Once it became clear that Philadelphia would play host to the Democratic National Convention, and that Hillary Clinton would be the nominee, I started thinking about my city, and how well it suits her.
I’ve lived here since 1994. I came here to work as a reporter, and I’ve stayed to write books and raise my daughters.
To many people, Philly’s still the rough-around-the-edges Acela stop between the glittering poles of Washington and New York. Here we are, in the middle — a little overlooked, a little resentful, entirely our own place, apt to get snappish if you suggest that we’re Brooklyn Lite or think we’re nothing more than “Rocky.”
Our attractions can have an eat-your-vegetables feel — Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell. Tell middle schoolers that they’re going to New York or Washington, and you’ll get bounces of excitement. Philadelphia gets sullen shrugs and “I guess so.”
Maybe that sounds familiar to a woman who’s been characterised as an eat-your-vegetables kind of candidate, more dogged than dazzling, stuck between the poles of former President Bill Clinton and President Barack Obama, two of our most charismatic leaders.
We aren’t perfect. We’ve got a long list of mis-steps, goofs and gaffes, caught-on-tape embarrassment and hilariously venal politicians. We’re the place where tourists die on Duck Boat rides and people are killed by a collapsing building. In 1985, our police dropped bombs on a house in a residential neighborhood occupied by a black liberation group called MOVE, killing 11.
We are where the Declaration of Independence was signed, where the Liberty Bell rang, and where Alexander Hamilton cheated on his wife with Maria Reynolds, whose love letters rival any teenager’s sexts for their cringe factor (“Oh my God I feel more for you than myself and wish I had never been born to give you so mutch unhappiness.”)
Sure, Clinton has a server scandal and Benghazi. We gave the world Wing Bowl. She stood by her husband when he dallied with an intern. We claimed Bill Cosby, even as the rumours and whispers and, finally, reports about lawsuits made the rounds.
We get each other, the candidate and the city. We are both derided, scarred, flawed, still standing. Immovable. I doubt that Clinton will have much down time during the convention, but if she does, here is the Philadelphia I’d want to show her.
We could start at the south end of Broad Street where, every New Year’s Day, men in skirts and sequins known as Mummers march and dance and twirl and sometimes also make fun of trans people and Native Americans, among others, reminding us that there are plenty of people here who might like it when the Republican nominee for president says, “We cannot afford to be so politically correct anymore.”
Maybe we’ll stroll up Locust Street, toward the jewellery stores and the expensive boutiques, where we’ll pass Planned Parenthood. Once, a protester yelled at my friend Jamie, when she was pushing her stroller, “Thanks, Mom, for not killing your baby,” and Jamie yelled back, over her daughter’s wails, “I’m pro-choice! Do you think a teenager should be forced to do this?!”
We could make our way to Queen Village, my neighbourhood, leafy and lovely. We’ll walk to Monroe Street, and my first apartment — two bedrooms, hardwood floors, central air, dishwasher and garbage disposal and a shared garden in the back, $600 (Dh2,203) a month in 1994.
I set up my metal-legged folding bridge table in the second bedroom and wrote my first novel on a Mac Classic, imagining that I’d find an agent and sell a book, and someday, my dreams would come true and I would be happy.
I wonder if Clinton ever thought like that: “If Bill wins the election. If he wins another term. If I become a senator. If I become president, that would be enough.”
People slam her for her drive. They say she is all raw ambition, no heart; a soul-less automaton with her eyes eternally on the prize. I’ve wondered, when I’ve been called ambitious, whether there’s any acceptable way for a woman to desire, any way to say, “I want,” where the object is anything besides a man or a baby, and not have it be perceived as a threat.
When Clinton was in Philadelphia for a fundraiser in January, I brought my daughters, because this was history, and I wanted them to see it. Upstairs, we had our picture taken. The three of us had ended up in black-and-white dresses, and the candidate smiled at our outfits, as my 8-year-old said, “I hope you win!”
Downstairs, in front of a crowd that had been waiting for hours, she looked understandably weary, and she sounded painfully hoarse while hitting talking points with grim precision: about how we need to build bridges, not walls, about how we must remain a land of hope, not fear.
I remember feeling frustrated; then feeling frustrated at my frustration, thinking that there’s no good way for a woman to speak, no good way for a woman to be as a presidential candidate. Too loud and you’re shouting; too soft and you’re weak. Still, I wanted soaring oratory. I wanted a less flawed, less problematic candidate; one without baggage, questionable choices, a long, fraught history; a dazzling star whose rise had the feel of fairy tales, not grim inevitability.
Perhaps it’s in there, somewhere. I’d look for it, as we strolled to Capogiro for a scoop of salted caramel gelato and then up to Rittenhouse Square.
We’d find a little girl, maybe riding a scooter around the goat statue, and Clinton could tell her, “You can be anything you want when you grow up; you can be president,” and it wouldn’t be theoretical, it would be real.
Maybe this is the city where the Clinton campaign will catch fire, hit its stride, find its voice. Maybe Philadelphia, the troubled city that’s been written off, is where a battered contender can find that there’s a chance, still, for magic.
— New York Times News Service
Jennifer Weiner, the author of the forthcoming memoir “Hungry Heart,”
