In Austin, Hillary Clinton honored for public service

Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has played as consequential a role in American politics as anyone in her lifetime, received the inaugural In the Arena Award from the LBJ School of Public Affairs on Tuesday.

The award's name is drawn from a speech President Teddy Roosevelt delivered at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1910, the year after he left the presidency, in which he said: "The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena…; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls, who neither know victory nor defeat."

In presenting the award, Angela Evans, dean of the LBJ School, said that Roosevelt "perfectly describes" Clinton's grit and courage in a lifetime of public involvement as an attorney, advocate for children, first lady of Arkansas and of the United States, New York senator, secretary of state, and two-time candidate for the Democratic nomination for president. In 2016, Clinton failed while "daring greatly" as the first woman to be the nominee of a major party for president, winning the popular vote but losing the electoral vote and the White House to Donald Trump.

"If you want to be blameless, stay on the sidelines," said Evans, who said that for decades and to this day, Clinton perseveres over enormous "vitriol."

Clinton took the stage at the Lady Bird Johnson Auditorium to receive the award to whoops, hollers and applause from the audience, which was studded with longtime supporters who rose to cheer her.

Seated opposite one another on stage in matching red chairs, Evans interviewed Clinton, who recalled that she entered the metaphorical arena in the 1960s.

"It really was an amazing time in American history," Clinton said, noting the presence of Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson's daughters Luci and Lynda at the event. "It seemed we were all pulling in the same direction to that common ground, that higher ground."

That decade was marred by political assassinations and the Vietnam War, she said, "but people were alive, and they were committed and involved in all the issues of the day."

"It was a different feeling," Clinton said. "There wasn't the devaluing of government and politics and the cynicism that is used to turn people away from common effort.

"We have to rebuild that," she said. "I think that is beginning to happen again."

"Isn't it great to have Hillary Clinton back in Austin," said Roy Spence, co-founder and chairman of the Austin advertising firm GSD&M, a trustee of LBJ Foundation Board. Spence, a close friend and political adviser to the Clintons, offered welcoming remarks at the event.

Spence recalled working with the Clintons on the George McGovern presidential campaign in 1972 in Texas, which, he cracked, "went extremely well."

"We were in the arena together at 23 years old," said Spence, who did a spot-on imitation of Bill Clinton.

"It's good, isn't it," he said.

Clinton said it hurts her heart that Texas has the highest uninsured rate in the nation and a maternal mortality rate that rivals developing countries.

Clinton said that in entering the arena, "If you're not there for a cause larger than yourself ... it is hard to keep going."

Of Stacey Abrams, an LBJ School alumna and the Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia, Clinton said, "If she had a fair election, she already would have won." The race remains unsettled.

Clinton also decried the decline of news and the American attention span in the age of clicks, and the rise of intentionally misleading information and "deliberate falsehoods that started on the first day of (the Trump) administration."

I've been to many inaugurations," she said. "The crowd wasn't that big."

Correction: The spelling of Luci in reference to Luci Baines Johnson, was corrected to drop an "e" at the end.