Dear Hillary, why I miss you...

Dear Hillary,
I am writing to tell you how I am missing you and that I'm sorry I never got to know you. I think you made some serious errors and I need to mention them first. You campaigned on more experience and on being the safer bet in case of an emergency. And of course NOW took up your candidacy like a hammer and evoked the resentment of women like me whom they said would be traitors if we didn't vote for you. You know that kind of thing can incite oppositionalism even in the best of us.

You said he didn't have the experience and you did. But the human part didn't come through enough, only the competetive part. You didn't show us the clips of you in the years you made deep personal contact with those for whom you fought. I apologize for my own distractin--exactly the theme on which I am writing--and for my being sucked in to the hole into which you were placed, and from which it was hard for you to emerge.

You brought one specific thing to the campaign which perhaps would not be your favorite subject but added in any case, to your being less than avidly excessive in your moral/religious superiority. You, as your daughter Chelsea, as well as your husband, President Bill Clinton, had been through a personal tragedy in the arena of sex and the city and sex and the President. While most of us now know that JFK (whom many of us will never stop idealizing), ran a constant stream of flesh back and forth to the White House, the press wasn't of that mind then, to persecute a President for anything other than lies or acts of treason. Helen Thomas, the acclaimed journalist and member of the White House Press Corps for 40 years, talked, when she did her HBO documentary (and her wonderful 2006 book Watchdogs of Democracy?: The Waning Washington Press Corps and how it has Failed the Public) about this change of climate from which you and your family suffered.

But you, unlike many others, did learn to tell people when it's none of their business, and you helped your daughter do the same or perhaps she helped you or perhaps you helped each other. You set an invaluable example regarding the dignity of our personal lives, histories and actions. You do and did us a favor with your integrity at a time when candidates answer to anything and the words "It's none of your business" are usually considered impossibly politically correct. Witness the cruel annihilation of reputation of John Edwards, about whom I'll speak shortly.

Best of luck and hope to meet you in person, and to see and feel your strength and presence on the political scene and horizon. We need you, we need your spunk. We need to be refreshed--not by the self-mockery that late night hosts and Maureen Dowd have been craving--but of simple forthrightness, even when it's a one word answer that you give.

Thank you and Happy Labor Day Weekend.