No sooner did I write "The NYT gushes" than I began to doubt whether it is gushing. Yes, "perfect" sounds like high praise, but: "transitional figure." It's almost an oxymoron. If it's perfect, why are we progressing through this stage, transitioning? She's not the fully formed female President, but she's perfection as a way station on the road from here to there. She isn't where we really need to be, and so the perfection is imperfection.
[O]ne of the running subtexts in this story... is that when it comes to women winning political office, there’s a long line of wives in the cast of characters. [Elizabeth] Dole is married to the former presidential candidate Bob Dole. Margaret Chase Smith was both wife and office manager for Congressman Clyde Smith of Maine, and she took his seat after he died.Collins had Hillary Clinton on the telephone, and Hillary told the old joke about a "successful businessman" who tells his wife that if she'd married her old boyfriend she'd be the wife of that gas station attendant and the woman says — as Hillary flattens the punchline — "No, if I’d married him he’d be a big success like you." Is that what Hillary thinks of Bill? That's my question. Collins didn't ask that and she sure didn't ask my next questions: If Bill got to be President because of you. wouldn't electing you now be like giving you a third term as President? Haven't you already had your full constitutional share of presidential terms?
The first woman governor, Nellie Tayloe Ross, won a special election in Wyoming to succeed her husband in 1925. The first female senator was Hattie Wyatt Caraway of Arkansas, who was initially appointed to succeed her husband....
Clinton — the wife of a former president, with the longest résumé in the room — is a perfect transitional figure, whether she wins or not. Maybe there had to be a heroic Senator Smith with a muffin recipe, too. Maybe — and this is taking a really huge jump — there also had to be a “Ma” Ferguson, who became the first woman to be elected governor of Texas in 1925 after her husband was convicted of financial corruption. Ferguson did promise voters “two for the price of one” long before Bill Clinton thought of the phrase.So the perfection Collins flogs is status as a wife of a former President?! In that framework, Hillary is only "the perfect transitional figure" if you believe America is mired in its travels on the road to female equality in some godawful backwater town where a woman cannot make it on her own. Did Mary Tyler Moore throw her hat in the air for nothing?
That was Minneapolis in 1970, and I am not buying that a woman in 2015 needs to make it by riding alongside her successful husband. That's not where we are, and I can't believe Gail Collins isn't embarrassed to talk about the United States that way.
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"Transitional figure" is damning with faint praise. It's not much different from calling somebody a token.
Maybe Collins sees the America of the future as a corrupt matriarchal oligopoly.
"...everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Mother."
The best that HRC could claim was that she was the junior partner in the Clinton team. He had the incredible political skills that easily surpassed her and most other politicians of her generation. Her role was to do damage control for his flaws.
"Clinton — the wife of a former president, with the longest résumé in the room..."
Does that résumé include being fired as a Watergate lawyer?
Because sometimes people leave things like that out on their résumé.
I am Laslo.
Using the Mary Tyler Moore intro as an emblem of the independent 20th century liberated woman is the most elegant sneer I've ever seen in a blog post anywhere.
Why is Hillary Clinton not in jail?
Gail Collins probably has her job because of her husband too.
"Clinton — the wife of a former president, with the longest résumé in the room..."
The grammar police should be all over that.
"Why is Hillary Clinton not in jail?"
Because in the United States, the political class is real; and if you're in the very high social strata, the Justice Department won't touch you.
What, exactly, is on that long resume?
I take "perfect transitional figure" to mean Hillary is the "you can fool some of the people all of the time" candidate on the road to the Democrat's holy Grail of overt leftists fooling enough people enough of the time to win a perpetual, self-sustaining majority of the Electoral College votes.
In other words, Hillary now and Bernie Sanders' younger successor later.
"What, exactly, is on that long resume?"
No DNA lab on earth can answer that.
"... on the road to the Democrat's holy Grail of overt leftists fooling enough people enough of the time to win a perpetual, self-sustaining majority of the Electoral College votes."
Sorry to have to tell you we're there already.
Althouse said...
I am not buying that a woman in 2015 needs to make it by riding alongside her successful husband. That's not where we are, and I can't believe Gail Collins isn't embarrassed to talk about the United States that way.
Maybe, but there has been an unbroken string of 44 male presidents, so there is apparently some barrier to entry, if we allow the facts to speak rather than Mary Tyler Moore's fictional character.
And, it is still better than George Bush who was legacied into Yale and the Presidency, without contributing anything to his father's preeminence.
The best we could do is consign Hillary to history, where she belongs.
...the longest résumé in the room...
The Hammerstein-Equord class "stupid and industrious."
Collins fits the Hillary True Believer profile: an educated, professional woman, born between 1945 and 1950, who imagines that she could be in Hillary's shoes if her life had gone a little differently.
There are a lot of people like that working in the media biz.
For the life of me I cannot imagine a single person whose life has been improved because Hillary was born. She is like the opposite of George Bailey.
What Terry said at 9:09AM!
Elizabeth Dole doesn't belong on the list because she met Bob when she was Secretary of Education or something, so had already accomplished political success without her husband.
Elect Hillary "Lurleen" Clinton!!
Is that what Hillary thinks of Bill? That's my question.
You bet I think she does and I think she is right. Without her drive and ambition, he would have been a hillbilly southern governor chasing skirts all his life.
Professor Althouse:
I am not buying that a woman in 2015 needs to make it by riding alongside her successful husband. That's not where we are, and I can't believe Gail Collins isn't embarrassed to talk about the United States that way.
Feminism in the 1970s proudly told women they could and should achieve on their own merit—not ride to success on the coattails of some man.
That is what I learned at Wellesley in 1970.
Hillary did not.
Thanks, AJ -- I really hadn't thought of it before, but with most powerful people you hear anecdotes about how they helped out others with no expectation of being helped in return. There were a lot of stories like that about Romney & Bush. I don't remember hearing a single one about either of the Clintons.
Well, Hillary learned a different lesson in 1970 that the country was not ready for woman president. So she married a guy and made him president. Despite all its discrete victories in women's progress by making an individual woman self sufficient, the US has failed to elect a woman president. Why is that? It has nothing to do with feminism or the woman's mindset. It has mostly to do with the political structure and the retail politics of convincing every voter to trust a woman to do that job. In that sense, the collective in the US is still backward to place trust in a woman to do that job. BC needed a Hillary then and she certainly does not need him or his coattails now. It is a pity that feminism didn't teach to look at a woman as a whole, as her own person even when she is the wife of an ex-president.
PM317 wrote:
"In that sense, the collective in the US is still backward to place trust in a woman to do that job."
Democracy is the enemy of progress! Down with democracy!
It isn't that the country isn't ready now for a female President, but rather, it is unready for a Hillary Presidency absent her husband putting her in that position. She might have been elected a small city mayor, or to a state legislature. But likely nothing higher. She got her Senate seat thanks to her husband and his position, allowing her to raise the required money, get the Puerto Rican vote, etc, thanks to his fund raising connections and ability to grant pardons to shady characters. She is really a pretty horrible retail politician, and it was her marriage that allowed her to skip the retail politics that politicians go through on the way up.
She's the perfect transitional figure if you think the U.S. is transitioning from a republic to a crime syndicate.
pm317 said...
Well, Hillary learned a different lesson in 1970 that the country was not ready for woman president. So she married a guy and made him president.
There is a lot of truth to this. Despite his abundance of charisma Bill Clinton is an extremely undisciplined individual. It has been said that without Hillary he would have been the most popular professor at the University of Arkansas.
Remarkable women rulers in history go back to queens Hatshepsut and Nefertiti of ancient Egypt.
Why this harping on women this or that?
And to use that as an argument for voting for Hillary!; the secretary-treasurer and chief legal counsel for Clinton Inc. for the last 40-45 years?
Hillary! is indeed a very successful woman, but should not just what she has been successful at count?
Would Clyde Barrow have been Clyde Barrow without Bonnie?
Perhaps, but not much for movie material.
Hillary is a power-mad Harpy, who patiently rode her husband's coat-tails to power.
Indeed, when her predator husband was caught banging 21-year old interns, cheating on her to no end, and humiliating her in the process, she convinced a buncha gullible NY feminists to deem her the "victim," deserving empowerment, and then rode that scam all the way to the Senate.
I know many strong, successful women - and happen to be married to one. They know Hillary is a fakir. She exudes cunning awfulness, wrapped in a veneer of motherly, lawyerly competence. But she'd be a Stalinist, if she ever got enough power.
Just say no to Hillary.
"I can't believe Gail Collins isn't embarrassed to talk about the United States that way."
Faux amazement. right? Your I-can't-believe-x shtick is getting very old, ma'am.
You'd have to assume that Progs feel any embarrassment in pushing their candidates in any way they like, or that in this particular instance they're at all embarrassed about using hoary pseudo-feminist cliches as they damn well please. Even you, a law professor, can't be that deep in the tank (see, we can all play that game). Let me know when you spot Herself being embarrassed about anything.
She's the perfect transitional figure because she's a Democrat. The rest of the story is just attaching to the convenient story line of her gender and a possible history-making first. It would be some other fluff if it was a different candidate.
Meyer Lansky was a very successful man, but would you have voted for him for President?
That was Minneapolis in 1970, and I am not buying that a woman in 2015 needs to make it by riding alongside her successful husband.
I think you're restricting it too much to marriage. I think for Collins & her ilk, it's not just marriage, it's female sexuality in general that they use as a weapon in their social climbing arsenal.
Remember that quotation from The Fear of Flying?:
The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game . The man is not "taking" and the woman is not "giving." No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the unicorn. And I have never had one.”
There is no sex without ulterior motives for these women, which is why they forgive Hillary so readily. She, too, in her own way, just used her pussy to get what she wanted.
Gail Collins and the rest of the Leftist fellow travelers will write anything they feel will help their preferred candidate.
Althouse looks for meaning where a lust for power is all that exists.
Collins is the perfect example of "promote the least competent." She was easily the worst editorial page columnist at the Times, so they promoted her to editor of the editorial pages.
Gushing for Hillary, groveling for Obama. It's what they do.
The polls now indicate Hillary! will lose against any of the top Republican candidates, except Donald Trump.
Think about that for a minute.
As for why she is running? If she can serve just one term as President, she and her money will finally be safe, and she can rest her weary head.
It's not any more complicated than that and has no more significance.
Is that what Hillary thinks of Bill?
For better or worse, Bill had fought his way out of poverty, graduated Phi Beta Kappa, and won a Rhodes Scholarship BEFORE He met Hillary.
The Drill SGT said...
For better or worse, Bill had fought his way out of poverty, graduated Phi Beta Kappa, and won a Rhodes Scholarship BEFORE He met Hillary.
This is a fair point. He has a lot of natural ability. But, I have met Rhodes scholars who struggled to get a faculty position at an average university. Collecting academic trinkets only gets you so far. I think the record show pretty clearly that he is not the most disciplined of individuals.
Whenever anyone asks for a list of Hillary's accomplishments there is an awkward silence or meaningless droning.... So many, many miles flown...... Keeping Wimminz issues at the forefront.... blah, blah, blah.
Yep, she has held mighty impressive positions of power. But has she really done much with those. (I do not include self enrichment.)
Seldom do they mention her greatest accomplishment of acquiring that second X chromosome.
"That's not where we are, and I can't believe Gail Collins isn't embarrassed to talk about the United States that way."
I believe Gail Collins should be ashamed of every word that has ever been published under her name. But I can't say I'm surprised she isn't.
Terry said...
PM317 wrote:
"In that sense, the collective in the US is still backward to place trust in a woman to do that job."
Democracy is the enemy of progress! Down with democracy!
-------------------------
No, that is not what I said at all. In fact, it takes time to evolve and progress and is evident in the democratic process in the US. Elsewhere in the world where they have had woman heads of state, it is mostly because of parliamentary democracies. But those countries broke the ice by appointing a female and then the people embraced that idea in electing her in subsequent elections. Break the ice, US, it is high time but that is easier said than done because the voting public has not been given a wide array of female talent either over the recent past. The reluctance of women to run for public office in the US has to change.
pm317 said...
Elsewhere in the world where they have had woman heads of state, it is mostly because of parliamentary democracies. But those countries broke the ice by appointing a female and then the people embraced that idea in electing her in subsequent elections.
pm317 is making some good arguments here as to how difficult it will be for a women to break this particular barrier in the US. I don't like the Clintons but I can see the historic nature of Hillary's attempt to grab the brass ring. I would guess that she fails, in part for the reasons outlined by pm317.
Collecting academic trinkets only gets you so far. I think the record show pretty clearly that he is not the most disciplined of individuals.
No undisciplined collector of academic trinkets could get very far, especially in today's Democratic party, he said, blithely ignoring the past seven years.
there has been an unbroken string of 44 male presidents, so there is apparently some barrier to entry
Likewise we make the President go without electricity in the White House almost half the time.
"if you're in the very high social strata, the Justice Department won't touch you."
Tell that to Martha Stewart or Leona Helmsley. Politicians are members of a ruling class that gets away with most things that would send even a rich person to prison and has. Martha Stewart was entrapped by a corrupt investigation of a non-crime. She made mistake of allowing an FBI agent to interview her without a lawyer.
" I think the record show pretty clearly that he is not the most disciplined of individuals."
Bill Clinton made most of his real accomplishments before he met Hillary. His discipline probably was adequate UNTIL he met and married her. Then he elected for Lord Acton's world. Corruption followed.
Hillary could well make a mark as the only Protestant on the Supreme Court.
Speaking of President Clinton's effect on Senator Clinton, see Recommendation: How to talk about your Iraq vote (advice to Hillary Clinton).
Excerpt:
President Clinton was right to strictly enforce the Gulf War ceasefire despite the opposition of the Security Council members that advocated for Saddam in 1998 and again in 2002-2003. Your husband was right to impress the gravity of Saddam's "clear and present danger to the stability of the Persian Gulf and the safety of people everywhere" (President Clinton) upon you as a Senator and his successor in the White House. According to the Iraq Survey Group and the Iraqi Perspectives Project that studied captured regime documents, President Clinton's dire warnings about Saddam from 1998-1999 were correct. But for the regime change, Saddam would have rearmed - was in fact already rearming in violation of UNSCR 687 - Saddam was a terrorist and tyrant, and Saddam's peculiar decision-making, ambition, and the nature of his regime were not reconstructed as mandated by the Gulf War ceasefire.
When the the law, policy, and facts underlying Operation Iraqi Freedom are correctly understood, it is clear that your husband and his successor in the White House were right about Saddam. Your critics and competitors for the Democratic nomination for President are wrong now and they were wrong in 2008. You were right to vote for the 2002 AUMF.
I first heard that joke about the woman, her husband and the gas station attendant on Justified, except that the character played by Clinton friend Mary Steenburgen tells it specifically about Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton.
bgates said...
Likewise we make the President go without electricity in the White House almost half the time.
Any nation that could elect the pathetically inept Bush Jr and not have elected a woman has to acknowledge that competence is not the only criteria by which candidates are judged.
"For better or worse, Bill had fought his way out of poverty, graduated Phi Beta Kappa, and won a Rhodes Scholarship BEFORE He met Hillary."
Bill didn't fight his way out of poverty, his mother married out of it.
"Bill didn't fight his way out of poverty, his mother married out of it."
No, he is and was a very smart guy. His mother was a nurse anesthetist, which is not real poverty, but he got most of what he did on his own.
A crazy train goes where?
"Any nation that could elect the pathetically inept Bush Jr and not have elected a woman has to acknowledge that competence is not the only criteria by which candidates are judged."
And then following Bush with the laughably incompetent Obama for two terms. After Obama beat out Hillary for the nomination. But then even the most pessimistic couldn't have foreseen what a complete clown Obama has become. So, fair point, ARM.
"Any nation that could elect the pathetically inept Bush Jr and not have elected a woman has to acknowledge that competence is not the only criteria by which candidates are judged."
You meant to say that the Democrat Party which elected pathetically inept Barack Obama (the genius who after 3 Ivy League schools can barely do 7th grade math and thought that Obamacare could cut premiums by 3000%) in its primaries, you need to acknowledge that competence is not the only criteria by which democrats judge their candidates. Right?
And speaking of "competency" - what has Hillary achieved as secretary of State? Name 3 top things. Start with Middle East, discuss ISIS, Iraq, Syria, then talk about China and Russia. Good luck.
Hillary made a lot of money as an wife of a governor of Arkansas (and accidently an attorney in the law firm which had a lot of business with the Arkansas state government) - which I assume is her biggest accomplishment.
"His mother was a nurse anesthetist, which is not real poverty, but he got most of what he did on his own."
He did quite well for himself but his stepfather was wealthy. There is no getting around that.
Bill Clinton was the child of a fairly wealthy family.
I'll mention that, as "Beloved" as he was...Bill never pulled down 50% of the vote in his Presidential elections. Including one where he ran against Dole and the even cookier-than-usual Ross Perot.
And she is measures less popular than he.
"She's the perfect transitional figure if you think the U.S. is transitioning from" great start, how about a list?
a republic to a crime syndicate.
a representative democracy to a banana republic.
If the Clintonites could take off their partisan blinkers for five minutes they might realize just how much a Hillary presidency would be a slap in the face to women everywhere. Is an Evite Peron/Lurleen Wallace really the best women can hope for in 2015? Do we really want our first woman president to be this person?
All across the political spectrum, we've shown that this country is perfectly fine voting for a female president, so long as we like her or her policies (Sarah Palin's fans are almost exclusively on the Right, and Liz Warren has no lack of fans on the Left). So it's not like Hillary's our one shot.
Pass on this woman. Show that pandering and cheap identity politics delivered with the subtlety of a cinder block is beneath our contempt.
The perfect transitional figure as we move from high speed down the Road to Serfdom, to "Full speed ahead!"
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