The Dreams of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Rudy Giuliani
By Hunter Patterson, Domestic Affairs Staff Writer

Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani weren’t born into political families, groomed from birth to run for office. They weren’t born into substantial wealth, allowing them to simply use their family wealth to buy themselves a political office. They were self-determined and self-made; they had their goals and knew that they couldn’t rely just on a name and their daddy’s money to get started, they had to dream big, and dive head first into causes they believed in to effect change within the country. Clinton and Giuliani created their own dreams, following their separate roads, a far cry from their simple upbringings of suburban Illinois and the urban sprawl of New York City.

Senator Clinton and Mayor Giuliani hold themselves oddly unique among their party’s presidential fields. Senator Clinton is the lone women in field of middle aged white men. Not only that, she is the wife of a former President who is wildly popular still among the Democratic Party, and has yet to make a major gaff or say something that the wide voting populace would frown upon. Her only opposition within the party are the anti-Iraq activists who hound her for a refusal to apologize for her vote to go to war, and the new breed of Democrat who desires change and a new direction in politics.

Mayor Giuliani is an iconoclast within the Republican Party. While strongly in support of the war in Iraq as well as the global war on terrorism, he stands on the opposite side of the majority of his party by being pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, and pro-gun control. This, however, hasn’t seemed to hurt him much in the polls, as he still leads despite widespread knowledge of his non-traditional views.

Stripping away their adult-acquired fame and status, the idea that these two people could seriously run for President is the embodiment of the American Dream; unlikely, hard fought and earned, while paved with determination and refusals to let obstacles of circumstance stand in their way. Senator Clinton is a woman raised in suburban Illinois who worked to pay for law school in an Alaskan cannery. Mayor Giuliani is the son of a mob hit-man who grew up in tough Italian neighborhoods of New York, working his way up through the US Attorney’s office by going after drug lords and mob bosses once thought impossible to touch.

The circumstances of being a middle-class women and the son of a criminal would alone bar the unmotivated from seeking not just high office, but even a higher calling to improve things they saw as wrong around them. Instead both chose to fulfill the American Dream by bettering the things they saw wrong in America. For Senator Clinton, her strive for a better America began while she was a law student at Yale, researching at the Yale Child Study Center. From there she embarked on a mission to improve the welfare of children throughout the nation, writing a paper entitled “Children Under the Law”, as well as working with the Children’s Defense Fund. She also worked at several law firms in which she worked to improve the welfare of our kin, a cause she continued as first lady of both Arkansas and the United States.

Mayor Giuliani grew up surrounded by the mafia; his father and several members of his extended family were deep within the mob, mostly in the form of thieves or hit men. He was able to avoid the pull of his roots and went on to college and law school, beginning a life of public service in the U.S. Attorney’s office, making a name for himself by prosecuting drug lords and financial criminals. He eventually solidified his claim by attacking a world he knew all too well, the mafia, going after the “Five Families” of New York crime in the renown “Mafia Commission Trials”.

Their Dreams were different, but their goal was the same, a better America. In protecting a shop owner in a criminalized area or ensuring the safety the safety of a child with abusive parents, Senator Clinton and Mayor Giuliani lived their dream, and in the process helped others live theirs.

Now, as they stand on stages in front of thousands who cheer at their names and hold signs wishing them to be the next President, their American Dream is only beginning. One wonders if young Hillary and young Rudy, playing with their friends, sitting at the dinner table, ever knew that their destinies would lead them to the top political offices of the nation.

The American Dream isn’t something you can buy. You can’t make it out of wood. You can’t wish it true; you can’t win it on a game show. The American Dream is something far more complex and beautiful than anything that can be created. It is a thought, a dream, an idea, and an -ism. Senator Clinton and Mayor Giuliani are proof that opportunities in this country are widely available for each person. While they went their separate ways and with their different styles and political ideologies, Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani seem to be writing the same book titled "The Dream Lives On".