[FONT="]6m ago03:26[/FONT] [FONT="]Rodham mentioned she liked a house. He bought the house and told her she had to marry him then. “The third time was a charm.” They were married 11 October 1975. “I married my best friend.”
I was still in awe at how smart and strong and loving and caring she was, and I really hoped that her choosing me... was a decision she would never regret.
[FONT="]8m ago03:25[/FONT] [FONT="]Clinton: “I was still trying to get her to marry me. The second time I tried a different tack. I said, I really want you to marry me, but you shouldn’t do it.
She said, that isn’t much of a sales pitch.
I said, I know but it’s true. And it was true.”
Because of the young Democrats our age, Clinton explained to her, none of them “is as good as you are at actually doing things.” He said she should go home to run for office.
He finally got her to come to Arkansas. The people at the law school were so impressed they offered her a teaching position. She moved. And she was a stranger. It was more rural and conservative than what she knew.
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[FONT="]11m ago03:22[/FONT] [FONT="]Clinton continues. “Then she went down to south Texas.”
The Texas delegation is really excited about the shout-out.
Rodham registered Mexican-American voters. “Then in our last year of law school, Hillary kept up this work. She went to South Carolina to see why so many African American boys were being jailed as adults.
Always makin’ things better.
Meanwhile, let’s get back to business. I was trying to convince her to marry me. I first proposed to her on a trip to Great Britain [on Ennerdale Water]... I asked her to marry me and she said I can’t.
I went home to law school. Hillary moved to Massachusetts to keep working on children’s issues.
[FONT="]15m ago03:19[/FONT] [FONT="]Clinton remembers meeting Rodham’s crotchety, conservative father. Her mother was different, he recalls. She was more liberal. “Knowing her was one of the greatest gifts Hillary ever gave me.”
Clinton describes Rodham’s evolution of her social conscience. The civil rights movement, he says, convinced her to become a Democrat. He talks about Rodham’s summer internship interviewing workers in migrant camps for senator Walter Mondale’s subcommittee.
She got so involved with children’s issues that she actually took an extra year in law school ... working to determine what more could be done for children.
Hillary opened my eyes to a whole new world of public service by private citizens.
[FONT="]18m ago03:16[/FONT] [FONT="]Clinton describes standing in line with Rodham to register for classes:
I thought I was doing pretty well, until we got to the front of the line and the registrar looked up and said Bill, what are you doing here, you registered this morning?..
He says he asked her on a walk.
We’ve been walking and talking, laughing together, ever since. We’ve done it in good times and bad, through joy and heartbreak. We cried together this morning” at a friend’s death.
We built up a lifetime of memories.
[FONT="]20m ago03:14[/FONT] [FONT="]Move the scene to the law library. Rodham catches Clinton staring. She walks over and says:
Look, if you’re going to keep staring at me, and now I’m staring back, we at least ought to know each other’s names. I’m Hillary Rodham, who are you?
I was so impressed and surprised, that whether you believe it or not, that momentarily, I was speechless.
[FONT="]22m ago03:12[/FONT] [FONT="]Wow they love Bill Clinton. There he is. Skinny as a rail. Tasteful dark suit and electric blue tie. Is that the Charlie’s Angels theme? Some instrumental disco.
Clinton kind of jogs over to the lectern. But the crowd is not going to let him start. All those sticklike signs make the crowd look huge and very dynamic. It’s rather disorienting.
He says thank you a bunch of times. Then he starts.
In the spring of 1971 I met a girl. The first time I saw her, we were appropriately enough in a class on political and civil rights. She had big blond hair. Big glasses. She wore no makeup. And this sense of strength.
After this class I followed her out, intending to introduce myself. I got close enough to touch her back, but I couldn’t do it... I might be starting something I couldn’t stop.
