The Great Big Promising Elephant in the We-need-change Room: Hillary is a Woman

By PLS

She's a woman and she knows it takes a village. It's time for Hillary to play this card!

It's risky, of course. But the cautious unisex campaign she's been running isn't working. Everyone agrees she's competent; everyone agrees that she could do the job; but no one's excited.

Damned if you do and damned if you don't. It's still not easy to be a woman.

'The Female Trap

Hillary did what smart women were supposed to do when she left college. She subordinated her career to a bright man. In the process, she accomplished and learned a lot. Ditto during the Bill Clinton presidency. She learned as much as any staff member would have learned. Her claim of experience based on that relationship is anything but bogus, as countless married women with similar experience know.

Including me. I was married to a specialist in Indian politics. By the time he'd researched and written the book based on his dissertation, a book whose analytic structure was my idea and which I rewrote word by word, paragraph by paragraph, I was an expert on Indian politics and the Congress Party, and I remained so. In fact, I was more engrossed in Indian affairs than the subject of my own Ph.D., which was American Literature, and I remain so. What did I get out of it? The usual blow-off in the acknowledgments. To this day, my income is seriously diminished by the fact that I made that marriage and gave it all I had.

There are millions of women who also made this bittersweet bargain in the school of marriage and hard knocks. That's why vigorous efforts to disparage Hillary's experience have fallen flat. And yet it's a rare woman who isn't, understandably, a little defensive about the situation.

So Hillary, who went on to become a superb politician and legislator as Senator from New York in her own right, still works to prove and prove and prove that she wasn't a deaf, dumb and blind dunce all those years as Wife of Bill and especially as First Lady, when tradition wouldn't let her hold a respectable job of her own. The carpetbagger who wasn't supposed to be elected breezed through a re-election for a second term as senator. But she's still behind the career path eight ball for those years when she left Yale for Arkansas and then found herself in that ghastly First Lady position. So now she's overcompensating. She's overselling the experience factor in a market that's looking for change.

The Wife and Mommy Trap

But Hillary's also got a loyalty problem. She's still married to the guy. She can't diminish him. She can't totally distance herself. What's more, even as she hopes a little of the enduring loyalty to Bill will rub off on her candidacy, she needs to fear the impact of the Clinton haters. It's a messy business that younger women may not entirely understand.

Speaking of Hillary as First Lady, I heard her speak to university students in Kampala, Uganda. Bill had just given a wow of a speech in which he pepped up an audience that President Museveni had put to sleep. Hillary's speech was every bit as enthralling to her audience of academics and students. That's just one reason why Hillary has a huge number of admirers in the international community. She also delivered a stirring address at one of the UN conferences on women. So Hillary not only knows foreign policy, she has a huge bank of good will abroad. Karen Hughes should have consulted with Hillary before she trotted off to sell America to the Arabs. But where's that passion now? Advisers have neutered Hillery.

First Lady. The unpaid glory position that's also the kiss of death for a serious woman in America, where it's still not universally accepted that working women are doing the right thing by their families. The First Lady is supposed to have a project, but it has to be a safe and sanitary one, just as most middle class women in Hillary's generation and mine were supposed to do nice charity work instead of being employed professionally full time.

Nevertheless, women had to fight to have that charity work taken seriously on a curriculum vitae. How many of us, like Hillary now, had to plead with prospective employers to take an unconventional, discontinuous professional career path seriously? When I joined the Foreign Service at age 42, I wasn't deemed worthy of mid-level entry. My work experience didn't fit the conventional career pattern. Except for women. I had to start at the bottom with the twenty somethings. Responses from other prospective employers were even more dismal. Millions of women have had this experience.

So Hillary started out her campaign by trying to prove she has the goods. She's proved that, but her campaign still isn't taking off. And it's not working because, the Pundits say, the theme of the year is change.

Right! When they're ready to let you into the club, they change the rules!

Affirmation, Not Denial

So now Hillary needs to take a risk. She needs to come out of the unisex closet.

She came close during that last debate in Iowa. She actually named the elephant. Remember? She retorted to a question as to whether she was indeed a change agent with the perfect response. "You're talking about change here? I'm a woman."

My debate-watcher's reaction at that point was, "At last!" And I waited for more. I waited for her to build on that. But she didn't

Hillary needs to appropriate the title and gist of the book she wrote a few years ago. The title was: It Takes a Village. Conservatives criticized it for appearing to demean the role of the nuclear family. But these days that phrase crops up all the time--- and it crops up approvingly. No one disputes it. It takes a village to raise a child. The value of community responsibility is now a part of conventional wisdom. And people who worried about the nanny state a few years ago are clambering for government to step in and help out in innumerable directions: toys, drugs, health care, the environment, home finance, pensions, etc., etc.

It's time for Hillary to reclaim her book. It's time for her to show that she has vision. Even then, she saw clearly how people need to look after one another, at all levels: family, town, state, country. It's time to be a woman and reclaim the caring role. Passionately. Unapologetically.

Along with that message, it wouldn't be a bad idea to note that Queen Elizabeth I, Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi and Gold Meir were not wimps when it came to national security. In fact, women are very good at protecting their children or their territory. The idea of women as weak, timid, fearful and unventuresome isn't nature. It's a cultural construct whose time has come and gone.

Let Hillary be Hillary

So take a risk, Hillary. Be a real change agent. Be a woman. A strong, gutsy, vibrant, caring, confident, smart woman. Let it all out! Without arrogance. The Iowa audience loved it when you parleyed a stereotype into a winner, "Well, now you've hurt my feelings, but I'll try to rise above it." And then you admitted you were a woman. It was a wonderful---and squandered moment, when you didn't follow up with the things that can make a woman candidate the change agent par excellence. And all of this can be said without falling into alienating feminist rant, which would indeed be the kiss of death.

Lots of disenchanted women who are gravitating toward Barak will come running if you have the guts to say that it's time for a woman to be in the White House because a woman knows that it takes a village to raise a child and it takes a government that cares about the general welfare to create the context for healthy productive lives.

By the way, these aren't "women's" issues. They are the defining issues for a civilization. Cowboys think you can fight a war and forget about reconstructing a society. Wise leaders know that you can avoid a lot of bloodshed and suffering if you build a decent society. That's a change in attitude, with practical consequences, that we desperately need.

So don't ignore the elephant. Ride it!

Comments

[zenpundit]

Hillary appeals to Boomer women of similar political and class views that she herself holds. That's it. No one else really likes or trusts her ( *fear* her yes - useful quality in moderation).

Boomer women are an influential constituency within the Democratic Party to be sure, but far from the majority of Democrats, much less the electorate. To pick up young women, much less men, African-Americans, Hispanics, Labor, independents Hillary would have to convince them that she could authentically represent their interests.

You don't have to be a likable personality to succeed in politics - Nixon, LBJ and unnumbered members of Congress were not particularly charismatic, some were downight nasty, mean-spirited bullies - but you have to connect to groups beyond your core supporters and at least convince them that you will deliver.

[JLK]

Her problem is that she isn't a people person, and it shows.

[Cycledoc]

Hillary needs to send Bill home or at least deemphasize his participation. He is a divisive and detracts from her impact. This campaign is not about his legacy but Hillary's future.

[CKR]

Gloria Steinem checks in this morning with a somewhat similar piece.

And here's a bunch of boomers doing something a bit different. (Although I do note the secondary role of women in the headline; also in numbers.)

And yet another commentary on the sexism whose equivalent in racism would be generally decried. The comments are a good indicator that it's still standing proud. And more commentary, this time on the Steinem article.

I'll agree that there are still problems with sexism, but I doubt that it is the sole source of Clinton's problems. I'm tired, too, of the argument as it goes on that comment thread. I'm not happy with political dynasties. And none of the candidates' policy stands match mine exactly. It's too bad we can't vote on just one factor, but there it is.

[pls]

I'd also prefer that the first woman president of the US not be the spouse of a previous president. But I don't think I'd consider the Clinton duo a dynasty. Now the Bush family is another matter. Three generations. Senators. Two presidents. Governors of two states. Or the Kennedys. Only one president, but many members of Congress. Three generations now. Or the Rockefellers. Vice President. Governors of three states. Etc. Of course, out here in the west, there's also the Udall family, although it hasn't reach the most exalted levels of elective power. All in all, it seems to me, the word dynasty should be reserved for families that enjoy many generations of dominance. When it happens, it bothers me, too. Moving on a little, not only do I worry about such generation-spanning real dynasties, I worry about developing a political class that's increasingly separated from the vast majority of the country, not only minorities, but the working and middle classes. Then an Obama shows up. Or others from equally unpredictable sources. That's enormously encouraging.