As I predicted, Hillary Clinton was not going to maintain the soft and gentle persona she showed at the end of Thursday night's CNN debate.
Over the weekend, she both scolded ("Shame on you Barack Obama") and mocked ("The heavens will open up") her rival for the nomination. Yesterday, the Clinton camp was accused of circulating a two year old photo of Obama in tribal dress, obviously released to offer visual confirmation of the rumor (lie) that Obama is a Muslim.
I don't know if these were calculated political decisions or just Hillary's personality showing through. Either way, it was ugly and does no favors to women who aspire to the presidency of the United States.
There are several reasons women have not, until this year, made a serious run at the White House and not all of them are related to Hillary's glass ceiling excuse.
Sure, there has been real discrimination against women in this and many other countries. And yes, it has to do with patriarchy, and male chauvinism, etc. etc.
But women have been or are currently the leaders of many other countries including India, Pakistan, Ireland, England, Germany, Chile and Israel. How is it that women have succeeded in becoming top elected officials in these countries, which surely have their share of patriarchy and male chauvinism? Is the United States less democratic or less enlightened? Do these countries produce many more brilliant female politicians than the United States? Or is something else going on?
The reasons why this is the first year in which a woman is a serious contender for the presidency of the United States mostly have to do with our particular culture. The United States is the world's oldest democracy, and men have been running the show for over 225 years. They have a lot more experience than women at running for the presidency. Not only do they know how to approach the electorate, but the electorate knows how to evaluate them as candidates. Voters tend to favor characteristics that are traditionally thought of – at least in this country – as male characteristics: strength, sense of humor, self-confidence, toughness, resilience, and what could be called "unflappableness," the ability to roll with the punches and not be knocked off message by emotion.
We know that voters don't like too much emotion in their male candidates. Edmund Muskie was condemned for tearing up over an attack on his wife, and remember what happened to Howard Dean when the press and the public saw him as too emotional in what became known as "the scream?"
Women candidates have a slightly different problem. While voters seem willing to accept a tearful woman, they are not as comfortable with a woman who comes off as a scold, as too sarcastic, or as emotionally volatile, which Hillary has been recently. While voters may be ready for a female candidate and even a female president, that female would have to fit into a very specific persona, and unfortunately for Hillary (but fortunately for the United States) Hillary does not have that persona.
To be fair, she has part of what she needs to be a viable candidate. She is smart, tough, and knowledgeable about all the important issues. She has a certain amount of experience and she can string sentences together and sound intelligent. With those qualities, and a husband who is a former president and has a formidable political machine surrounding him, she thought she was a shoe-in. Bush (and Republican) fatique had set in, the Democrats would be the logical choice this November, and thus this was the perfect year for a woman to win. However, Hillary hadn't counted on it being a year when a charismatic, intelligent male candidate would run, and especially not one who did have the exact temperament and persona the voters want.
What Hillary is missing is the cool, even temperament voters want in a president, either male or female. And because women are often seen as emotional, Americans want a woman who can show she is cool under fire, and doesn’t come unhinged when the chips are down. Being the underdog is, after all, a test of how a president would do when facing a crisis.
Lately, Hillary has responded to her desperate circumstances by becoming unhinged. She has been both attacking Obama with shrill and caustic language, and trying to bait him into making an emotional response to her attacks. It hasn't worked. Obama remains cool and composed and has not been knocked off his message, while Hillary sounds increasingly shrill and desperate.
I have noted for a while that in her speeches, she sounds like she is continually yelling at the audience and at her opponent, while in his speeches, he moves from calm rhetoric to soaring oratory and finally to loud proclamations. But now Hillary's speeches are worse. Now she sounds like a school teacher or principal with her "shame on you Barack Obama," and while that might work to energize some of her supporters who hate Obama, it sends the rest of us running away.
Like nails on the chalkboard, it reminds all of us of at least one female teacher whom we couldn't stand for her prudish discipline, her humorless personality, and her domineering manner. In addition to that, she mocks Obama and his supporters. The last time I remember a politician mocking someone, it was George W. Bush mocking the woman whom, as governor of Texas, he had condemned to death. It was ugly then, and it's ugly now.
In the past week, Hillary has gone from soft and sappy praise of Obama to her "shame on you" comments to her mocking sarcasm to her release of a photo to swift boat her rival. This is not the sign of a woman who has the emotional stability to lead the country. It is the sign of desperation.
Hillary seems not to understand one huge psychological fact about the realities of gender in this country. Every single man and woman who is born experiences a woman as the first authority over him or her. During most of childhood, authority figures are women. Eventually, girls begin to identify with those female authority figures, while boys learn to dominate them in order to overcome the fear and often the humiliation they sometimes experienced at the hands of woman.
For a man to then accept a female as the top authority figure in the country it is not just important that he see her as competent. In fact, it is far more important that he see her as calm and balanced emotionally, not somoene who evokes memories of an authoritarian and angry teacher who took out her frustration by humiliating and chastising her students. Hillary's recent schoolmarm antics as well as her sarcasm and overt contempt for Obama (just a few days after she said how proud she was to share the stage with him) prove that she is somewhat emotionally unhinged and that is why she is doing so poorly against Obama, and why she would lose in a general election against McCain.
I don't care what it does to her donors, the Clinton legacy, or even her marriage. Hillary needs to get out now before she does more damage to herself and her future, the chances of the eventual Democratic nominee beating McCain, and possibly sets the cause of electing a woman president back for decades.
