#ImWithHer: Hillary Is Experienced And Qualified To Lead
Hillary Clinton Is Clearly Better Educated And Surpasses Donald Trump By Leaps And Bounds In Terms Of Both Experience And What Qualifies Each Candidate To Hold This Nation’s Highest Office. The Evidence Is Clear: There is No Comparison.
Clinton Education:
According to Carl Bernstein’s A Woman In Charge, Hillary Rodham attended the public schools of Park Ridge, Illinois, where she often participated in extracurriculars and, as a young girl, dreamt of being an astronaut. Hillary attended Maine East High School, where she participated in student council, the school newspaper, and was selected for National Honor Society. She also served as class vice president and ran unsuccessfully for class president before transferring in her senior year to the new Maine South High School, where she was a National Merit Finalist, graduated in the top five percent of her class of 1965, and was voted most likely to succeed.
At the age of 13, Hillary helped to canvas Chicago’s South Side following a very tight presidential race (with some evidence of election fraud) for Richard Nixon in 1960. Hillary was raised in a middle class, conservative home and, ironically, began her journey in politics as a Republican. Four years later, she volunteered for the Republican presidential candidate, Barry Goldwater (Yes! She was a Goldwater Girl!). However, her conservative values were always tempered with a concern for issues of social justice that she learned from her mother, Dorothy, and strengthened by her Methodist Youth Minister.
Rodham earned admission into Wellesley College, where she studied political science. While at Wellesley, Hillary was an active student, building a list of accomplishments including, but not limited to:
- Becoming the head of the local chapter of Young Republicans
- Campaigning for several local campaigns, as well as for Eugene McCarthy for President (Notice the Political Shift)
- Elected President of Wellesley College Government Association
- Organizing Wellesley’s First Teach-Ins on the Vietnam War
- Worked with Wellesley’s Black Students to Recruit More Black Students and Faculty
- Senior Thesis on Poverty and Community, in part a critique of the tactics of radical community organizer Saul Alinsky (I’m not too fond of this point)
- Graduated with a Bachelor of Science with Departmental Honors in Political Science
- “In 1969, she appeared in Life magazine after giving the first commencement speech by a student at Wellesley. She received a standing ovation after shocking the audience by criticizing the first speaker, Sen. Edward W. Brooke.” In this speech she said, “The challenge now is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible.”
Hillary Rodham commenced her graduate studies at Yale Law School (1 of only 27 women in her class), “where she served on the Board of Editors for the Yale Review of Law and Social Action.” In her second year she worked at the Yale Child Study Center and took on cases of Child abuse at Yale-New Haven Hospital. She also volunteered at New Haven Legal services, providing free legal advice for the poor. Mirroring her time at Wellesley, Rodham continued to add to her list of accomplishments, including, but not limited to:
- Interning for Marian Wright Edelman’s Washington Research Project, which later became the Children’s Defense Fund. There, she interviewed the families of migrant laborers and reported her findings to Walter Mondale’s Senate subcommittee.
- Advised the Children’s Defense Fund
- In 1974, she went to Washington, D.C., as one of only three women out of 43 lawyers to work on the inquiry into the possible impeachment of President Richard Nixon as a member of the impeachment inquiry staff advising the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives.
- Received a Juris Doctor Degree from Yale in 1973
- Postgraduate study on Children and Medicine at Yale Child Study Center
- Consultant to the Carnegie Council on Children
Trump Education:
According to the Washington Post, Donald Trump attended a private school — Kew-Forest School in Forest Hills, Queens, where his father, Frederick, a very wealthy real estate developer, was on the governing board. However, Trump was a behavior problem and, by age 13, his parents sent him to New York Military Academy. During his senior year of high school he attained the role of “captain” at the military school, his only military-related qualification. According to the New York Times, Trump said military school in New York and military service were basically the same thing and it gave him “more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military.” Besides, he was fortunate to have an unbelievably high draft number and also heel spurs when faced with the possibility of service in Vietnam.
According to the Washington Post, “Trump attended college at Fordham University, a Jesuit school in the Bronx, for two years, before transferring to the University of Pennsylvania (after a “friendly” interview with an admissions officer, who happened to be a classmate of Trump’s older brother) and studied economics for two years, graduating in 1968 with a bachelor’s degree.” He was a student of the prestigious Wharton School of Finance; however, he did not continue on to the Wharton MBA program at Penn. He was noted to have “respectable” grades but he was seemingly happy to allow others to perpetuate a myth, in print, that he graduated first in his class. In contrast, William Geist of the New York Times reports that Trump’s commencement program from 1968 “does not list him as graduating with honors of any kind.”
Clinton’s Service and Political Experience:
1975
Hillary Rodham now, Hillary Rodham Clinton, moved to Arkansas and joined the faculty of the University of Arkansas Law School in 1975, where she taught criminal law, criminal procedure, and trial advocacy and ran the legal aid clinic and prison projects.
1976
In 1976, she joined Rose Law Firm, where she served as the firm’s first female associate and, soon, the firm’s first female partner. Here she often worked pro bono on child advocacy issues.
1977
In 1977, Hillary co-founded Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, one of the state’s first child advocacy groups (a state level alliance with the Children’s Defense Fund).
1978
In 1978, President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the board of the Legal Services Corporation. She served as Chair of the Board (the first woman to do so) from 1978–1981. During her tenure as Chair she fought back Ronald Reagan’s efforts to reduce funding.
1979
Hillary became First Lady of Arkansas when Bill Clinton won the Gubernatorial election of 1978. “Hillary made it her mission as first lady to improve the state’s lagging health care and education systems.” In this role, Hillary:
- Served as Chair of the Rural Health Advisory Committee
- “Led the Arkansas Educational Standards Committee, which greatly improved schools, and promoted programs that benefit women.”
- Named one of the most influential lawyers in America
- Named one of the most influential lawyers in America, Again
- First First Lady of the United States to hold a law degree
- Part of the innermost circle of advisors to the President, particularly with regard to appointments
1993
- The First First Lady to join the American delegation to Beijing for the United Nation’s conference on women’s rights (for which she was criticized). Hillary led the U.S. delegation at the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Many within the U.S. government didn’t want her to go and others wanted her to pick a less “polarizing” topic. But she was determined to speak out about human rights abuses, and her message became a rallying cry for a generation.
“If there is one message that echoes forth from this conference, let it be that human rights are women’s rights and women’s rights are human rights once and for all. Let us not forget that among those rights are the right to speak freely — and the right to be heard.”
1996
- Authors It Takes a Village and Other Lessons Children Teach Us (Best Seller, Grammy Award Winning Recording)
- Instrumental in establishing the nation’s Children’s Health Insurance Program — a Bipartisan effort that proved to be the largest expansion of public health insurance coverage since the passage of Medicaid in 1965.
- Helped to Create the Office of Violence Against Women
- Initiated and shepherded the Adoption and Safe Families Act
- Instrumental in the passage of the Foster Care Independence Act
- First First Lady to run for the Senate, Hillary became the first woman to serve as U.S. senator from New York, by a solid 55% majority.
- Served on four major Senate committees: Armed Services; Budget; Environment and Public Works; and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions.
- Re-elected to a second term in the NY Senate with 67% of the vote
- Hillary Rodham Clinton announced her candidacy for president in the historic 2008 election
- Focused on Women’s Rights and Human Rights
2009–2013
- Served as Secretary of State to the Obama Administration
- ‘Visited 112 countries, brought smart power — coupling diplomacy with the threat of force or sanctions — to U.S. foreign policy, and helped shape the global conversation”
- “Built a coalition for tough new sanctions against Iran that brought them to the negotiating table”
- “Brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that averted a war and protected Israel’s security”
- Made advancing the status of women and girls around the world a core part of U.S. foreign policy
- Champion for LGBT rights at home and abroad
2015
- Hillary Rodham Clinton announced her second run for the Democratic presidential nomination
2016
- HIllary Rodham Clinton Becomes the first woman in history to represent a major party in a U.S. presidential election.
Trump’s Service and Political Experience:
Donald Trump has never been elected or appointed to any public office at the local, state, or national level. He’s never served in the military and has no record of public service to review.
Trump, who began his real estate career with his father’s company upon his college graduation, is running for President of the United States based solely on his reputation as a successful businessman. The one piece of evidence that would substantiate his business savvy and economic success is a record of his income tax returns, which he refuses to make public, making him “the first major-party nominee in 40 years to not release his returns”. He told ABC that his tax rate is “none of your business.” In fact, according to the Washington Post, “The last time information from Donald Trump’s income-tax returns was made public, the bottom line was striking: He had paid the federal government $0 in income taxes.” This after he “regularly denounces corporate executives for using loopholes and “false deductions” to “get away with murder” when it comes to avoiding taxes.” Further, Trump has quite a list of business disasters, pointed out here by Time Magazine and Gawker. Not to mention this impressive list of Chapter 11 Trump bankruptcies.
Another noted recent accomplishment of Donald Trump was his stint as executive producer and star of the reality tv series, The Apprentice and its celebrity offshoot. The show was successful, running 14 seasons. NBC renewed The Apprentice for a 15th season, but, on June 29, 2015 NBC severed its relationship with Trump saying, “At NBC, respect and dignity for all people are cornerstones of our values . . . Due to the recent derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants, NBCUniversal is ending its business relationship with Mr. Trump.” Trump entered the presidential race as a contender in February of the same year.
Finally, Trump is an accomplished author, with more than 15 best sellers, “his first book, The Art of the Deal . . . considered a business classic and one of the most successful business books of all time.”
All things considered, I have to mention here that I made an intentional second and third pass through this post because I was feeling like it was about as fair and balanced as Fox news. I felt like I should be giving Donald Trump more credit for his accomplishments. I went to his website in pursuit of the positive. Unfortunately, I found his website lacking in positive information on his qualifications that would help him measure up to his opponent. The Washington Post offers mixed reviews. At best, Select International tells us what Donald Trump can teach us about leadership. Perhaps this video can shed a little light:
Bottom Line:
This post isn’t about scandal or lies or accusations. It’s about education and qualifications. When we do a side-by-side comparison of the candidates, it’s plain — Hillary Clinton is far more qualified to be the president of the United States than Donald Trump and, as it turns out, this isn’t a coincidence. (If you have not read this linked article, read it now!)
