‘92 DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION : Hillary Clinton Stresses Children’s Issues

While Gov. Bill Clinton has kept a relatively low profile during the week of the Democratic National Convention, his wife, Hillary, has been wowing delegates from key states and constituencies with a mixture of passion, humor and a delivery any political pro would envy.

Her message has family values written all over it; she has been pushing hope for children, renewed faith in the political process and, yes, home-baked chocolate chip cookies.

Clinton’s consistent theme is that the Reagan and Bush administrations have let America’s children down. At one stop, she quoted from an old African proverb: “ ‘It takes a whole village to raise a child.’ Well, it’s time for America to understand that.”

At another event, Clinton promised that any program her husband introduces would pass what she described as the “Chelsea test,” named after her 12-year-old daughter. “What we want for the children and families of America is what we want for our own family,” she told members of the Asian Pacific Caucus.

To each audience, she has offered a distinctly tailored message: To the Massachusetts delegation, she applauded former Sen. Paul E. Tsongas’ political courage. To Illinois delegates, she reminisced about learning to “really understand politics” as a child in Chicago. To New Yorkers she said she considered surviving the city’s predatory press during the primary season a “rite of passage.”

Speaking to Texas delegates in a sweltering hotel ballroom, she said Texans and Arkansans share many things, including an appreciation for central air conditioning. “That’s another lesson we will bring to the country,” she told the cheering crowd.

But she was at her best at an address to the African-American Caucus on Tuesday afternoon, where she was introduced as “an Eleanor Roosevelt” for her long career as a civil rights and children’s advocate. Clinton paid an emotional tribute to 79-year-old Rosa Parks, whose refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., bus in 1955 sparked the civil rights movement. Parks attended the caucus meeting.

“I often wonder, if I had been called, would I have answered? Rosa Parks made that stand on faith--it’s that kind of faith we need more of. We all owe a debt of gratitude to this woman.”

Despite the kinder, gentler image Clinton has been working hard to project, her harder edge showed through in a few unscripted moments. When boisterous Brown delegates interrupted her address to the California delegation Monday morning with chants of “Let Jerry speak,” she shot back, “You know, I’ve never known Jerry not to speak when he wants to speak. He’s always speaking, near as I can tell.”

But her main mission remained to solicit help in turning out the vote for her husband over President Bush and presumed independent candidate Ross Perot in November’s general election, and for her own chocolate chip cookie recipe over Barbara Bush’s in a national magazine’s “Bipartisan Bake-Off.”