Kennedys for Clinton

She stands for Democrats and for the nation, these family members say. 

By Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Kerry Kennedy January 29, 2008    

This is a wonderful year for Democrats. Our party is blessed with the most impressive array of primary candidates in modern history. All would make superb presidents.  We are supporting Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton because we believe she is the strongest candidate for our party and our country.  

While talk of unity and compromise are inspiring to a nation wary of divisiveness, America stands at a historical crossroads where real issues divide our political landscapes.  Democrats believe America should not be torturing people, eavesdropping on our citizens or imprisoning them without habeas corpus or other constitutional rights.  We should not be an imperial power.  We need health care for all Americans and a clean safe environment.  The loftiest poetry will not solve these issues.  We need a president willing to engage in a fist fight to safeguard and restore our national virtues.  

We have worked with Hillary Clinton for 25 years and witnessed the power and depth of her convictions first hand. We’ve seen her formidable work ethic, courage in the face of adversity, and her dignity and clear head in crisis.  We’ve also seen her two fisted willingness to enter the brawl when America’s principles are challenged. Her measured rhetoric, political savvy and pragmatism shield the heart of our nation’s most determined and most democratic warrior.  She has been an uncompromising and loyal ally for each of us in our battles to protect the environment, to promote human rights around the world and juvenile justice in America.  Hillary is a problem solver listening to people then achieving solutions by changing attitudes. Her transformational leadership was on display when she ran for our father’s Senate seat in New York, facing the rabid, heavily funded attacks from the far right and the difficulty of prevailing in traditional Republican upstate.  Traveling with her, we watched admiringly as she persuasively articulated an inspiring and unifying vision rooted in American values and history.  Then, through patience, hard work, leadership and political acumen she transformed many of those rock-solid conservative counties into solid Democratic strongholds.  We look forward to working beside her in the general election as she uses those same talents to change once rigid opinions and political affiliations across the nation.    

Like our father, Hillary has devoted her life embracing and including those on the bottom rung of society’s ladder—giving voice to the alienated and disenfranchised and working to alleviate poverty and injustice at home and around the world while urging Americans that we cannot advance ourselves as a nation by leaving our poorer brothers and sisters behind. She’s been an equally effective champion for women’s rights and human rights. Hillary Clinton, more than anyone, inspired the global movement on behalf of women and girls in developing nations. As a result of her efforts, millions of women around the world can now vote, go to school, own property, and enjoy rights we take for granted in our democracy.   She will use her position as the first woman president to further elevate the power of women around the world.  

Hillary’s towering global stature reflects America’s great humanitarian traditions. She has worked for peace in Northern Ireland and fought to bridge religious, racial, and ethnic divides from Bosnia to the Middle East to South Africa. She has been the human face of American democracy for more than a decade, showing a rare understanding that American values can only be exported by moral leadership, by a strong home economy, by a detailed understanding of the history and cultural backdrops of the nations we engage and by winning the hearts and minds of our brethren overseas. She understands as our current administration does not, the uses of power.  The world, she says, is hungry for American leadership, but will not accept our bullying. She knows the difference and will quickly re-establish America’s lost prestige and moral authority.  

Working as an activist, advocate, and public servant are not new to Hillary Clinton. Her political career has been centered in comforting the afflicted, afflicting the comfortable and reminding Americans what it means to be American.  As a young lawyer, she focused on children’s issues and legal aid.  She has always been fearless about engaging the most intractable  problems and the toughest opponents.  

As First Lady of Arkansas, she brought health care to rural areas and helped reform the state’s lagging education system. As First Lady of the United States, she courageously took on health care reform.  When a massive propaganda campaign by big pharma and the radical right derailed her efforts, she didn’t give up. She helped create the nationally acclaimed Children’s Health Insurance Program. That kind of persistence in pursuit of our highest ideals is the brand of leadership America now requires.  

Seldom has history confronted America with such daunting challenges: a catastrophic foreign policy that has cost us our international leadership and aggravated the threat of terror against our people, a misbegggoten war that is squandering precious American lives and dollars, a health care system that leaves millions of Americans suffering without coverage, irresponsible corporate power that is corroding our democracy, outsourcing our jobs, engineering tax breaks for the rich aggravating global warming and other environmental crisis and reducing our economy to shambles and  

We need a leader who is battle-tested, resilient, and surefooted on the shifting landscapes of domestic and foreign policy.  Hillary Clinton will move our country forward while promoting its noblest ideals.    

– By Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr and Kerry Kennedy

Posted by Holley Chant,  from LA Times