US ready for a woman president, but Hillary?
Toby Harden, The Telegraph
05/09/2007
Worldstage: Washington
For much of her life, she was a political appendage of her husband, while resolutely using her maiden name. Reluctantly, she adopted Bill Clinton's surname even as she was humiliated by his sexual incontinence. After mocking women who stood by their man, she did exactly that.
Over the Labour Day weekend - the traditional start of the presidential campaign, but this time virtually a mid-point marker - she was once again at her husband's side, while simultaneously casting herself as the candidate of change and a new era in Washington.
But, in an act of political triangulation of which the former president is doubtless proud, she is now neither Rodham, nor Clinton, but just plain "Hillary". The contradictions that ran through her career as First Lady in Arkansas and the White House remain, but are glossed over in a way that seems at once cynical and effortless. She has found a Third Way.
Despite predictions that she was too polarising a figure ever to be elected even to Congress, she appears to be squaring the circle. Her main rival, Barack Obama, has powerful star appeal and fund-raising prowess, but is struggling to keep up in the polls.
Never conceding an inch, Mrs Clinton declares herself a better friend to the African-American community than the man who would be America's first black president. She can bring about fundamental "change" - a word she used 26 times in a 30-minute speech in Iowa on Monday - despite having been part of the Washington establishment for 15 years.
Only a politician with the chutzpah of a Clinton would dare to attempt such a conjuring trick, never mind look like being able to pull it off.
The New York senator refers to herself breaking through "the hardest of glass ceilings" to become America's first woman president, but urges voters not to choose her because of her sex. Barbs at women who "stay home and bake cookies" have been jettisoned in favour of repeated references to being a mother.
Gone are the trademark grey pant-suits. At presidential debates, she is resplendent in coral, leaving the dark suits to her seven male rivals. When the Washington Post ran an article noting her change in style and highlighting an outfit that revealed her cleavage, the Hillary campaign denounced the paper's supposed sexism and took the opportunity to raise money on the back of the slight.
All this is a far cry from 1984, when Walter Mondale named Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate and feminists celebrated history in the making. Soon their hopes turned to dust, as the first presidential ticket to include a woman limped towards a landslide defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan.
Along the way, Ferraro endured a litany of indignities. A veteran Mississippi politician addressed her as "young lady" and asked: "Can you bake a blueberry muffin?" The comedian Johnny Carson joked that Mrs Mondale might get peeved if his husband stayed late in the Oval Office having private sessions with the Vice-President.
Ferraro later wrote a bitter memoir accusing anti-abortionists, Republicans, Rupert Murdoch, Italian-Americans and even Mondale aides of creating a tide of sexism that sank her. But in reality many of the mistakes were made by Ferraro herself, including posing in an apron in a book called the Mondale Family Cookbook. Mrs Clinton is a much better and more battle-tested politician.
While Ferraro, an obscure congresswoman, was defined by her sex, Mrs Clinton is viewed as a politician first and woman second. Just as Kennedy rose above being a Irish Roman Catholic, she has become more than just the female candidate.
"Sometimes the pioneering individual has to go against type," notes Michael Barone, editor of the Almanac of American Politics. "Kennedy had a persona more like that of a British lord than some red-haired fighting Irishman."
Realising this, the formidably disciplined Mrs Clinton has positioned herself as a foreign policy hawk in her party, risking the wrath of the Left rather than appear weak.
The nagging fear for Democrats is that Hillary will win the nomination, but lose the presidential election to a Republican candidate with broad appeal, such as Rudy Giuliani. After 28 years of a Bush or a Clinton in the White House, the yearning for something new is palpable.
Some 55 per cent of swing voters are women and the news that the hit television show 24 will soon have a woman president, portrayed by a lesbian actress, barely made a stir. There is little doubt Americans are ready to have a female running the White House.
Whether they are prepared to sign up to another Clinton for four more years is a different question entirely.<
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