Want to guess who has the most favorable opinions of Hillary Rodham Clinton? The New York Times unfurled the numbers in one easy-to-read graphic. Setting aside the obvious categories (Democrats and liberals are mostly favorable, Republicans and conservatives are mostly unfavorable), you are left with 20 choices, including independents and moderates, and men and women of different ages, income levels, and marital statuses.
The answer is...
Single women. Fifty-three percent of them report favorable opinions, compared to just 22% unfavorable (and the others undecided).
Single women care about the issues. I've written about that during the last presidential campaign, and more recently in Singled Out. The issues constitute the "what" question -- what is important to Hillary, and to the people who are considering whether to vote for her. Here I want to consider something different -- the "who" question. Who is important to Hillary, and to the people who have already formed favorable opinions of her?
Consider this quote from the Washington Post, about the personal force who "knew what made [Hillary] tick, how she thought, how to present advice to her." Who was this? And who, according to that same article, "understands Hillary's dynamics, her rhythms, what will fly with her, what won't, how best to structure a schedule that plays to her energy levels?" Who is this force of nature, with such great people skills, and with such an exquisite attunement to Hillary?
If you guessed Bill Clinton, you guessed wrong.
The Post story was about more than a dozen women who have been with Hillary for years, some for well over a decade. Many had been with her at the White House and during her bid for the Senate. Now they are running her Presidential campaign. As the Post put it, "Never have so many women operated at such a high level in one campaign." The accompanying picture of eleven of those women was striking. Who else has a campaign staff that looks like this?
What readers saw were women, powerful women, and lots of them. Loyal, too. "I feel like [Hillary] always has my back, and no matter what, I'm going to have hers," said one of the women of "Hillaryland." The loyalty of these women, though, is apparently not of the stupid, arrogant, destructive variety. They do not always agree with each other, and even in their own minds, they are not always right.
The Hillaryland story was about the many influential women who surround Hillary. To me, though -- and I bet to many other single women as well -- the story was about friendship. The women get together to talk politics, policy, and social justice, and they get together just to talk. They exercise together, and invite others to join them. They are there for each other in sickness (including dire sickness) and in health.
So go ahead, if you must: Obsess over whether Hillary will bask in Bill's warm glow or disappear in his shadow. Ask whether Elizabeth Edwards, as appealing as she is, should be the lone star in ads for John Edwards. Engage with Maureen Dowd on whether Michelle Obama's quips about Barack's domestic putterings are humanizing, or whether they are instead turning him "from the glam J. F. K. into the mundane Gerald Ford, toasting his own English muffins."
I'd rather hear about the candidates' friends. Show me, all you Presidential wannabes, that there are people who have been there for you in your life, and you for them, year after year after year. (And not because you signed a legal contract vowing to do so.) Show me, too, that your collective commitment is to the greater good. That's what I call Character.
With this essay, I'm not tipping my voting hand. I like a lot of the Democratic candidates (and I have reservations about all of them, too). With more than a year to go, I have not yet settled on The One. But I will say this for Hillary: I sure do like her friends.