“All of us face
hard choices in our lives. Life is about making such choices,” she said.
She run for the
presidential election in 2008 but her rival from the Democratic Party, Barack
Obama, defeated her in the nomination represented the party. After Obama
elected as the new President, surprisingly, he asked Hillary to serve in his
administration as Secretary of State.
Hillary opened
her memoir in the Chapter 1 titled “2008: Team of Rivals” with this paragraph,
“Why on earth was I lying on the backseat of a blue minivan with tinted window?
Good question. I was trying to leave my home in Washington, D.C., without being
seen by the reporters staked out front.”
That’s a quiet moment
when she was on the way to meet Obama with a very mixed feeling; disappointed,
exhausted, emotionally draining and physically taxing after she campaigned very
hard to the very end but lost. And now she was going to meet with her former
rival and knew what Obama would like to ask. “Only months before, Barack Obama
and I had been locked in one of the hardest-fought primary campaign in history.
Now he was asking me to join his administration, in the most senior Cabinet
post, fourth in the line of succession to the presidency,” she said.
Her dilemma
finally ended after a lot of advices from her colleagues, families and
especially from her husband, Bill Clinton. In the last paragraph of Chapter 1
she wrote, “The next month, on January 20, 2009, I watched with my husband in
the biting cold as Barack Obama took the oath of office. Our rivalry, once
fierce, was over. Now we were partners.”
In the next
Chapters of the memoir till the last, we can see Hillary’s road to 112
countries during 4 years of her tenure, and travelled nearly one million miles.
She faced a lot of hard choices in the diplomatic world when dealing with
conflicts, wars, terrorism, climate change, energy, and disasters that suffer
people in the world. However, her vast experiences previously as the first lady
and senator proven contributing a lot to her in carrying out the job,
intensively managing communication and negotiation among the world country’s
leaders.
It was tough
jobs, indeed, and we understand America – through Hillary – took position when dealing
with complicated and dangerous world.
The memoir is
also reflected her feeling as an ordinary human being (woman), for instances
when she met with Aung San Suu Kyi. And when her ambassador to Libya and three
other staffs were killed during raids in Benghazi, she mourned deeply but had
to be looked strong before the press corps as she had to deliver speech to the
American people about the loss. “I felt the heavy burden of explaining the
unexplainable to a country… I took a quiet moment alone in my office to compose
myself and think what I wanted to say…”
The hard
choices is a right title of this memoir. She was aware of it, and be brave to take
it. But whatever she decided, she will always be thankful for the chance to
serve her country.
“Our choices
and how we handle them shape the people we become,” she said.
***
Serpong, 11
Apr 2021
Titus J.
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