Hillary Clinton, who recently failed for the second time to be elected the first woman president of the United States, recently announced that she is ready “to come out of the woods.” She believes that she has it within her to find unity in a divided nation. By expressing this remarkable sentiment, Clinton demonstrated that she still does not understand the reason why the American electorate rejected her for one of the most unlikely men to ever achieve the presidency. She should stay in the woods, find a quiet place, and think about her life until she reached some kind of understanding.

Hillary Clinton is a woman who is so enraptured by herself that she lacks all sense of irony. Otherwise, she would not imagine that she could ever be an agent of unity and reconciliation, no more than her husband could ever advance the cause of respect for women.

A point exists in the lives of some people when they realize just how rotten they really are. John Newton, the 18th Century clergyman, and poet was once the worst sort of human being, the captain of a slave ship. But Newton came to realize that the life he was leading was pure evil. He underwent a time of self-loathing, followed by repentance and a sense of forgiveness brought on by Christian faith. He composed one of the greatest hymns in history, “Amazing Grace,” and spent the rest of his life combatting the very evil he once helped to perpetuate.

Clinton needs to have a John Newton moment, not to put a too fine a point on it. She needs to find that sense of self-loathing for the things she had done in furtherance of her ambition, starting with the destruction of a 12-year-old rape victim named Kathy Shelton back in 1975 and including all the enablement of her husband’s crimes against women.

She needs to beg for forgiveness, both of whatever God she acknowledges and of her victims and she needs to be sincere about it.

Maybe then Hillary Clinton can come out of the woods and spend the rest of her life doing good and not furthering a limitless ambition that has brought nothing but grief to herself and countless others.