Hillary and the Unfeminine Mystique
I would have loved to vote for America's first woman president. But it wasn't meant to be.
Hillary Clinton, the woman who could have made history, simply let me down.
She let me down five years ago when she voted for the war in Iraq. And she let me down all these years since, by never repudiating her vote or apologizing for her mistake.
She let me down -- and lost my respect -- by continually using the pronoun "I". "I'll be ready the first day in office." "I'll be the one to answer the phone at 3 a.m." Like some egomaniac, she seemed to forget that there are 300 million other people in this country.
Barack Obama didn't forget this. His most-used pronoun is "we". While Clinton billed herself as a one-woman act, Obama focused on the ensemble, on plurality, unity and cooperation, That's not showmanship -- that's statesmanship.
And Clinton's favorite verb? "Fight." Thanks, babe -- that's what they're doing over in Iraq, and in Afghanistan, and in Lebanon, and in too many places around the globe. I don't want a fighter in the White House; I want a peacemaker.
As an active feminist all my life, I see exactly where Clinton went wrong. She was using the old paradigm: To beat them (the men) you've got to be like them. Tough, aggressive, pragmatic. But what a difference it would have made if her campaign had employed some "feminine" qualities: compassion, conciliation, generosity.
She must have taken Margaret Thatcher as her role model. She should have copied Golda Meir instead, who was known to greet foreign dignitaries in her housedress, and brew them a cup of tea in her kitchen.
I do, of course, sympathize with Hillary's marital predicament. As many wives discover, a husband can be both a help and a hindrance, an embellishment or an embarrassment. I think she would have been a lot wiser to leave hubby home, tending the lawn in Chappaqua.
Most likely, Hillary herself will not be willing to return home next year and take up domestic chores. Nor should she. She will make a fine elder stateswoman. Chastened by this campaign, she may yet become a mellow voice of reason, of tolerance, of understanding, of moral rectitude and responsibility.
She is finished running with the wolves. Now it's time to lick her wounds and be a woman again.
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Thanks Joan, my thoughts exactly. What's the point of voting for a woman, if you're gonna get a pseudo-man?
OMG! That is so right on target. Clinton is such a parody of knuckle-dragging neaderthal that seems to me would offend men and women.
The saddest part about Hillary to me as an African American is playing the race card by her campaign. I can't begin to tell you how excited I was to vote for her in my state but the continous use of racial references in SC and now the WV "hard-working whites" just made me sad for her more than anything.
How fast we fall sometimes. I burst my behind a lot everyday and was one of three women to graduate from Engineering school 20 yrs ago with honors, and for her to insinuate that only whites are hard working was very uncalled for. Hispanics are, Asians are, bi-racial people are, caucasians are...
Needless to say she hasn't apologized, just like she didn't apologize to those white people she made sound like were racist and were voting for her. I believe she has many many supporters that are NOT racist and also happen to be white.
Hillary, I hope you do some soul searching when your campaign comes to an end. I hope you learn that divisions in any shape are more telling of you as a person and not the people you're tearing apart.
United we stand, divided we fall!
This is an excellent analysis and I was just going to respond saying how strongly I agree. But my first, two-pronged resistance to voting for Hillary still trumps my objection to her using the race card. First is her hawkishness, most recently revealed by a reference to “obliterating” Iran and secondly, a strenuous objection to 16 years in the White House for any one couple as co-presidents. For the Clintons to be the most powerful leaders in the world for 16 years, even though not 16 straight years, is too long for us to be under the thinking, values, decisions and biases of this concentration of leadership. To me the most damaging thing about Hillary useing the race card is not that I think she is racist but that it reveals she will use anything--even against her principles--to regain that White House power.
I don't think that the mix of qualities that Hillary Clinton brought to the table was particularly feminine or masculine. For example, she demonstrated a detailed knowledge of public policy across a wide variety of issue positions -- feminine or masculine? She did not have the same grasp of the campaign details like the critical election rules in Texas -- feminine or masculine? She also demonstrated a willingness to pander with her gas tax suspension -- feminine or masculine? She demonstrated the inability to pick a quality team of advisors that she could stick with throughout -- feminine or masculine? She successfully reinvented herself as a "fighter" in the last weeks of the campaign -- feminine or masculine? She kept telling the whopper about Bosnia even after being challenged -- feminine or masculine? She engaged in race baiting and employed a strategy of "elect me because the black guy can't win" -- feminine or masculine.
In short, Hillary Clinton brought a mix of qualities good and bad to the race. I am sure that she felt a particular burden to prove her toughness, but I don't believe that the fundamental flaws and strengths she displayed had anything to do with being a woman trying to be a man but were rather human qualities that both men and women regularly embody.
You are so correct in this article. Hillary has constantly used "I" to describe her campaign and she has been the tough one without any idea of how to fight in context to this election. She has chosen to fight those in her own party and she has lost!
She ran a hypermasculine, Alpha male silverback gorilla campaign. Carville said if she gave one of her cojones to Barack they'd both have two, which means Hillary started with three ( and even that might be an understatement )
Women don't have to be any more compassionate or decent than men in running political campaigns. In fact it's a bit sexist to expect them to. But it would've been nice to have seen just a bit more compassion and decency than she's shown. Not because she's a woman, but because she's a democrat supposedly better than the GOP by virtue of an intrinsic working moral compass.
Still its unfair. She shouldn't have to carry the burden of an entire gender on her shoulders ( although she played the sex card constantly ), she should be judged solely on how she ran her campaign. If thats the case, she receives a D minus as a grade.
The day we can look at individuals as individuals and not judge them on the color of their skin or what is or isn't between their legs is the day we can talk about true equality in this country. And for those who weep they won't see a woman president in their life, are you that insecure in your own self worth that that;s necessary. It doesn't reflect one iota on you. Just because they may be the same sex or color, their achievement or failure is their own, so stop living vicariously through others.
And btw, when Jackie Robinson broke into the majors, he was under a microscope.
Thankfully he was up to the task, winning a handful of world series. But we don't look at any baseball players race today, we judge them by their stats. Thats real progress.
For women or anyone to place the future of womankind or the possibility of there ever being a female president on Hillary's shoulders, it was an unfair expectation.
If she loses, it won't mean a thing. There will be plenty of qualified women to run in the future, and maybe some will even decide to be more gracious than she's been, in either victory or defeat.
There are qualified women to run in the future, but they won't. This race has proven to most intelligent human beings that this country is not ready for a woman in the top position. Oh, I know you'll say that you would have voted for so and so, or anybody but Hillary and I know that just isn't true. Because as soon as this new woman would have stepped into the spotlight, your subconscience would give you some small reason to hate her. One negative in the press and to people like you she would be evil and you'd vote for a Hitler-type before you'd vote for her.
Hillary is an Alpha female. What is this Alfa male crap? She is her own personality. She's tough. She's a woman . If you don't like her personally -- fine. But what is this baloney about her being a woman and that she did something against her own gender? Women are tough as hell. Being tough is her gender. Her personality has nothing to do with being female. Stop throwing sexism into the mix. This country wants a female leader. Hillary got to the top. She has opened the door for more women to run. Hopefully with Obama, the country will see that a white Christian male, is not what is needed to run the country.
Even by men's standards there have few campaigns as ugly as hers.
Obama supporter's are about to see exactly what an ugly campaign really is.
The fact that the Republicans will run a very, very dirty campaign will not be a big surprise for most Democrats who have been alive and conscious for at least the past 20 years. Taking glee in this says alot about your maturity though.
Obama '08
Who are you to tell us what it is to be a "woman'? This is sexist drivel; that is sadly, demanding, as we hear so many people demanding, that she be put in her place -- only the supposedly feminist spin here is that in being put in her place, she will finally be rehumanized or rather refeminized. I think Hillary is in her place right now -- fighting for the nomination with a support of well over half of the Democrats, including men and women.
last time I looked she was behind in popular vote and the fact is she only has 46 to 47% of all vote cast incl. FL and MI. Sen Obama has 47-48% so either way she doesn't have "well over half" of anything except of people who think she's untrustworthy
The percentages you are spouting here are the equivalent to a tie.
Who are you to tell us that the person who wrote this isn't a woman? Grow up.
Women, by evolution and nature had to develop a more intelligent way of dealing with the world than brute force.
It's not sexist,.. simply fact, and nothing negative.
The timing was perfect for a woman to take the reins after 8 years of testosterone driven aggression and short sightedness, however she blew it by either revealing her lack of feminine gifts or her willingness to play a role, to act, to lie, to deceive.
Either way, she’s hurt the first real chance we have had in America for a Woman use her healing gifts for our nation.
Thank God Obama has gifts of his own that fill the void.
Well said, BeingFrank!! Well said . . .
"She let me down -- and lost my respect -- by continually using the pronoun "I". "I'll be ready the first day in office." "I'll be the one to answer the phone at 3 a.m." Like some egomaniac, she seemed to forget that there are 300 million other people in this country."
One of the things the Obama campaign has been most successful at is portraying the Presidency as a team sport, with all this "yes we can" stuff. "Yes we can" boils down to "yes we can...vote for Obama." Once he's in office, if he makes it, he's kind of on his own. All 300 million of us are not going to be setting policy and fussing over the budget; we're not all going to be signing bills and going on foreign trips and hanging out at the Egg Roll at Easter. We're not all going to be answering the phone, at 3 am or 3 pm. We are going to be no more or less empowered than we have at any point in US history since 1789.
BUT OBAMA WILL MAKE DECISIONS TAKING ALL OF OUR VIEWS, NEEDS AND WELFARE INTO CONSIDERAT
WITH HILLARY SHE WILL TAKE THE "WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME" APPROACH..
THAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE 2 OF THEM.
Hillary blew it when she tried to morph into being a MAN. She made it worse with all of her LIES, EMBELLISHMENTS AND POLITRICKS, IN ORDER TO WIN AT ANY COST.
The straw that broke the camel's back was when she and Bill played the RACE CARD.
I was all for supporting the WOMAN, but then Hillary made it a race between TWO MEN, and now I am choosing the better "MAN" ......OBAM
"WITH HILLARY SHE WILL TAKE THE "WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME" APPROACH..
So her talk of job creation, universal health care, global warming initiatives, withdrawal from Iraq, etc...thos
Well that's what he's trying to change. He's said many times that he wants to transform government into a government by and for the people. He's asking, urging us all to be more involved and trying to empower us. He'll be the only president, yes, but if he is elected, he'll be looking to us to dictate which policies we want. No, we want be dealing with budgets and signing bills, going on foreign trips, but we'll all be expected to voice our concerns and say what we want from our government, rather than the other way around. And if he's elected, I think we'll actually have a president that'll listen to us.
Another thing to remember and something we need to remind politicians off is that WE THE PEOPLE are their bosses, period. If they're doing something we don't like, something that's affecting us in a way we don't like, we need to let them know. I think after this election, seeing that one can run a campaign on donations from regular citizens, our politicians will be listening to us a lot more.
But again, there is nothing in what you've said that is any different from any time in our past. We've always had the right and the encouragement to voice our concerns and speak to our government. Politicians have never been all-powerful, we can vote them in and out of office at regular intervals. Having a government that listens is an important thing, but in a country of 300 million, there are a lot of people needing a lot of different things, and not everyone is going to go away satisfied.
I'm not trying to be pro- or anti-Obama here, I just can't understand why people don't seem to see that he's basing his entire campaign on the idea of giving Americans something THEY ALREADY HAVE.
You have been sold a real load of @#$%$%&*. Exactly how is thatis going to work.
I think this is the problem - we haven't worked with the president nor have we made demands upon the president. Nor has the president made any demands upon us as citizens to improve our country or made sacrifices. Oh, there was that entreaty to go shopping.
Those that support Obama don't expect him to make those changes overnight nor do we expect him to be on his own. We expect and want to be involved.
"Once he's in office...h
What an amazingly misguided view of the presidency of the United States! But I guess it fits with the story Bill and Hillary told themselves and sold you. Hillary's healthcare failure stemmed from exactly that sort of lone ranger glory unto herself thinking.
There may be no greater example in the world of a job that requires bringing people together. Clintons do that by triangulating. They just hope to slice off a bigger piece of the pie for themselves. That is no way to bring a country together. And together is what we need to solve the critical issues we face.
Next time you're at the library, see if you can find a copy of a book called "The Impossible Presidency: Illusions and Realities of Executive Power," by Harold Barger (published 1984)
"Americans have expectations for presidential performance that in no way match the real powers of the office. We are far more emotional about presidents -- who lack formal authority -- while Europeans are much less idealistic about prime ministers or presidents who *do* have substantial political powers....
The "I" thing stands out for you because women aren't supposed to take credit for anything in this society. If you listen carefully, men use the "I" thing all the time. Even Obama uses it.
A minister in my childhood once tried to explain "sin" to me. I understood good and bad, right and wrong. (A parent's hand on my behind comfirmed these!) But "sin" was too abstract for me at the time.
He went to the chalkboard and wrote the word: (lower case) s - (capital) I - (lower case) n . Sin, he said, was the great big "I."
That was one of the few moral lessons I've never forgotten.
Thanks, Joan. Although I am a avid Obama supporter, I do think Hillary has wonderful capabilities and can continue to be a valuable political force. I think that after her magnificent start in the presidential race, she lost her way. Perhaps being unwilling to admit mistakes (Iraq vote, negative campaign tactics, denigrating her fellow Dem candidate, elevating the Repub opponent, changing rules to benefit herself, etc.) was the major flaw that broke her campaign. However, she needs to reassess and quickly begin her long road to healing the wounds she has inflicted. The sooner she begins, the quicker the process will be completed.
She had absolute no planning behind her. Had she planned she would have voted all this
time in the senate in favor of the people, against the Patriot Act, the Military Commission Act,
the FISA, etc. then the voters would have had an easier time to connect with her. Seems like
running for president was a whim. Yes, the voting record is important for we don't forget and
it defines you regardless if you state the opposite as she does.
No, I don't think it was a "whim". That is part of the problem. She had made the decision to run for president many years ago and used calculations to support that future run. Her record and behaviors are an indication of this. It says that she is basically conservative according to where the rest of the country is, she is interested in helping to support entrenched interests in Washington, she will sacrifice some of her principles to appear tough militarily (see Iraq war vote), and she promises things during elections that she doesn't deliver legislatively (see electoral college and gas tax suspension).
Obama '08
Hillary is not the woman I hoped to vote for. Of all the personas at her disposal, Hillary chose to campaign as an unenlightened man. She is also not a man whose principles, demeanor, and conduct I can support.
The overwhelming majority of the men who try for the office fail. Sorry, Hillary, you just weren't the best man in the contest.
"She should have copied Golda Meir instead, who was known to greet foreign dignitaries in her housedress, and brew them a cup of tea in her kitchen."
Isn't that kind of a superficial observation?
Golda Meir was as tough and driven and smart a politician as ever lived. You're talking about personal style and a lack of airs, which is an admirable quality...
So if Golda was running for President in the US in 2008, with that record behind her, would she win?
Golda Meir is also the person who said, "I can forgive the Palestinians for killing my children; I can't forgive them for making me kill theirs." A bit of a contrast to Hillary's threat to obliterate iran.
She also said: "A leader who doesn't hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader."
And: "We will have peace with the Arabs when they love their children more than they hate us”
And: "Arab sovereignty in Jerusalem just cannot be. This city will not be divided-not half and half, not 60-40, not 75-25, nothing.”
And: “We don't thrive on military acts. We do them because we have to, and thank God we are efficient.
Is any of that really so different from: "In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them."?
Wow. Thanks Joan. You hit the nail on the head. Hillary failed to understand the mood and the moment. She forgot that the country and the world had no more appetite for fighting or unbriddled individualism. She was another Bush, only in a dress. Now is the time to bow out and let us focus on healing the rifts and winning the election.
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