Hillary Clinton and Us Weekly Politics

Ask most people in Australia, where I live, who the number one contender for the Democratic presidential nomination is, and they'll likely answer 'Hillary Clinton.'

Such people clearly do not follow the US blogosphere.

If they did, they'd know that of all the prominent Democrats, Clinton is the one spoken about in the least positive terms by ordinary party members. Obama is heralded for his statesmanlike poise and unifying charisma, Gore for his environmental leadership, Edwards because he actually seems to have a decent policy platform. When Clinton is praised at all, it's because she's a woman -- and even then, she isn't exactly popular amongst feminists or college-educated women generally.

Not that there's anything (inherently) wrong with that. There are plenty of good reasons to not endorse Hillary Clinton as a presidential candidate -- many of which have been well reported here at the Huffington Post. She acts on the basis politics rather than principle. She supported the war. She's not even all that left wing.

But I can't help but wonder if the criticism Clinton attracts is based on something more than her politics. Certainly, it's hard to imagine any of the leading male Democrats attracting the level of vitriol or nitpicking that Clinton does from both sides of politics on a regular basis.

Perhaps they're simply less objectionable. But maybe there's more to it.

It seems like a cheap shot to say that Clinton attracts the criticism she does simply because she is a woman. Part of it's simply that we've had so much time to get to know her every foible and defect. It's easier to critique Clinton than, say, Obama and Edwards because we (think we) know her so intimately. Like Britney, Madonna or Paris, we refer to her by her first name (she invites us to) -- and we treat her with the same level of derision.

And like the Us Weekly staples, the manner in which we 'know' Clinton is to a large extent divorced from her actual qualities as a senator, first lady or even a human being. Rather, Clinton is an icon, a signifier, a self-confessed 'Rorschach test,' onto which we project the interpretation of our choosing.

And that does have something to do with gender. As Australian journalist Julia Baird -- now working for Newsweek -- argued in her 2004 book, Media Tarts, both the media and the public have a tendency to enthusiastically embrace high profile female politicians, before later discarding them with equal fervor.

Women's presence in politics may no longer be a novelty, but high profile, ambitious women -- potential leaders or presidents -- are. To all but the most conservative, they are seen as a cause for excitement, a sign of a fresh new political narrative.

But it is that very excitement that leads to their downfall: as we eagerly eat up the details of their 'characters,' we reduce them to just that; as we watch their upward trajectories, we read any lack of success as an abject failure; as we get to know them intimately, we feel as disappointed when they fail to live up to the dreams we have projected onto them as we would a close friend or lover.

Any politician who benefits from the power of personality will face similar issues (the gloss is already starting to wear off Obama), but for women, they are inescapable: Condoleezza Rice is hardly what most people would consider charismatic, yet she has been a constant subject of personality-based media coverage of presidential speculation. When they try to shift the focus to hard policy, as Clinton has in her time in the Senate, they are accused of being 'robotic,' or lacking in vision.

Then there's the question of whether a woman we didn't know as intimately as Us Weekly-style celeb could even be in the running for a presidential nomination.

But it isn't all bad news for Hillary. With this month's release of the damning biographies Her Way and A Woman in Charge, criticism of Clinton has shifted from policy to personality, and those doing the criticizing from inside her own party to outside it. And if online conversations over the past week are any indication -- there's no better way to unify a party around one of its candidates than a reminder of where the real political enemies lie.