By Colleen O’Connor
Times of San Diego
The polls are tightening. The Democrats are fretting. And Hillary Clinton has stumbled.
If she is to win the Presidency decisively — with both the popular and Electoral College vote — she needs to return to San Diego to regain her momentum.
San Diego was her “lucky city” before the California primary. It can be again for the general election.
When struggling to define herself vis-a-vis her opponent, Clinton delivered a “powerful” foreign policy speech in Balboa Park. Even Conservative commentators, from Fox New to the Washington Post, praised it
During that widely heralded speech, Clinton displayed a deft and formidable contrast with Donald Trump suggesting that he might start a nuclear war if elected to the White House simply because “somebody got under his very thin skin.”
She wielded wit, humor and a depth of understanding of foreign affairs that matched her resume.
Contrast that speech with her latest gaffe — calling Trump supporters “a basket of deplorables”— and the need for a reboot is obvious.
No place better than San Diego.
Why? Because one of California’s marquee campuses, UC San Diego, houses the first Eleanor Roosevelt College —named for another pioneering First Lady — and also, the most admired woman in the world for 13 separate years. Only to be exceeded by Clinton’s 20 years atop the list.
Also, Clinton closely identifies with Roosevelt. Both women shared more than triumphs. They shared a history of betrayals, ridicule, infidelities, unparalleled cruelty and humiliation from detractors — all during some of the nation’s most fearful times — the Great Depression and World War II for Roosevelt, and the current never-ending wars in the Middle East, massive refugee crisis and 2016 campaign for Clinton.
Yet, both women pushed the nation forward onto paths more intelligent, humane, and of longer-lasting merit, than those who derided them.
Roosevelt’s history of courage in supporting civil rights for blacks, defense of Jewish refugees during the Nazi era, non-stop advocacy for the poor, advocacy for the migrant workers and the unemployed during the Depression, supporting Japanese-Americans after internment, and overseeing the drafting of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights while a delegate, as well as pioneering new advances for all women and children — remain unmatched.
For her efforts, she was alternately labeled “a communist,” “a traitor,” followed by the FBI (not for her safety) and a “pinko” during the witch-hunting days of the McCarthy era.
“No one has done what Eleanor did,” said award-winning Roosevelt biographer Blanche Wiesen Cook. “Until Clinton.”
Clinton remains an astute student and avid fan of Roosevelt — her personal hero during difficult times.
According to investigative journalist Bob Woodward, Clinton once allegedly “communed” with Roosevelt in the White House solarium.
Woodward writes that Clinton was encouraged to “search further and dig deeper for her connections to Mrs. Roosevelt.”
It was “an imaginative exercise to force her ideas, to think about how Eleanor would have responded to a particular problem.”
Thus, this suggestion that she come to San Diego and deliver another heart stopping speech where her hero’s college is inspiring whole new generations of young world leaders.
After all, Clinton delivered the dedication speech for the Eleanor Roosevelt College in 1995 where she admitted to being “a die hard Eleanor Roosevelt fan.”
Time now for a return visit.
Think what Roosevelt would do. Think what you can and should do.
Only then will you display the strengths to finish the campaign in a manner befitting the first woman to be President of the United States.
Only then will you prove yourself equal to Roosevelt’s legacy.
Preceding republished from Times of San Diego. Colleen O’Connor, a native San Diegan, is a retired college professor and co-editor of “Eleanor Roosevelt: An American Journey.”