The truth about Hillary - Guardian [View All]

[rndmprsn]

one guardian writers take on hillary's (alleged) run for prez in 08.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1539320,00.html

Clinton is popular but America is not ready for a woman president

Although the next presidential race is three years away, Americans are constantly being asked whom they want to see in the White House next time. A few weeks ago came a startling new development: for the first time a majority of those polled said they were likely to vote for Hillary Rodham Clinton...

...These are not just new crowd-pleasing ventures - such views have been part of her public persona for a long time. At the same time Clinton knows she will also have to challenge the Republicans on defence and security; she famously voted for the Iraq war and is spending, as one commentator put it, "hours mastering military arcana", as she must if she is ever to persuade Americans to take her seriously as commander in chief.

Such behaviour may alienate her most liberal supporters. But then Hillary was never the politician that radical feminists dreamed of. Just as the first modern woman leader in Britain had to be tougher than the boys to silence her critics, so the first woman US president will be harder than the men around her. It was all very well for Bill Clinton to show off his human side - everyone knew he was surging with testosterone. If Hillary were to do the same it would be seen as weakness.

Yet this necessity puts her in a bind. US culture may constantly throw up images of powerful females, but they are always seen as lacking something vital - not brains, nor guts, but heart. From Lara Croft to Catwoman, from Condi to Hillary, the power of the superwoman always seems to come at the expense of her perceived humanity. When commentators say that Hillary Clinton is too cold to win over voters, what they are really saying is that she is too powerful to be a real woman. Behaviour that would be forgiven in a man - wariness of confiding in others, self-belief - is seen as evidence of a hyper-ambition that makes her less than fully human...

...Whatever Hillary Clinton does to position herself politically, this dirt will keep coming. If she's lucky she will be able to rise above her detractors and speak directly to voters with a voice that seems both reassuring - because she's been around for so long - and new - because she is, after all, a woman. But if she's unlucky she will seem both old hat, tainted with the scandals of the Clinton era, and, as a powerful woman, way too revolutionary for current American society. Perhaps all Republicans will have to do to stop her succeeding is to remind voters that 13 years ago she said didn't want to spend her life baking cookies.