Brilliant minds work in parallel directions: mine, President Obama’s, and Mike Piazza’s. Together, they provide one of the strongest pushbacks against those who criticize Hillary’s performance as Secretary of State.
As a baseball nerd and Teddy Roosevelt fan, I was thrilled when Piazza - the former Dodger/Mets catcher – at the end of his Hall of Fame induction speech last weekend quoted from Teddy’s 1910 “Man in the Arena” speech, the more complete text of which includes:
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
This is the Teddy-esque version of a meme put forth in numerous ways, such as “Those who can’t do, teach; those who can’t do either become critics.”
I immediately jumped on this and – like most of us Kossacks do in crafting ‘speeches that we think should be heard’ (usually in the shower) – thought that someone at the Democratic Convention starting the following day ought to incorporate this speech (or its message) into a defense of Hillary. One the things that has annoyed the ‘ell out of many of us about the Benghazi and email server attacks on Hillary Clinton is the unwillingness of her critics to recognize that, for someone taking on a huge if not back-breaking job, it’s not surprising for her to have maybe improperly handled a handful of emails (say, compared to yesterday’s NCGOP Tim Kaine lapel pin foul-up) or to have had only a single major attack on a US foreign embassy/consulate/etc. (particularly in light of the 20 [leading to 66 American deaths] that occurred during the George W. Bush administration). Actually, that’s a damn good track record, although it sounds weak to say that only four consular officials died while on her watch.
I immediately found and printed out that segment of the speech and shared it with my wife and son. So, you can imagine that I almost jumped out of my chair to high-five myself when this popped into Obama’s speech last night, when he was referring to the partisan attacks on Hillary:
That’s what happens when you’re the kind of citizen Teddy Roosevelt once described – not the timid souls who criticize from the sidelines, but someone “who is actually in the arena…who strives valiantly; who errs…[but] who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement.” Hillary Clinton is that woman in the arena. She’s been there for us – even if we haven’t always noticed.
Think about it. This woman has spent 40 years of her life under brutal and usually unabashedly partisan scrutiny with a mammoth public record for nay-sayers to draw from. Of course, she’ll have made mistakes readily found by her enemies, particularly in flying to all corners of the globe across numerous time zones dealing with unpredictable foreign leaders. She could have instead remained a Senator and safely waited her turn while under the radar. I have more respect for – and I’d much rather have as President -- someone who’s taken the risks of and lived with her errors in a life of public service than someone who’s been out of government life altogether and left no such footprints, for good or ill. I have nothing but scorn for those second-guessers who purport to criticize her without taking such risks themselves.
As Tim Kaine would say, “Can I be honest here? ... I'll take that as a yes". I wouldn’t even be disdainful of Trump’s failures in his business endeavors – except for the fact that (a) he’s using his business record as an exemplar of his business acumen, (b) he handled the failures dishonestly by taking money out while others were left holding the bag, and (c) he lied to investors and customers going in about both what the businesses would do and the extent of his hands-on involvement (or not) in the enterprises. Hey, Lincoln failed (in business and politics) much of his life, too.
Related, personal note: In the 1970’s, my father left a successful career as a stockbroker to open a local solar energy business. It failed, largely for reasons out of his control (withdrawal of the government subsidy program, defective design of their core supplier’s equipment, etc.). My parents lost their dream home, my father returned to stockbreaking (family joke) and my mother went back to work, and they slowly re-built their retirement nest egg, and they lived comfortably until their deaths. I remember my mother half-jokingly (okay, quarter-jokingly) contemplating strangling my father for putting the family’s finances at risk, but I had to admit that I least gave my father a measure of credit at putting himself out there and taking that big risk, rather than playing it safe and settling for doing something that he thought was mind-numbing.
So, for the Daryl Issas and Trey Gowdy’s of the world who want to second-guess every decision Hillary made, F**K YOU. At least she was in the arena trying to accomplish something, rather than sitting back and second-guessing others. And for the sheep who mindlessly nod their heads in complicity with those attacks, who would you really rather have your daughter grow up to be: a Hillary Clinton or an Ann Coulter? And this point should be made over and over again at Sunday dinner tables to gruff, manly-men, Trump-supporting uncles. Because ‘real men’ respect risk-takers, right?
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Side notes:
1. Others making use of this quote include Nelson Mandela and, upon exiting the White House, Richard Nixon.
2. Props to Chris Matthews (or the MSNBC staff) for immediately knowing not only the speech but the fact that it was delivered at the Sorbonne in 1910.
3. Please don’t drill into the story about why the decision to start the risky business was more my father’s than my mother’s; it’s complicated and that’s not the point.
4. I have no idea whom Mike Piazza supports in this election and do not ascribe any electoral preference to him… and that's not the point either.