Hillary Rodham Clinton may not be the best president the US never had, but nothing became her more than her statesmanlike concession speech — when she got round to making it.
She would have passed out of history if the continuing protests and the surge of migration inquiries hadn’t indicated a new healing role. Indians are especially grateful to her, for without matching Donald Trump’s business interests, she displayed a special feeling for India. Inder Kumar Gujral told me Bill Clinton said at their very first meeting: “India has two ambassadors in the US, Naresh Chandra and my wife!”
Richard F Celeste, who was staff assistant to Chester Bowles and himself became ambassador in 1997, credited her with changing Clinton’s jaundiced attitude to India during his first term. India impressed her during a three-day tour in 1995 even if she didn’t impress some Indian women journalists who called her “phoney”, “insensitive” and “solely decorative”.
“Promise me, Dick,” she insisted as soon as Celeste was appointed, “that you will take him to India.” She wished it was the next month. Celeste was an unusual ambassador. While working with Bowles he helped Stalin’s daughter, Svetlana Alliluyeva, Dinesh Singh’s sister-in-law, escape to the US, and made a range of Indian friends, including Jojo Karlekar, the Calcutta social activist, and the artist Satish Gujral. When the president told him he was looking forward to visiting India, Celeste detected Hillary’s hand.
“I suspect she said something like, ‘You must visit India. You must get a feel for this diverse, exciting, challenging country.’ Ever since that moment, President Clinton has had a particular desire to come to India.”
Hillary Clinton proclaimed her interest publicly. Wearing a pale pink pantsuit and pearls, she lit the ceremonial lamp at India’s Independence Day celebrations in Washington and charmed the 1,300 guests while Kabir Bedi compèred the ceremonies and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright applauded. Albright (whom some called “Half-bright”) alone did the honours on Pakistan’s national day.
Hillary Clinton also ensured Gujral and Bill Clinton didn’t meet cold on the former’s first visit to the US as prime minister. As he recalled, she “warmly insisted” when they met at Mother Teresa’s funeral in Calcutta, “that all four of us (the two leaders and their spouses) must get together in New York” before the formal meeting.
She invited him to a reception for dignitaries attending the UN. Bill Clinton received Gujral at the front door of New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel as a gesture of deference to a senior. Gujral said that at least six times during their 40 minutes together how much he was looking forward to visiting India the following year. Since he was taking Chelsea, it would have to be during her school holidays.
Bill Clinton’s younger brother Roger claimed he and their mother were surprised when Bill brought Hillary home the first time. “This girl from Yale was not the kind of woman Bill had dated in his high school and undergraduate years. She was really different. No make-up. Thick glasses. Rather shapeless brown hair. After a few awkward moments, Bill excused himself and took his mother and brother into the tiny kitchen. There he said, ‘Look, I want you to know that I’ve had it up to here with beauty queens. I have to have somebody I can talk with. Do you two understand that?’”
Sarah McClendon, the veteran White House correspondent, who recounts that story, adds: “Yes, folks, Bill likes Hillary for her mind. And so do I.” Although she adds Hillary Clinton “just gets prettier every year”, it’s probably the mind that saved a fractious partnership all these years.
Clinton was denied the pride of seeing her shatter the glass ceiling as America’s first woman president. “Someday, someone will, and hopefully sooner than we might think right now,” she said. But it would be a symbolic change like Barack Obama’s presidentship. Her comment reminded me of the English anti-suffragette, who believed that any woman worth her salt should be able to make her husband and son vote the way she wanted.
Hillary Clinton’s hope that Trump will be “a successful president for all Americans” matters far more. So does her promise to regard “him with an open mind” and give him “a chance to lead”.
Given the angry resistance to his incumbency, Trump can rise above the misgivings aroused by his campaign to be “president for all Americans” in an inclusive and harmonious presidency only with the help of the Democrats. He needs Hillary Clinton more than she needs him.
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