God Save America from Donny T:...A global maternal figure in the mold of Golda Meir. Hillary’s latest incarnation: America’s tough but kind grandmother

God Save America from Donny T:...A global maternal figure in the mold of Golda Meir. Hillary’s latest incarnation: America’s tough but kind grandmother


Her turn (TODD MAISEL/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)


Hillary Clinton was born an adult. Her mother told me so. Dorothy Rodham sent her 4-year-old daughter out to punch the neighborhood bully — another girl — in the nose. Hillary's right-wing father, a chief petty officer in the Navy and tradesman, taught her "Life is combat."

After this week, there should be no doubt that Clinton is a fighter. Or that throughout her long career, contrary to the preposterous Republican caricatures that she's out to undermine America and line her own pockets, she's chiefly fought for the rights of others.

Now that she is fully leaning into the political fight of her life — for her own right to serve in the most powerful and challenging job in the world, and do so as a woman - the question is: Will she dare to lead as a woman?

I believe she began to show what doing so would look like in her masterful speech closing the Democratic Convention: offering herself as a nurturing presence in the personal struggles of her constituents and a consensus-builder with the Congress who will build alliances but refuse to suffer fools on the international stage.

But that's not obvious to all. A protective mother who left dated notes for her daughter to read in Hillary's absence as the family's breadwinner, over the years, she has played as many stereotypically male as female roles. How will that pioneering identity play, particularly to all those insurgent white working-class men without a college degree who supposedly despise her?

As far back as 1994, Hillary expressed  her frustration in appealing to working-class white men: "It's not me they hate, it's the changes I represent. I'm the wife who went back to college and…" — she didn't dare finish the sentence, but we both knew what she had in mind: the wife who did get a degree and maybe ultimately landed a better job than her husband.

Veteran political analyst Bill Schneider says, "These men are furious about losing their cultural predominance. This isn't their world anymore."

They're right. Women have leapt ahead in college enrollment. A growing number are primary family breadwinners or single mothers. Their left-behind husbands see Trump as their savior, an action hero. He takes big risks. He talks a big game. Men like that.

But the "I alone can fix it" boast ignores his many failures and the penalties paid by his workers, investors and Trump U. "students."

Hillary, like many women, has always consciously chosen her identities to fit the cause at hand. At 16, she began unpacking the rigid Goldwater Girl role she'd assumed to please her father. Exposed to the ideals of Dr. Martin Luther King, she turned herself into a fearless civil-rights activist. She even dissed a status-quo African-American speaker at her college graduation — demanding the politics of "making the impossible, possible."

She had a high tolerance for risk in those days. But she didn't feel comfortable being ambitious on her own behalf. Politicking in big crowds wasn't easy for her. From college, she wrote to a friend — John Peavoy, who shared her letters with me — that she might choose to be "an alienated academic" or a "compassionate misanthrope." She finally settled on "educational and social reformer."

Hillary was beloved by her male classmates at Yale Law School. Not for her female charms, hidden behind Coke-bottle glasses, but because she was supportive of them. She coached them, believing in their potential more than they believed in themselves. Her identity then: the ultimate Big Sister.

It took other identities, deliberately forged, to raise a child — and to help raise a President. Bill Clinton would be first to admit it. And to redeem the family name after her husband was impeached.

At age 53, for the first time, she dared to declare her independence and build her own public persona, becoming a political candidate and then a senator in her own right. In the Senate, she earned a reputation not as a showboat or press hog, but as a quiet and tireless worker. She learned to find common ground with Republicans — even curmudgeons like Orrin Hatch, who had tried to convict her husband.

As secretary of state, the identity evolved again, with the common threads of exhibiting toughness and quietly building consensus. She worked to affirm President Obama's instinct to risk going after Osama Bin Laden. She negotiated one of the rare ceasefires between Hamas and Israel that lasted. She wanted to arm rebels in Syria earlier than the President did, but had to accept Obama's reluctance to get involved.

What is the identity she presents today? A woman with empathy for those left out of the American Dream — and as someone who has followed her for 20 years, I can tell you that has been a constant throughout her life. A ready commander in chief with many partners in the military, she has the steely resolve to forge a global coalition to defeat ISIS.

Hillary has grown into a wise woman — a global maternal figure in the mold of Golda Meir. This President Clinton would aspire to be America's compassionate but no-nonsense grandmother.

It's true that the Hillary Clinton of today is more risk-averse than she once was. After 30 years of savage cuts, she says she's developed alligator skin, in stark contrast to Trump, whose skin is so thin he wants to hit "a very little guy," Mike Bloomberg, "so hard his head would spin."

After his hostile takeover of the Republican Party, Trump had to kill off every contender. He'd no doubt try to do the same with any senator or governor or world leader with the gall to challenge him.

Hillary, by contrast, embraced her worthy opponent and let Bernie's weepy supporters down easy, promising: "Your cause is our cause." She showed how she will dare to lead like a woman, surrounding herself with admiring military men and building a government of inclusion.

Her identity at this stage is totally integrated. It fuses the collaborative skills of a woman who listens and the confidence of a stateswoman who is the match of any man.