Former President Visits Washington & Jefferson College

FORMER PRESIDENT VISITS WASHINGTON & JEFFERSON COLLEGE

by Alisha M. Kendall
The Weekly Recorder
March 14, 2008

On Tuesday afternoon, roughly 2,000 people piled into W & J’s Henry memorial Gym and held their breath in anticipation. A few minutes after one’ o’clock, introduced by the head of the Young Democrats, Kristin Schuh, former President Bill Clinton walked onto the stage. After a long applause, he began to promote Hillary’s campaign, using a technique that answered important problems in today’s society.

He started with how Hillary told him she would know, if after four years in the presidency, she did a good job in keeping the faith in the American people. He said her response was that if she could say yes to three things, she would know she did a good job: 1. The people are better off when I quit then they were when I started. 2. Young people have a better future to look forward to after I am done than before I started, and 3.Our country and the world are coming together and not apart. Right after this, he mentioned the ever popular “American Dream,” which is what allows people in lower and poverty class levels obtain middle class status.

Mr. Clinton then went on to speak about the economic benefits in the United States, and stated that about 90% of the benefits in the last decade have gone to the top ten percent of the earners in the U.S.-“You cannot run this country for the better of the top ten percent of the population.”

He then discussed several of Hillary’s plans she has for if she wins the presidency. He started with energy, one of the major crises in the United States at this time. Hillary’s plan is to make a cleaner, better energy program, that will allow every state in the country to become energy independent. He then moved on to another major crisis: health care. He asked everyone in the room to raise their hand if they knew someone without health care. Nearly everyone in the Gymnasium did so. The United States is the only country (with the same type of status as ours) in the world that has not yet adopted a formal health care plan. The next crisis is the post-secondary school education crisis. In the last decade, the cost of secondary education has raised seventy-five percent. Hillary has several steps to help with this. First, she wants to raise the Pell Grants every year to account for inflation. Second she wants to give students more opportunities to work their way through college. She wants to crack down on the abuses of private college loan companies, and the insane interest rates they offer. She believes that if you graduate from school and enter into the public service field, such as a firefighter, your service should pay for your schooling. Also, she wants to institute a plan that would make it so you only pay a percentage of the income you make towards your school loans yearly, to avoid ridiculous payments that many students can’t afford.

Hillary also believes that the time has come to bring our soldiers home from Iraq. We have basically used all of our ground forces here at home, and we can’t build them back up until our soldiers come home. We have already given the tools to Iraq that can be used to build a better country, now it is up to them to do something about it. We need to focus on our own country and our own troops and get ready to finish the fight against the war on terror. She believes that a small group of special task forces should be left in Iraq, to ensure nothing goes wrong, while our soldiers need to be brought home in a timely fashion.

Mr. Clinton closed with several recommendations for being president that Hillary has, which should not be used as causes for her elimination from the race. He included her low-paying job in children’s defense that she took out of law school, instead of a higher paying position. He mentioned how she ran education reform during his terms as Governor of Arkansas. He added that she has passed bills as a senator, with assistance from Republicans, which gives her a better chance of putting her plans into action should she get into the White House. He closed his speech with a quote about Hillary: “She is the best candidate I’ve has a chance to support in my forty years as a voter.”

Alisha Kendall is a graduate of Fort Cherry High School and currently a student at Washington and Jefferson College studying pre-law. This future attorney is interning with the Weekly Recorder during the upcoming Presidential primary.