Rodham

by Curtis Sittenfeld

I knew plenty of smart people, but I’d never before encountered a person whose intelligence sharpened mine the way his did. His perspective both overlapped with and differed from mine so as to be challenging, reassuring, and never boring.

“Welfare queens are a racist Republican myth perpetuated by Reagan to erode public support for social services.”

Sometimes I think I’ve made so few mistakes that the public can remember all of them, in contrast to certain male politicians whose multitude of gaffes and transgressions gets jumbled in the collective imagination, either negated by one another or forgotten in the onslaught. The less you screw up, the more clearly the public keeps track of each error.

I have always been particularly touched by the proverb about the purpose of life being to plant trees under whose shade you do not expect to sit.