politics with its day-to-day practice by developing innovative programs that asks new questions about understudied subjects in American politics Eagleton focuses attention on how the American politics the political system works how it changes and how it might work better for future generations the event today is the Clifford P K's professorship of public affairs at Eagleton it is in honor of senator case says 34 years of service to New Jersey in the United States Congress the Rutgers Board in 1980 voted to establish the program in his name and this program brings prominent respected public servants to campus like it has done today Eagleton Institute has awarded this lectureship to leaders such as former President Gerald Ford former Vice President Walter Mondale and former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill we are Rutgers are so proud of Eagleton Institute of Politics and let me mention its director Ruth Mandel who [Applause] whose leadership over two decades that Eagleton has made it the premier Institute that it is today and in addition to being or at least I tried to be a good host to Secretary Clinton my other important job this afternoon is to introduce you to a Rutgers alumna Lorna Balmoral although Lana calls Washington DC her home she's in New Jerseyan at heart she was born and raised in Mahwah she attended Rutgers College graduating with honors in 1993 later earned a master's degree from the London School of Economics in 2001 in 2003 she began working in then senator Clinton's office as her director of scheduling since then she has worked closely with Secretary Clinton and joined her at stops in the Department of State as well as on the presidential campaign trail in 2016 Lorna has been a guest speaker at Eagleton and we are so pleased that she has joined us today so let me now invite Lana Val Moro to the podium to introduce Secretary Clinton please help me welcome hello Scarlet Knights thank you very much - chancellor dutta and to the entire community for hosting our event here at rutgers on behalf of our office I can tell you that we have been overwhelmed by the response to secretary Clinton's visit today you have given new meaning to the term March Madness twenty five years ago I was an undergraduate here at Rutgers College it probably goes without saying that attending college then and now are significantly different the way we communicated was different there was no email or social media we worked on our papers on shared computers with something called floppy disks go ahead and Google that cell phones were rare and the news was measured in days and weeks not by hours and minutes and yet much of my experience is what I imagine yours is today we worried about our grades and our overall GPA we read the targum we pulled all-nighters we attended Rutgers sports games decked out in red I lived in Frelinghuysen and on Senior Street I went home on the occasional weekend to see my family and have a home-cooked meal in Mahwah and I avoided taking the bus whenever possible all of us wondered what we would do with our lives once we graduated from Rutgers there was one thing I did know as an undergraduate I had a growing passion for politics and public service while at Rutgers I volunteered for the 1992 clinton-gore presidential campaign after college I continued to work on campaigns which led to Capitol Hill and life in Washington and then one day I got a call senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was looking for a director of scheduling this was more than my dream job this is my don't dare to dream because it will never ever happen job I started the interview process and on one cold December day I was invited up to New York for my final interview with the boss herself my Amtrak train had a huge issue in northern Maryland and when it finally did pull into Penn Station I had 12 minutes to get there on time in a torrential rainstorm I arrived at my interview late and soaking wet she took one look at me and said are you okay putting me completely at ease it was my first time seeing something I've now seen so many times how warm real and sincerely kind she is she brings out the best in the people around her I feel incredibly lucky to be on her team I worked side-by-side with tremendous people who I consider my extended family the education that I received here the confidence and the sense of purpose I found at Rutgers it has taken me farther than I ever dreamed and I am so proud and grateful to be a Rutgers alum there have been millions of words written about senator Secretary Clinton I could introduce her with a list of lifetime accomplishments but you already know so many of them no matter what the title she has held or what's responsibilities she has given she there is one common theme she has worked tirelessly to make our country and our world a better place she has set a new standard of leadership and dedication to service wherever she goes that was true in her early days as a lawyer and an advocate for children and families as first lady in the US Senate at the State Department on the campaign trail and it continues today as the person who has prepared her daily schedule for the last 5475 days give or take a few I can tell you that there is no one who works harder or fits more life into her days than she does she makes every day count Secretary Clinton occasionally quotes a beautiful passage by John Wesley do all the good you can by all the means you can in all the ways you can and all the places you can at all the times you can to all the people you can as long as you ever can I can think of no one who lives those words better than Hillary Clinton she is the bravest strongest smartest most resilient thoughtful person you will encounter she simply defies convention each and every day working for her has been the honor of a lifetime it is now my privilege to introduce the director of the Eagleton Institute Ruth Mandel and Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton [Applause] oh thank you this is great and didn't want to do a wonderful job I'm so excited she's back here at Rutgers with me Ruth I'm used to the Eagleton drawing room yeah a little bigger a little bigger Wow ah thank you Lona for everything she has been so helpful so wonderful for so long in the work that we have done and especially in arranging this event and Wow and welcome on behalf of the Eagleton Institute of Politics we're thrilled to host Secretary Clinton I'm gonna call a Hilary from now on but as our 2017-2018 clifford PK's professor of public affairs and before I begin I want to extend sincere thanks to Senator cases family I see joining us for today and always supporting us in this work yes and also of course you've met Chancellor data as well we want to thank the Division of Student Affairs the division of undergraduate academic affairs and Rutgers athletics for coming together everyone came together to make this day possible our team could not have done this without your team and speaking of our team I want before we begin to make a special shout out and thanks to Eagleton's Randy Chen molesky and in it then now Cohen who have worked tirelessly to make today's event possible so this event has been billed as a conversation which suggests something small and intimate but that was before our community's eveness to see you compelled us to shift to a basketball court and one faculty member or I might have mentioned to you wrote and suggested we go to the stadium we stopped short of that but on behalf of all of us thank you for being here for saying yes and welcome back to Rutgers thank you thank you [Applause] [Applause] I'm going I'm gonna ask some questions and we've asked for questions from the public and all in just first several of those as we go along so let's begin as strange as it may sound and certainly to some of you here you are the most well known person people don't know some people know one or more of your titles Lona mentioned them an extraordinary series of roles and service to this country and yet with all that people often say they don't really know who you are as a person sometimes I say I don't really know what that means but we hear it nonetheless clearly you are hugely admired and populous so a case in point is this crab today and the people on our waiting list who will never forgive us a more lasting sign is that you have topped gallops list of most admired woman in the world 22 times [Applause] and I think those of you who might not know this this is almost twice as many times as the amazing woman you often mention a top of your most admired list Eleanor Roosevelt and yet and yet you're also widely caricatured and attacked as was she a student at Rutgers School of Biological and Health Sciences ask the question similar to one of mine what are the biggest misconceptions people have about you i dad what do you wish people knew or understood better about you well first Ruth let me say how pleased and honored I am to be here and especially to participate in the Clifford Peak case professor of public affairs I admired senator case from afar and delighted members of his family are here today I kind of yearn for those years when Republicans and Democrats work together on behalf of the common good of our country and I'm delighted to be here with Ruth whom I've known for a very long time and I admire greatly also the work of the Eagleton Institute and the Center for Women and Politics so today I have no idea what Ruth is gonna ask me she has no idea what I'm gonna answer and it may be fitting we're in a basketball court because we'll throw the ball back and forth to try to make it interesting for you over the next hour and a half the question that Ruth just posed is obviously one I've given some thought to because I hear it myself I hear what Ruth was alluding to like well-known but not well known or known but not understood and I take you know I take that to heart because I've been in the national public eye now for 25 years ever since 1992 but I have often thought that I am a kind of Rorschach test for people who are trying to make sense not just of me personally but of women's roles and women's expanded opportunities in not only America but around the world so that I'm seeing not just as an individual as Lona who I just adore and has literally done my schedule as she said for all these days knows I'm very grateful for my friendships and my colleagues and I spend a lot of time nurturing those I feel like I've got a tremendous circle of people who do know me and do understand and do support me and I I'm very grateful for all of that but when you're in the public eye you get snippets of a person and I think it's gotten even more difficult not to have a fragmentary view of anybody in the public arena today so I can't I probably can't answer it fully I think people are very curious and in part the curiosity is because of my coming onto the stage in a you know in a way as the first woman of my generation to be in the White House as a first lady having worked as a lawyer as an advocate prior to my husband ever being elected president so that raised questions and and I think people drew all kinds of assumptions or caricatures from that I did as you might recall play a very active and public role in trying to bring about universal health care reform so that everybody would have access and I don't think I can overstate how controversial that was and so there I was you know doing what I thought was an important mission that my husband and his team had asked me to do and every day I was just you know in the vortex of political struggle and so I I think that I myself personally and the role of women in our society we kind of converged one might even say collided at a point in history and I think it is still to some extent going on so I I can only hope that people understand and maybe know more about me because there's a through line to my life my commitment to my own family to children and families to women's rights and opportunities to trying to make us a more perfect union I really believe all of that because I was given a great support in my own life by my own family and a great public school education and everything that has made me who I am so I would hope that people would spend a little bit of time you know actually looking behind the image or the picture and you know that that is I think what we hope for all of us we want to be known as who we are and judged positively or negatively based on what we actually do not what people say we did so I think that's my best answer I mean the image and picture are so complicated most admired woman in the world more than any other woman and at the same time and right now people saying get off the public stage and shut up which is something we're hearing all the time you know how do you well I you know that that began to happen after the election yeah and you know the election was pretty traumatic and so you know I think there were a lot of people who were like oh my gosh I don't want have to think about it I don't want to have to hear about it I totally that's how I felt I took a lot of long walks in the woods you know drank my share of Chardonnay I did what I could [Applause] to deal with it but then I did decide that I had to figure out what happened because I was confused about it and ended up you know writing a book called that and I was really I was really struck by how people said that to me you know mostly people in the press for whatever reason like oh you know go away go away and I had a one of the young people works for me go back and do a bit of research they never said that to any man who was not elected [Applause] I was kind of struck by that and I'm really glad that you know Al Gore didn't stop talking about climate change and I'm really glad that John Kerry went to the Senate and became an excellent Secretary of State and I'm really glad John McCain kept speaking out and standing up and saying what he had to say and for heaven's sakes Mitt Romney is running for the Senate so III think you know look I think it was the moment in time because of what had been expected to happen in the election which obviously did not and then a lot of angst and second guessing and finger-pointing and everything that went on but I am really committed to speaking out and doing what I can to have a voice in the debate about where our country is going because maybe we'll get to it I won't be surprised to hear me say that I have some concerns I think we need to you know we need to all be talking about it not just me but every one of us needs to be speaking up and and taking part [Laughter] so when we established the Center for American women on politics in 1971 part of this whole era that we've been involved with people told us there was no such subject as women in politics certainly nothing to study and we were establishing it at a university almost 50 years later we're very proud that this Center is the nation's really premier resource on all things women and politics and we fight always we always point to you as a model of women's political leadership you recently wrote the most important work of my life has been to support and empower women I'm proud I'm proud that it's the work I'm most associated with and it remains what I'm most dedicated to Debbie Walsh coughs director for almost 20 years has been saying that this work to change the face of political power is a marathon not a sprint right now we're experiencing an unprecedented moment of political engagement on the part of women how do we sustain that and how do we sustain the institutions that are supporting that engagement partisan non partisan academic activists how do we keep from regressing in the face of backlash oh I think you know I'm so encouraged and actually optimistic about the number of women particularly young women who are running for office who are being active in politics even if they themselves are not the candidates I've been supporting groups that are recruiting women to become candidates training them as you have done at the center over so many years so I think there are there really three interrelated challenges the first which I really believe we are on the brink of crossing over is to convince women to get involved in politics and despite despite how difficult it is going in with your eyes wide open that you will be criticized you will unfortunately face all kinds of attacks online offline in you know the real real world so-called but it's worth it it's worth it to go out there to advocate for what you believe to be the person trying to make the change you want to see and the numbers of women who are running in these midterm elections and in the special elections that we've seen over the past year and three or four months is very encouraging to me so we've got to keep those numbers we have to keep the pipeline full it's not one and out it's one after another keep getting more women to run keeping and convincing young women to be part of it and also encouraging women to work in politics not everybody wants to be the candidate it's not for everybody and yet you saw Ilona up here probably the most important person to any candidate is her scheduler because you have a precious commodity known as your time and your energy and you have to trust totally the person who's making the decisions and their logistical and political and you really have to put your whole faith in that person so it's a it's a very complicated job that requires all the skills that she learned here at Rutgers so there are roles for people who never want to be a candidate as I hope many of you will consider this the second thing though is yes there there is something of a backlash I understand that and it's not only in our country it's in other places around the world because when you make enough progress when you change enough laws or regulations or norms or challenge you know preconceived notions about women and what they can do or should do there will always be discomfort and there will always be people who will want to pull that progress back and you have to understand that's part of breaking through glass ceilings and moving forward and bringing others with you so you cannot allow yourself to get discouraged about that because it's going to happen and finally if you're new to politics new to being involved in making change it is easy to get discouraged because it takes so long and there are so many setbacks and if you go into politics or public policy changes believing so strongly in what you want to see happen you're advocating for you name the issue that you care about for equal pay or paid sick days or paid leave which by the way are being considered in state government right now here in New Jersey and if you care about those issues you can call your representatives and your senators and the governor's office and you get into it and you think well who's against these things right or you're advocating for climate change or you're advocating on behalf of those brave young students from Parkland for common-sense safety measures [Applause] and you find out that there are a lot of people who don't want that to happen and they are has determined if not more so than you are because they have other interests they see the world differently they make money from it they have ideological reasons for it the biggest challenge we face is keeping up our momentum of sustaining the energy that I have now seen across our country and we just saw we saw first of all in the March the day after the inauguration and now we've seen it on the march for life and recognizing that that's so important and to bring people with you and to share that energy and to build those coalition's but it will all come to naught if you don't show up and vote so at the end of it everyone who cares about any of these issues has to turn yourself into a get-out-the-vote person to get everybody you know especially young people for whom these decisions will have decades of impact to show up and vote because we can have all the rallies and all the marches and all the other events that are possibly imaginable but if we don't change the people making decisions we're going to be discouraged and we can't let that happen so I want to go back to that in a minute but first I want to ask something that a student in the School of Arts and Sciences sent she writes which is related to this issue broadly after the disappointing 2016 election many young women took to participating politically in droves but for people of color like me nothing has changed she continues how do you see the predominantly white political landscape changing within the coming years and how do we provide the resources to people of color to become equal participants in the process [Applause] because that's one of the most important questions we have to ask an answer for ourselves I started an organization called onward together won't surprise you to hear that I believe in that and I am funding about a dozen groups that are young people some of them had an organization before the election some of them started literally the day after the election and they are recruiting candidates and in particular candidates of color they are recruiting women and in particular women of color they are organizing to train people to be candidates particularly people of color to get the same access to resources that anybody should be able to get if you want to run as a candidate for local state or national office to really be a resource to encourage and recruit and train and help support people from all walks of life but with a special emphasis on people of color now it does come down though as we were just talking about who's willing to run and who's willing to put yourself out there and we need to have more encouragement and support and recruitment of candidates who represent every community in our country and in some states those are much more diverse communities than in other states but what I've been encouraged by in the last year is to see a lot of people running for the first time so you know an african-american running for Congress in a in a district that has historically been Republican but that's not gonna stop her Native American running for the first time in a state that is you know dyed red but they're still gonna get out there and make the case on behalf of the people that they want to represent it does take it does take courage I'm not going to I'm not going to understand what it takes internally the confidence and the courage to step up there particularly if you're a person of color particularly if you're young but I think you will find at least I hope and I'm doing everything I can through my organization you will find more support than you might have a year five or seven years ago and we've got to keep that going we've got to make sure that our party's structures at the local state national level are really welcoming and supportive of people who historically have felt marginalized or left out you know we are we are at a really really important turning point in America and I believe that our diversity our vitality the dynamism of our young people has got to be supported and lifted up because that is what will get us through the period we are in now and push us better and stronger into the future [Applause] swinging around against to the to the question of women in the campaign and early in the campaign you said and I'm quoting you I'm not asking you to vote for me because I'm a woman I'm asking you to vote for me on the merits but then you added that one of those merits was that you're a woman can you talk a little bit about the merit of being a woman and both as a candidate and as an officeholder well I really believe in based on my experience I've seen it up close that being a woman in a political campaign or being a woman officeholder based on our experience as a daughter a wife a mother a grandmother gives us a a different life perspective and and that's something that we should own and be proud of because every person who runs for office brings his or her own life experiences to the campaign and to the voters and I I tried to say in the campaign that as Ruth just quoted I knew I was running as a woman I couldn't have run as anything else very honestly so I knew I was running as a woman but I wanted people to know that and embrace that but also to look at what I would bring to the office were I elected and in my eight years in the Senate I worked closely with the women of the Senate Democrats and Republicans we had we had a dinner every month we shared concerns some of them policy issues and what to do about a problem some of them campaign questions some of them like what do you do with your purse when you're at an event and there's nowhere to put it so we really let our hair down and we just talked about what it was like being a woman in the Senate in those years and it was very revealing because even though we might have had different partisan labels attached to us and a number of areas we found common cause and it was a real reminder to me that there may be different ways of getting something done but if you could start by a shared perspective about what a problem is and then help bring people to an awareness that there's something we can do you can then debate the details because obviously if you're a Democrat from New York like I was or a Republican from Alaska like Lisa Murkowski is you might have a different idea about how to do something or whether it's important to do but having those conversations it was almost unique and that was a better time than what we're seeing now you know people don't even talk to each other anymore they don't socialize with each other they're gone they're not even in Washington other than maybe Tuesday Wednesday and up until Thursday afternoon when they're back in their states or districts it's really hard to cooperate with somebody if you don't even see them as a person you just see like a walking R or a walking D and we've lost a lot because of that so I'm hoping that we each bring something to the debate but we can't have the kind of problem-solving I think we should have if we don't listen to each other and if we walk into a room already believing you have nothing to learn from someone because you know they're Republican you know they're a Democrat we are in a world of hurt you know I worked with practically every Republican that I served with I worked on common cause on issues that he had an interest in and I sought help on matters that were particularly my state and I will tell you after 9/11 when New York was attacked if I had not had the support of a Republican president and Republican leaders in the House and the Senate we would have never gotten the help we needed to rebuild New York and we would never have eventually gotten all the help we needed to take care of first responders and others who were sickened by what happened um I should I should actually know this but in our the women in the Senate still meeting I believe their dinners having dinner I believe they're I don't know if it says regular as it was with us but I believe they still so they're able even in this atmosphere yes yeah and and on a couple of issues it really you know it was important to have bipartisan support and it would grow out of those personal conversations around the dinner table right and there was an understanding in those days at least started that there were certain issues we're just not going to talk about as we know we can't get and it was all off the record sorry I mean you wouldn't leave the dinner and say oh you know I've convinced you know Susan Collins to do this or you or leave the dinner and say oh well you know I can't convince her to you it was all off the record because look at at the heart of everything our relationships relationships your closest friends and family your colleagues your neighbors and then out from there and if you don't build those relationships I told a group earlier over at Eagleton that when I was elected in 2000 from New York the then Republican leader Trent Lott was quoted as saying well maybe lightning will strike before she can get here I got there and by [Applause] by the end of you know my my 8 years there he was quoted as saying oh she is so great to work with she helped us on Katrina and getting the response that we needed because to him before I actually showed up and talked to him and met with him and worked with him I was a caricature and I know what that felt like you know I had a lot of work to do because again going back to Ruth's first question you know the the misimpressions the inaccuracies whatever you want to say about them gave people a view of me that was totally at variance with reality but it was the view that they were getting you know I was there for a couple of weeks and it was before I had my permanent office in the Senate and so all of us who were new were in the basement of one of the big buildings and we were all camped out there starting our work and and a Republican senator came to see me he said he wanted to meet with me and so I brought him in a little cubby hole of an office that I had and he said I'm here to apologize to you I said for what he said for everything that I said about you and thought about you I mean it was it was a kind of a poignant moment but a little disconcerting and I said well well I I'm sure I should apologize to you for thinking the same things but that would have never happened if we hadn't been about to become colleagues and now I look at the Senate and it just seems even more divided than we were back in those days so much more partisanship as opposed to cooperation so I am I am hoping that people will demand that members of Congress actually work with each other and don't play games and don't stop debates and don't take all or nothing' positions and maybe we can get back to actually working together which would be my hope sort of like they caught a virus or something because some of the people there now were there when you were there right and are they not talking to each other now but they used to I think that they may be talking but it's only pleasantries because they're being watched you know both parties have their faults I will I will premise what I'm about to say and we can all do better and I can certainly do better I mean obviously in the heat of battle and political back-and-forth I've said things that you know I I would like to take back we all are like that but I do worry that what's happened to the Republican Party is that it's being held captive by a very small group of powerful forces we have seen the power of the NRA for example and some of the very wealthy patrons of the Republican Party are so demanding if you if you deviate from their stated requests they will fund somebody to run against you in a Republican primary they will dry up your money they will make it really difficult now I would still like to see some Republicans stand up and say go ahead and try it and defend themselves but I understand I understand how intense the partisanship is within the Republican Party so that you worry about somebody on your far right coming in to try to defeat you in the primary and you end up kind of going along and wondering what you can do in the future and the only way to remedy that is to make it very clear we are just not going to accept that kind of politics you know I was the first person to run for president who had to deal with both citizens united and the gutting of the Voting Rights Act so with citizens united it was all bets are off more money than we've ever seen and being spent in ways we still to this day don't know I mean the NRA spent more money against me than they've ever spent against anybody and all these other groups were just pumping it out because with the Citizens United decision we can't stop it and we can't even follow it and we often don't even know after the fact and then the Voting Rights Act which was gutted opened the door to voter suppression like we haven't seen in 50 years and so people are being turned away from the polls because they don't have the exact right ID although they bring everything else they possibly can bring and they're being from voting rolls because maybe they haven't voted in a year or two and now if things don't look like they'll go your way you've got a governor in Wisconsin trying to stop elections so the problems are deep and they are ones that if we don't address regardless of party that's why we I'm so I'm so missing John McCain's voice right now because you can disagree with John but he will stand up for democratic values and democratic institutions and other Republicans who have spoken out are retiring they're leaving right here in New Jersey and in Pennsylvania and in states across America they're leaving because they know they will be shown no understanding by the hard right and the money that funds it so this politics is always messy and you know go to Eagleton and study political history and and you'll see that for yourself but it's different now because we have rigged it we've rigged the game we have rigged the money opening the door to unaccountable money giving corporations the right to influence elections having the facade of charitable groups influencing elections the role the Russians played the role of all of this should make every American regardless of party preference say wait a minute let's get back to as level a playing field as we can and let's be sure that we know what is being said and paid for in our own election [Applause] I have to I have to do this for my Freshman Seminar so I'm teaching the seminar Freshman Seminar called a woman for president question mark and and the other day I just want your reaction to this for the record the other day the other day I said before before you know you were coming here they knew you were coming here and I and I said so how long do you think it will be before we have a woman president and I found their answer a tad depressing they said 20 years mm-hmm what he'd said I hope what are you okay so let's talk about this I used I used to say I needed it to be before I got too old to dance at the door you're right you know in my book what happened I wrote a whole chapter titled on being a woman in politics and I did it because having gone through the campaign having not only experienced it firsthand but a lot of anecdotal stories and then a lot of research that was done before during and after the campaign it became clear that you know there is there's a there's a barrier a barrier to envisioning a woman as our president and I I really thought we would knock that barrier down and break that glass ceiling but I realized that it's going to take it's going to take some work I hope it doesn't take 20 years but bringing it out into the open to discuss may very well help us begin to clear the way so you've all heard people say well I'd vote for a woman just not that woman and since I'm often that woman I do hear that and so immediately after the election I watched as potential women candidates none of them have said they would be interested in doing this but potential women candidates began to get hammered so you all remember when Elizabeth Warren was on the floor of the Senate reading the letter from Coretta Scott King right [Applause] and and it was a very critical letter of Jeff Sessions and so Mitch McConnell basically told her do desist to stop talking I happened to be watching it and I saw Elizabeth's face I mean again I was in the Senate for eight years I don't ever remember this happening I watched Elizabeth's face and I saw her you know sort of gather herself and then start to talk again and and McConnell basically said she was told to desist nevertheless she persisted and ordered well but wait but ordered her off the floor and the the presiding officer in the Senate ordered her off the floor and I was watching this in total absolute bewilderment I watched her leave and she sort of hung in the doorway watching and then one of our good colleagues senator from Oregon Jeff Merkley he came to the podium of his desk and he read the Coretta Scott King letter and nobody said a word okay next thing I saw was Kamala Harris a former prosecutor a former attorney general and again it had to do with Jeff Sessions who was appearing before I think the Intelligence Committee she was on and she was cross-examining him I mean I did that to witnesses sometimes you know it wasn't particularly pleasant but if you're trying to figure out what happened you owe it to your constituents to drill down and so common law was doing that she was ordered by the chairman and another Republican member to stop so I'm sitting there thinking whoa this is a lot bigger and deeper than even I thought and I want you to ponder that because those two women were doing their jobs and they were doing their jobs in a in a way that their male counterparts in the Senate do them every day you get up and speak and you criticize somebody you sit at a hearing and you ask tough questions that's part of the job description so in my chapter on being a woman in politics I said look we have to call this behavior out and we should be very clear that we still don't have enough women in politics and we still don't have enough women in elected office but it's about time that women were allowed to be themselves the way men are allowed to be themselves and [Applause] you know years ago I was a trial lawyer and I tried cases mostly in Arkansas and I tried cases with a lot of men on my side on the other side representing other parties and they came in all sizes and shapes they were tall men in short men in fat men and thin men and loud men and soft speaking men and they were all taken at face value Wykeham don't like them but they had all these different modes of presentation if you will and I was telling the Eagleton students I was trying a case in a place called Batesville Arkansas and we had a little break and I walked back into the courtroom and the front bench was filled with men and camouflage and lots of you know three or four or five day beard so I said the bailiff who are they and he said well they're hunters they've been in the deer woods and they came in for supplies and they heard there was a lady lawyer and they wanted to see her well I felt that way sometimes during this campaign let's go see the lady running for president because you know again Mayo candidates come in all sizes and I've been on enough stages with enough men to know that you know sometimes they get going and they yell right some of them even pound the podium some of them shake their finger I never heard any of them called shrill and you know I'd get going and I confessed you know I know I'm supposed to be very demure and very careful and not show a lot of emotion and I'd get up there and you know I'd kind of get going and then oh my god did you see how shrill she was wait a minute you here was before me and who was after me [Applause] I one of my experiences and watching one of the many experiences in watching all of this during the 2016 campaigns was watching one candidate consistently wag his finger and and I remember saying to a couple of people mail you know if a woman did that she would be in a lot of trouble wagging your finger at the audience and I didn't hear anyone really talking about it that much really interesting it's obvious you know it's it's the it's in the DNA I mean we are still working all this out and I understand that I really do I think that because we don't have enough women you know think about you know during the Republican primary and you know Trump insulted everybody but he insulted the only woman on the stage for how she looked remember and so there there are just these you know these assumptions these these stereotypes that you play into and that everybody has rolling around in their head it's not like it's just a group of people everybody has it and and I you know I confess to you know sometimes not being as smart or sensitive as I needed to be or could have been but you know you want to just sort of say what you want to say and present yourself as you want to present yourself and yet you know you're constantly bearing that burden I was I was also I also mentioned I write about this in the book I was actually criticized for preparing for the debates and in the and and I was criticized by members of the press and I I thought that was so odd because you know I did have a little first-hand experience watching people running for president prepare for debates you know my husband would go away for you know a week and we go decamp somewhere and they drill him and yell at him and he prepared endlessly and you know President Obama's same thing it's not a pleasant experience because you have your team telling you how terrible you are but it's supposed to prepare you for actually being able to do it so and that first debate I guess picking up the cue from the press somehow you know I was being pictured you know as the as the fourth grade girl who prepares and does her homework right and raises her hand and and wants to do a good job and all of that I mean that's the way it was being sort of portrayed and so you know Trump said yeah I mean you actually prepared for this debate you know I first I thought that's a new insult you know and and I said yeah and I'll tell you what else are prepared for I prepare to be President so [Applause] crazy [Applause] I think you have a few friends here [Music] [Applause] and as someone who grew up in Vienna and barely escaped the Holocaust my mother would say from time to time that it could happen here and I was I would be very dismissive of that I would dismiss it and I dismissed her comments and her fears as implausible I now find it shocking I'm even about to ask this question but I I don't want you to talk about what are your concerns about the stability of our democratic institutions and structures in these tumultuous moments and what for you is the essence of American democracy well I am I am fundamentally optimistic and hopeful but I don't think that optimism and hope is warranted unless we do what we're supposed to do as citizens so I I worry about the degradation of institutions the dismissing of norms and values because remember a democracy is fundamentally held together by trust you can disagree with somebody but at the end of the day you have a common interest in how we make decisions you have an awareness of the importance of facts and evidence on which to base those decisions you recognize the absolutely essential role of the press and you protect that [Applause] and you believe in an inclusive economy and an inclusive society where the rights of minorities are protected as well and so the you know the pieces of how this democracy works are kind of clunky and they don't always move smoothly and we've made Lord knows our share of mistakes and we've had the make up for it and we've had that you know try to keep moving toward that more perfect union but at the end of the day enough Americans have rallied to those fundamental beliefs and that's why I'm optimistic because I think enough Americans are doing and will do just that I would like to get back to where Republicans and Democrats argue about all the policies that separate us and try to figure out the best path forward but right now I'm more worried about whether our Constitution is going to be honored whether we will see the rule of law protected whether we will have the predictability and stability that we need in foreign affairs you know as a former Secretary of State I am deeply worried about the loss of leadership and leverage that the United States is currently experiencing you know we have a we have a group of real adversaries and competitors and some are the same some are different but you know we do have a and an ongoing challenge from China we have a very aggressive set of challenges from Russia we have an ongoing worry well placed about Iran about Islamic terrorism and extremism so you know we have some real problems that we need to be addressing and that requires us bringing our friends and allies together not alienating them and walking away from them and I am worried that our word is no longer trusted and that the prospects for the kind of peace and prosperity and progress that we have spent decades building up since world war two are dimming so there's a lot to be concerned about and I understand that you know for enough Americans it turned out that the prospect of the unpredictable reality TV campaign was just too good to turn off but now we've seen it and we've seen it now for more than a year and I think many Americans are beginning to ask a lot of questions about what to expect and how this is going to turn out so I'm hoping that the worst the kind of question you asked me Ruth is just never even approached we never get to that but it will require people turning up and voting in these midterm elections and it will it will require a lot of Republicans to take back their party and to put their country back into the equation for the Republican Party going forward and it will you know it will not be easy and I just want to say a word about what we are discovering about the way our elections were impacted by Russia and WikiLeaks and Cambridge analytic and all of that we're not anywhere near the bottom of understanding this one thing we do know is as has been testified to repeatedly the Russians are still in our elections they think they had a pretty easy first run and they are going to be involved unless we come together as a country and unless we have leadership from our administration and our Congress and States to do much more to secure our elections and we've done up until now and this whole question of cyber warfare I don't know if you've read what's happening in Atlanta but Atlanta has been shut down by a ransom warfare attack so the Atlanta city government one of the biggest cities in our country has just been paralyzed because hackers have gone into the city's computer system and it shut everything down and they're demanding a great deal of money in order to open it back up so you have criminal actors hackers who are hacking for stealing credit cards and stealing personal information and demanding ransom and some of those criminal hackers are connected with States some of you might remember there was a big hack of Yahoo a few years ago four people ended up being indicted two were criminal hackers and two were Russian intelligence agents and what the Russians will do is try to employ hackers so that they will then be able to say well we didn't do it but of course it's all part of the same plot and I mention that because we need a National Commission to look into what actually really did happen and what could happen in order to protect our elections and every state should do everything it can to get to the bottom of what goes on in your own state and I know that you know in Virginia they ran some tests to show how easy their their computers their electric voting machines were to be hacked they did away with it and went back to paper and at some point I worry that we don't know what we don't know my friends we don't know and when they say well you know the Russians got into 21 states and their voter registration files but nothing changed I'm sitting there thinking well how do we know because no state wants to share the information because every state is a little embarrassed and so they're trying on their own to figure it out and the federal government could care less it appears because the current administration think it benefited them but having negotiated with Vladimir Putin he is not a reliable ally so you don't know who we will go against next so everybody should be worried about this I I don't have time for all the questions I want to ask I do want to kind of put one thing forward in the context of what you've been talking about is you know I've been for years disturbed by what I it's a complicated subject but essentially civic education and what people don't know they don't know about the institutions they don't know who their representatives are there lacks about voting we've had generations of students who've said well it's okay to be apathetic because what does that have to do with me what the government does you know and I sometimes would throw out well if they instituted the draft again you'd see you'd vote but we are seeing the March after at the inauguration and this March for our lives the Parkland response and it does look to me like a defining moment it looks as if it's a national ironically your defeat and this horror in parkland and other horrors that the black lives matter movement is about it looks as if it's a national civics lesson and that people are beginning to understand that what they do matters and voting matters and elections have consequences but I don't I don't need to make a speech here but what I want to say is is the only way we'll really know this is we're putting an awful lot on the 2018 election we are to see if people have learned the lesson the basic was you know civic education you know Ruth I I really hope this is a turning point and I hope it's a it's a turning point for a lot of people particularly young people and that's what was so powerful about the students from Parkland and their willingness to speak up and speak out and and and go after the NRA and and politicians who do their bidding and and I think that the consciousness has been certainly expanded about the connection between something that we can't abide the murder of all those students by someone who should have never gotten near a gun and how we try to honor their loss as well as all the others who have been victims of gun violence and that requires voting and you know I think some people get a little bit weary they say well that can't be that easy well it's not easy because most people don't vote and most people don't show up and most people don't see it as the powerful tool that it is and I'm hoping that in this election this midterm election and enough people will maybe for the first time or maybe for the first time in a long time say look I was really moved by what happened at parkland or I'm sick were the only country in the world not in the Paris agreement on climate change or I don't like what they tried to do to healthcare or whatever the motivator is enough people will say okay I know what I'm going to do and what I'm going to do is to go and vote and it won't be easy but I think it's doable and that's what I'm hoping comes out of all of this amazing energy and emotion that we have been seeing over the last weeks and months and that's why I said I'm fundamentally optimistic because you know the American people end up you know doing the right thing and sometimes it takes a little while longer than you wish and we can get crazy detours or get diverted but at the end of the day we don't want this incredible experiment in self-government and pluralism and dynamism and opportunity to founder and we don't want to turn decision-making over large parts of our lives to unelected you know powerful interests we want to be in a position where we are calling the shots in our towns and our counties and I States so I'm so I'm so happy you're here that I would love to go on but I'm sure you have a few other things to do so but I'm gonna bring this to a close by ending with something from what happened and you wrote this paragraph and about about Anand you'll of course immediately know what I'm talking about about an event that you spoke out less than 10 days after the November election it was at the request of your first boss Marian Wright Edelman founder of the Children's Defense Fund and I would like to read a paragraph from the book describing that event so there we were on November 16th together again at the Children's Defense Fund Marian stepped to the podium and talked about our long partnership and all we've done together to lift up children and families then she pointed to her two granddaughters sitting in the audience and said because of all the paths she's paved for them one day soon your daughter or my daughter or our granddaughters are going to sit in that Oval Office and we can thank Hillary Rodham Clinton [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] so I had a couple of other words that I will dispense with but I just want to thank you for all these years of smarts and grit and determination and getting back up again and daring to compete and being an inspiration to all of us thank you thank you thank you also [Applause] thank you very very much you

Channel: Eagleton Institute of Politics

Views: 2,361

Rating: 4.6226416 out of 5

Keywords: Trump, Obama, Election 2016, Election 2020, Bernie Sanders, Women, Gender, rights, diversity, CAWP, Center for American Women and Politics, Shirley Chisholm, Feminism, feminist, intersectional, intersectionality, election, America, United States, US Senator, Bill Clinton, Secretary of State

Id: dmZIdq0eGR8

Length: 81min 26sec (4886 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 04 2018