http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/opinion/13dowd.html?
_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: February 13, 2008
Russell Berman, a young reporter for The New York Sun, trailed Bill Clinton around
Maryland all day Sunday. The former president was on his best behavior, irritating the
smattering of press.
After Bill's last speech at Leisure World retirement community in Silver Spring, Berman
interviewed two women in the audience.
Elaine Sirkis, 77, an Obama supporter, confided that she just isn't sure she's ready for a
woman president. Betty Conway, 83, a Hillary supporter, confided that she just isn't sure
she's ready for a black president.
As Conway walked away, Sirkis smiled sheepishly. "I'm sorry," she told Berman sweetly
about her friend. "She's a bigot."
We're not just in the most vertiginous election of our lives. We're in another national
seminar on gender and race that is teaching us about who we are as we figure out what we
want America to be.
It's not yet clear which prejudice will infect the presidential contest more — misogyny or
racism.
Many women I talk to, even those who aren't particularly fond of Hillary, feel empathy for
her, knowing that any woman in a world dominated by men has to walk a tightrope
between femininity and masculinity, strength and vulnerability.
They see double standards they hate — when male reporters described Hillary's laugh as
"a cackle" or her voice as "grating," when Rush Limbaugh goes off on her wrinkles or when
male pundits seem gleeful to write her political obituary. Several women I know, who
argue with their husbands about Hillary, refer with a shudder to the "Kill the Witch"
syndrome.
In a webcast, prestidigitator Penn Jillette talks about a joke he has begun telling in his
show. He thinks the thunderous reaction it gets from audiences shows that Hillary no
longer has a shot.
The joke goes: "Obama is just creaming Hillary. You know, all these primaries, you know.
And Hillary says it's not fair, because they're being held in February, and February is Black
History Month. And unfortunately for Hillary, there's no White Bitch Month."
Of course, jokes like that — even Jillette admits it's offensive — are exactly what may give
Hillary a shot. When the usually invulnerable Hillary seems vulnerable, many women, even
ones who don't want her to win, cringe at the idea of seeing her publicly humiliated —
again.
And since women — and some men — tend to be more protective when she is down, it is
impossible to rule out a rally, especially if voters start to see Obama, after his eight-
contest rout, as that maddening archetypal figure: the glib golden boy who slides through
on charm and a smile.
Those close to Hillary say she's feeling blue. It's an unbearable twist of fate to spend all
those years in the shadow of one Secretariat, only to have another gallop past while you're
plodding toward the finish line.
I know that the attacks against powerful women can be harsh and personal and unfair,
enough to make anyone cry.
But Hillary is not the best test case for women. We'll never know how much of the backlash
is because she's a woman or because she's this woman or because of the ick factor of
returning to the old Clinton dysfunction.
While Obama aims to transcend race, Hillary often aims to use gender to her advantage, or
to excuse mistakes. In 1994, after her intransigence and secrecy-doomed health care
plan, she told The Wall Street Journal that she was "a gender Rorschach test."
"If somebody has a female boss for the first time, and they've never experienced that," she
said, "well, maybe they can't take out their hostility against her so they turn it on me."
As a possible first Madame President, Hillary is a flawed science experiment because you
can't take Bill out of the equation. Her story is wrapped up in her marriage, and her
marriage is wrapped up in a series of unappetizing compromises, arrangements and
dependencies.
Instead of carving out a separate identity for herself, she has become more entwined with
Bill. She is running bolstered by his record and his muscle. She touts her experience as
first lady, even though her judgment during those years on issue after issue was poor. She
says she's learned from her mistakes, but that's not a compelling pitch.
As a senator, she was not a leading voice on important issues, and her Iraq vote was about
her political viability.
She told New York magazine's John Heilemann that before Iowa taught her that she had to
show her soft side, "I really believed I had to prove in this race from the very beginning
that a woman could be president and a woman could be commander in chief. I thought
that was my primary mission."
If Hillary fails, it will be her failure, not ours.
Ne
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