How Hillary lost my vote

DEAR HILLARY:

I really wanted you to be the Democratic candidate and the next president of the United States.

In order to do that, I needed you to be the person I felt you were capable of being. I knew you were smart, funny and kind to your friends and family - I wanted you to demonstrate fairer play in the political arena.

I identified with you because we have some very important things in common.

I, too, am a baby boomer who came of age when women were just starting to enter the professions. I didn't know how I was going to do it, but, like you and so many others, I believed I had the ability, motivation and the perseverance to be successful.

It has never been easy.

Like so many women in our generation, I was often blindsided by the condescension of men toward women, regardless of our credentials (and theirs!) simply on the basis of gender.

Like you, my father and grandparents were from Scranton, and I spent many days there as a child.

Martha's Vineyard is also my favorite vacation spot. I've been visiting for the better part of 25 years and would own a home there . . . if I won the Powerball.

I know that despite all my educational and professional accomplishments, my proudest achievements are my two wonderful daughters. Chelsea is clearly yours, too. They always knew they came first, as did yours, I'm sure.

From what I can tell, you are an outstanding mother. When I took my older daughter to college, I tried to help her unpack, and as she shooed me out the door, I said, "But Hillary got to help when Chelsea went to Stanford!"

I believed you had a marriage that made sense to you, even if it didn't to anyone else. I have been a couples therapist for 30 years, and I know that marriages are incredibly complex. Every marriage, even a public one, is composed of very private spheres.

No one, not even a therapist who hears the most confidential information, can know the relationship exactly as it is for the people inside it.

A marriage is more than a love relationship - running a family is like running a business. There are products and services that must be managed, and that's not always sexy. At the time most people get married (at least for the first time), they believe that love and romance are enough . . . but they aren't.

It's hard to keep the vow of "for better or for worse" when it gets really bad, but you have - and I'm sure you've agonized over it. But I admire you for your commitment. I've been married for 28 years - and have the scars to prove it.

I believe you are a person of faith. Unlike some politicians who merely cloak themselves in a vague religiosity, you apparently regularly attend services and are a member of a bipartisan Bible group.

I admire your capacity for pragmatic diplomacy. Once you became a senator, you reached across the aisle to GOP members, even though some were especially vile to you and your husband during his presidency.

I DIDN'T HOLD YOUR vote on the Iraq war against you.

If you'd had all the information then that we have now, perhaps you wouldn't have.

If you had voted against it, would you have been able to have a seat at the table with the big boys or been derided as a weak sister who didn't have enough patriotism to put country ahead of politics?

I think it was a no-win situation at the time, and seems only clearer in hindsight.

I believe you felt you could outrun all the boys in this race - if the others were Joe Biden, Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd.

You were blindsided by Barack Obama - and felt he needed more seasoning, that it wasn't "his turn." And I stayed with you, rooted for you (even though I've admired Obama for four years).

Perhaps I could have continued to hold on, if only you'd stayed on the moral high ground and told the truth.

I don't expect politicians to deliver on all their initiatives. You are a policy wonk, in a way that - even with all my education - I'm not. I don't expect to ever read or understand every detail in your health-care plan. But I'm almost as old as you, and I know that initiatives don't necessarily translate into law, that politicians have to cut deals or they will get nothing done.

I thought it was unfair that likability was considered so much more important in a president than brains. Perhaps I'd enjoy a barbecue at the ranch with President Bush, but what would we talk about? I need someone who can, at least occasionally, use three-syllable words accurately.

To a great extent, I have to vote for the person of greater integrity, who will try to do the right thing most of the time - and I've lost faith in you. You finally lost me at Bosnia. Your claim to have been there during active hostilities has been roundly disproved, and your explanation that you misspoke or were too tired is, at best, lame.

And I'm sad. I wanted you to be what I think is the best part of you.

But, perhaps even more than that, I don't want John McCain. Don't get me wrong, I wish he (or anyone) had beaten Bush in 2000.

But after eight years of ineptitude, lack of moral rectitude and incompetence, I can't think of any reason that a Republican who has cuddled often enough with the Bush administration should be allowed to continue its missteps.

I will cast my vote in the primary for Obama, and hope that, while not perfect, he can unite the red and the blue into a purple nation.

I tried, Hillary. I just wish

you had fulfilled your incredible potential. *

Ann Rosen Spector is a Center City psychologist and an adjunct member of the Psychology Department at Rutgers-Camden.