When singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell sang at the Grammy Awards earlier this year, the song that made her a star more than fifty years ago struck a different chord for at least one person watching.
Hillary Rodham Clinton said, for her, it was almost like hearing “Both Sides Now” for the very first time: “I felt that, because when I first heard it, I had no idea what she was talking about. And then, of course, it happened to me, and to see love from both sides now, then to see life, all of the ups and the downs and the extraordinary opportunities and setbacks, everything that happens in a life.”
Clinton said that poignant performance inspired her to do something that doesn’t come easy: opening up in a new book, called “Something Lost, Something Gained” (to be published Tuesday). “It’s not my comfort zone, I’ll be honest,” she said. “I’ve always been a pretty private person.”
But as she approaches her 77th birthday, the former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state says she is finally willing to share some of the wisdom she’s gained – and what it has cost her.
“There were setbacks that I got back up from and kept going, so I feel something gained over a long life is a way of looking back and saying, ‘What did you do with the gifts and opportunities you were given?'”
Personal losses
One of the toughest setbacks: losing people that Clinton had turned to, over and over again, at low times in her life. High on the list: Betsy Ebeling. The two were once grade school chums. Ebeling showed up out of the blue at the White House when Clinton thought her husband’s presidency could be over. “She just showed up,” she said. “That’s the kind of friend she was.”
Ebeling died in 2019. “And I miss her every day,” Clinton said. “And I had a period, in 2019, where I lost another dear friend, Ellen Tauscher, who’d been a stalwart ally of mine, politically and personally. Then I lost my younger brother, and then I lost Betsy, all in the space of three months.
“I had a hard time coping with that, and it took a lot of long walks, and deep breaths, and prayer, and just constant awareness of, yes, I lost these three very important people to me in a very short period of time.”
Love and marriage
Still at her side is the man she married in 1975. Clinton says time has also given her a deeper perspective on love and marriage, as she approaches her 50th wedding anniversary. “Can you believe it? It’s pretty shocking to me,” she said.
Moriarty asked, “Was there ever a time when you thought you might not quite make it?”
“Oh, you know there was. You know there was!” Clinton laughed.
The Clintons both went to counseling: “And I mean, it was really hard. One day, I’d wake up and say, ‘OK, no, I’m done.’ Another day, I’d wake up and I’d say, ‘I gotta keep, I gotta keep trying to see this through and figure out what is it that I want? And what is it I feel right about? And how do you rebuild trust and how do you rebuild the relationship? And is it worth it? Is it something I want to invest in?’ And when I went through all of those questions, the answers were yes, yes and yes.”
The 2016 election and Trump
In her book, Clinton – who had long hoped to be the first woman to become U.S. president – says her loss in 2016 has been hard to shake even eight years later. She wrote:
“Since 2016, people have asked me, ‘Will you ever be able to move on?’ Move on? I wish!”
This past May she was recently reminded of just how close she came. A New York jury had found former President Donald Trump guilty of “falsifying business records in the first degree” for covering up payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels.
“I got tears in my eyes then, because this man has escaped accountability his entire life,” said Clinton. “The case, which was mistakenly called a ‘hush money’ case, was an election interference case. Why did he do what he did? He did it to try to keep the information from the American public so that they wouldn’t turn away from him and vote for me. So, it’s a pretty clear case of election interference.”
Moriarty asked, “And when you heard that he had been convicted – you’re human, there had to be a side of you, after enduring months of ‘lock her up,’ thinking, This is the person who’s actually facing time in jail?”
“Looks like karma to me,” Clinton replied.
And the debate that took place this past week between Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump brought back memories of her own duels with the man.
Asked if it had been hard for her to keep her cool during her debates against Trump, Clinton replied, “It was hard, because I had to be responding on the debate stage. But then, I had to be thinking: Now, do I respond to that? He’s trying to bait you. It’s like that old saying: If you wrestle with a pig in the mud, only the pig comes out happy.”
Passing the torch
Inside the Museum of the City of New York is an exhibit dedicated to a woman who helped pave the way for women like Hillary Clinton: Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress, who was also the first woman to run for the Democratic presidential nomination, in 1972 – 36 years before Clinton.
“You can go way back into the 19th century and the early suffragists,” said Clinton. “I stand on [their] shoulders, and have passed on the baton to the next generation, just as Shirley did. And so, when I see this exhibit about her, I think: She did her part, she really did.“
Clinton was asked to do her part in August, when she took the stage at the Democratic National Convention.
“Together, we’ve put a lot of cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling. And tonight, tonight’s so close to breaking through once and for all. … And you know what? On the other side of that glass ceiling is Kamala Harris raising her hand and taking the oath of office as our 47th President of the United States. Because my friends, when a barrier falls for one of us, it falls and clears the way for all of us.”
She said, “It was a hard speech to write. It was a hard speech to deliver. I had to read it through, like, seven or eight times, because I got teary. I had a big responsibility that I understood that only I could fulfill.”
Clinton said she was there this time to officially pass the torch to Kamala Harris: “That was the sort of unspoken throughline, that I had been there, and now it was generational. This moment required it. And I wanted to give her the best send-off I could.”
Was it emotional? “Oh, it was so emotional,” Clinton said. “This is another one of those moments in my life that I will never forget.”
READ AN EXCERPT: “Something Lost, Something Gained” by Hillary Rodham Clinton
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Story produced by Kay Lim. Editor: Ed Givnish.
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