Hillary Clinton runs against the stereotype of women, ruled by their emotions instead of their brains. She is tougher than the other Democratic candidates on the war in Iraq. Refuses to apologize for getting it wrong. Stands up to the personal attacks. She is woman, hear her roar. Except she chokes up at a question right before the New Hampshire voters go to the polls, and gadzooks, she pulls off an upset. Whether you believe the tear was genuine or not, imagine a female winning an election by crying. Imagine a woman winning the nation’s highest office because a lot of other women took pity on her. It’s enough to make a feminist go buy a bra.
It’s not the first time the Clintons have relied on the old double standard. If you listen to the Clinton campaign, Sen. Clinton deserves to be judged on her merits and not discriminated against because she’s a woman. At the same time, both Clintons complain she is picked on not only by the male media, but that Barack Obama and John Edwards are ganging up on her. Which is it — tough-as-nails candidate or vulnerable woman stereotype? It’s whatever works, baby.
Then there was Hillary’s feigned hurt posed by a debate question as her likability was called into question. A churlish Obama was chastised by the pundits in post-debate shows because he snapped with obvious impatience, "You’re likable enough, Hillary."
Right along, both Clintons have cried "foul" when things don’t go well. Hillary implored the media to "vet" Obama the way she has been vetted. Well, you can’t brag about your superior experience and then complain because you’ve been in the spotlight so long there’s more to examine. We also saw Hillary bad mouth the Iowa caucus system, but only after she lost; and husband Bill whine prior to the New Hampshire Primary when polls showed his wife might lose. Hillary’s upset win apparently quelled Bill’s misgivings. If the Clintons don’t win, something is wrong with the rules.
Since when is experience a bad thing, the Clintons want to know. Well, let’s see, George W. Bush has just spent the better part of eight years in the White House, does his experience make him more fit for the White House today or is the fact he’s been a lousy president hold sway? Who among us would think twice about amending the Constitution so he can run again? Sen. Clinton was not only wrong on the key issue of the day — the Iraq War; unlike Obama, she compounded that error by voting with the administration to label Iran’s Revolutionary Guard a terrorist organization — a piece of legislation that had no other purpose than to stoke the fires for a Bush war with Iran.
Her "experience" in the White House is largely shrouded in secrecy. We do know she botched healthcare, one of the few public tasks given her by the president. It does not appear she attended cabinet meetings when she was First Lady. So exactly what was it she did when she got into the White House? She surely is known as a hard-working senator, but few would consider her outstanding among her peers.
She complains about Obama’s lack of experience, but contrary to popular opinion, he did not fall out of the sky to run for president. Born in Hawaii, he went to school in Jakarta, where he spoke Indonesian. In adulthood, he was director of the Developing Communities Project where he worked with low-income residents before entering Harvard Law School. He was elected the Harvard Law Review’s first black president in its 104-year history. On the mean streets of Chicago, Obama organized voter-registration drives. As an attorney, he represented community organizers, discrimination claims and voting-rights cases. He lectured on constitutional law at the University of Chicago and spent eight years in the Illinois legislature before being elected to the U.S. Senate. He was important enough to be the keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic Convention.
For those of you who think he hasn’t been specific enough about what he would do as president, I urge you to go to his Obama for President Web site, where he lists his positions on the main issues of the day in excruciating detail.
Obama has been criticized for giving us the hope he might unite a badly divided country. Since Sen. Clinton’s husband was known as the "Man From Hope," when did she decide hope is a bad thing?
