Tarts, HRC, Nader

[marconiplein]

The great thing about Flickr is that you can say, "What photos have been amassed on blackberries?" (The fruit, of course, not the device.)

The answer--one of the answers . . .

Comments

[tagonist]

I share your difficulty articulating where exactly the line is between Hillary's unattractiveness as a candidate and her failure to conform to gender expectations, but a line does indeed exist. I think, however, that the question of how this would be different if she were a man is specious. If she were a man, her entire presence in the public sphere would have been different from day one and it doesn't make sense to try to reconstruct it now. My snappy response to people who insist that any objection to her candidacy is based on sexism (and I overheard a few college students the other night haranguing someone in a coffeehouse that "we learned in women's theory class that sexism is way way worse than racism") is that my ideal female candidate didn't come to public life as a wife, daughter, or model.

How about this: I can't find the edge between criticism of Hillary Clinton as a woman and criticism of her riding her husband's coattails. Without either she's another calculatedly inoffensive centrist in the mold of John Kerry, who I didn't support either.

Also, the Massachusetts Health Care Plan is a disaster, and should only be invoked as an example of what not to do.

[marconiplein]

"How about this: I can't find the edge between criticism of Hillary Clinton as a woman and criticism of her riding her husband's coattails."

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this.

I definitely feel you on the part where you describe her as an "inoffensive centrist." As it turns out, the American public would rather have an idiot that sticks with his convictions than an intelligent but calculating politician who creates his or her platform based on polls.

Her strategic relationship to Bill does not bother me, actually. In the beginning of his presidency, he was so openly proud of his relationship with his wife that he touted it as a selling point; Two politicians for the price of one! It was only after healthcare reform failed that Hillary took to baking cookies and acting wifely. (Again with the centrist behavior that pleases NO ONE.) People rise to power through personal connections all the time. It is, in fact, the unspoken American way. It leads me to believe that all those Americans out there trying to make it on their own without any help are either unlucky or tragically naive.

[tagonist]

I definitely agree that people find their way to power through connections. I just find Clinton's trajectory almost painfully limited to her relationship with her husband. She became a successful lawyer on her own, no doubt. She found her way onto a few panels over the years, no doubt. However, she's only been elected to a single office- her senate seat from New York. Stripped of her first lady status, she is one more Yale lawyer with friends in high places, who finds her way to electoral politics after a long private career studded with consultancies and powerless advisory posts. We have lots of these folks in the congress, but few reach the celebrity status she enjoys without first proving themselves exceptional as elected officials. Even the original "Fortunate Son" Al Gore Jr. was running for office in his twenties, and had been elected five times before first running for president.

So when she claims thirty five years of experience, I can't help thinking how thin that experience would look without the blockbuster proximity to the presidency between 92 and 2000. I'm sure the Arkansas Educational Standards Committee is a great platform from which to run for, say, the state legislature, but the presidency? Only Bill makes that look plausible.

And the centrism... ugh. I don't even know if I can credit her with centrism. Joseph Lieberman is a centrist. Clinton is, or was before the campaign started, going along to get along, which only works if all parties are playing by the same rules. The last eight years have been a disgusting spectacle of getting along by going along with, among other things, secret prisons, warrantless wiretapping, preemptive warfare, abrogated treaties... there is a place for compromise but only if there is also a place for principles.