Beauty pageants weren’t my thing, though. I wanted to be something more like President.
By the end of my junior year in high school (by which time we were back in Wisconsin), I’d been elected vice president of my class for the third year in a row, and in the fall of my senior year, the student council elected me president of that governing body. I was selected for “Badger Girls State”—a statewide program for kids interested in policy and politics held the summer after high school graduation, and was elected senator there. I went on to be one of four presidents of my class at Stanford University, and one of four elected class leaders of my graduating class at Harvard Law School.
I was on track to live the American Dream—through hard work, big dreams, and a bit of luck, to become whoever I wanted.
Mine was in many ways a very American childhood. And, with the buttress of money and influence that came from my father’s professional success, it was also a childhood of material comfort that set me up for a privileged life.