Hillary Clinton at Wellesley College Commencement: Part 2

I'm a bit late here, but I promised to say more about Hillary Clinton's commencement speech at her alma mater, Wellesley College. Clinton had, only a few months ago, lost a hotly-contested election to Donald Trump. The election left the nation quite polarized, with the Democrats feeling very distraught and mistrustful. Both sides believed in massive, extremely unlikely conspiracy theories. Furthermore, there was substantial evidence that the Russian government had interfered in the election by promulgating fabricated news stories. Clinton added unnecessarily to the controversy by using an unauthorized email server to conduct official business. She made the controversy even worse when she failed to be forthcoming about her email use.

Hillary Clinton

With that in mind, let us look at her comments about trust in government. Americans' trust in their government seems to be at an all-time low. Clinton's prevarication about her email system certainly did not enhance the public's trust.

Still, she made admirable comments about the importance of trust between government and citizens. This is obviously a two-way issue: the government must be worthy of trust, while the public must recognize goodwill from the government when they receive it. Both seem to have been lacking. Notice how she discussed the development of mistrust during the Vietnam War and Civil Rights era:

"We didn’t trust government, authority figures, or really anyone over 30, in large part thanks to years of heavy casualties and dishonest official statements about Vietnam, and deep differences over civil rights and poverty here at home. We were asking urgent questions about whether women, people of color, religious minorities, immigrants, would ever be treated with dignity and respect."

Clinton also noted that President Nixon earned great mistrust during the Watergate inquiries: 

"And by the way, we were furious about the past presidential election of a man whose presidency would eventually end in disgrace with his impeachment for obstruction of justice after firing the person running the investigation into him at the Department of Justice."

Still, Clinton ended with a message of hope. She reminded the audience that the nation survived the tumultuous 1960s, and that the nation was better because of it. The nation became more prosperous, and once-disparaged people were able to enter into full citizenship:

"But here’s what I want you to know. We got through that tumultuous time, and once again began to thrive as our society changed laws and opened the circle of opportunity and rights wider and wider for more Americans. We revved up the engines of innovation and imagination. We turned back a tide of intolerance and embraced inclusion. The “we” who did those things were more than those in power who wanted to change course. It was millions of ordinary citizens, especially young people, who voted, marched, and organized."

The message that she implied was this: the nation survived the traumas of the 1960s, and the nation would be able to survive the polarization of today. One lesson for us to learn from the past is that the United States has great resilience. It is also worthwhile for all of us to remember that the nation is stronger together than separate. Let us also put some faith in the nation's young people. 

Department of State photo

Here's my earlier post about this speech.