Hillary Rodham Clinton must be scratching her head. She doesn’t quite know what she needs to do to become the president of the United States of America, a dream she has apparently nursed since her days as First Lady (FLOTUS). Of course, first she needs to secure nomination by her political party the Democrats and then prepare herself to faceoff with the eventual nominee of the rival Republican Party. Hillary is no stranger to this process. In 2008 she was on the cusp of nomination before she eventually messed up, opening the way for the then little known Senator from the state of Illinois, Barack Obama, who then grinned his way to the presidency and into the history books. Hillary is once again the frontrunner. However, the demons of 2008 are proving formidable, almost impossible to exorcise. Something within her must tell her that things are getting rather slippery once again. What is a woman to do, she must ask herself. The pundits are already prophesying a repeat of her last attempt at winning the nomination. They are saying she is a defective candidate whom the Democrats shouldn’t take a chance on. Indeed, as they elaborate on this, one is left to wonder whether it is her campaign that is defective or whether they are suggesting that something is inherently so about her vis-à-vis the presidency. In other words: is Hillary a defective politician or is her being a woman the defect? The media say it is the former but their elaborations suggest it is the latter. David Brooks, a respected columnist for the influential New York Times, recently pointed out the ‘traits’ that are important for someone to make it to the presidency: “tenacity, toughness, and calculation.” But these are the same qualities that he says undermine Hillary’s quest for the top job. He gives her plenty of credit: “she has endured and persevered and rarely bent.” And then he asserts that she has done this in a way that turns off people: “this defensive posture has given her, at least in public, an embattled combative posture.” However, isn’t this posture the kind of ‘tenacity’ and ‘toughness’ that are presumably a requisite ‘trait’ for a successful presidential candidate? Hillary is also faulted for describing, in her speeches, a world that is “red in touch and claw,” where she often has the word “fight” as the “defining verb” of her political campaigns. Again, isn’t this understanding of the world some sort of “calculation” on her part of the American psyche? For a male candidate these are considered winning traits. However, the same traits are considered to be weaknesses for a female presidential aspirant as Hillary’s situation shows. Another of Hillary’s alleged defects in 2008, and now, is that she lacks empathy and compassion, and moreover, “only 30 percent say she is honest” while “many voters say she just doesn’t get people like them.” Such has been the ferocity of the attacks that Hillary has felt it necessary to fix her ‘defects.’ On the campaign trail in New Hampshire in 2008, a woman in the audience asked Hillary a question. Hillary paused for a moment and then cried, sort of, something that the media called her “emotional moment.” That Sunday Newsweek ran a story in which it was pointed out that Hillary had finally “displayed vulnerability and frustration,” but that the moment was likely to confirm that “anyone who needed to carry Kleenex in her purse was unfit for the highest office in the land.” The tenacious Hillary continued to work on her likeability. Television would show her on the campaign trail chugging beers and munching on burgers with blue-collar folks. She wanted to prove that she could hang out with the ordinary Joe. Most of this often backfired, however. Her actions appeared rehearsed and inauthentic, which often made her appear disingenuous, reinforcing criticisms made against her by her political enemies and fanned by the media, that that she is not to be trusted. The nightmare of 2008 is back to haunt Hillary. Democrats are whispering that she is a losing candidate and have silently started the search for a replacement, and are increasingly pointing to Joe Biden, the current Veep, as that person. Apparently Biden improved his chances recently. While on a prime time talk-show, Biden shared with the audience, both on the set and those glued onto their television sets at home, the difficulties surrounding the death of his son Beau. Biden was visibly emotional, and rightly so, given the nature of the subject. He, the media claimed, appeared “beautiful and genuine” in a moment that revealed his “golden heart.” Moreover, he came off as being “empathic,” which would make his candidacy “more formidable.” Biden, it was emphasised, was likely to succeed as a presidential candidate because “you need emotion.” Yes, the same emotion that once required Hillary to carry some Kleenex in her purse. A different columnist, also for the NYT, comes closer to identifying Hillary’s ‘real defect.’ In an article titled “the Joe Biden Delusion,” Frank Bruni also agrees that there is a plot among Democrats to replace Hillary with Biden. However, “this isn’t about him,” he writes. “It is about Hillary Clinton,” who must be replaced because “someone else is needed.” However, Bruni also refuses to ask the only question that is capable of carrying the argument to its logical conclusion: Who could that ‘someone’ be if in fact Hillary Rodham Clinton ticks off on almost all the ‘traits’ that are deemed important for a successful presidential candidate in American politics yet she remains unwanted by her political party? Anyone but a woman, perhaps?
