Hillary's failure: she is not her own woman

As a possible first Madame President, Hillary is a flawed science experiment because you can’t take Bill out of the equation. Her story is wrapped up in her marriage, and her marriage is wrapped up in a series of unappetizing compromises, arrangements and dependencies.

Instead of carving out a separate identity for herself, she has become more entwined with Bill. She is running bolstered by his record and his muscle. She touts her experience as first lady, even though her judgment during those years on issue after issue was poor. She says she’s learned from her mistakes, but that’s not a compelling pitch.

As a senator, she was not a leading voice on important issues, and her Iraq vote was about her political viability.

She told New York magazine’s John Heilemann that before Iowa taught her that she had to show her soft side, “I really believed I had to prove in this race from the very beginning that a woman could be president and a woman could be commander in chief. I thought that was my primary mission.”

If Hillary fails, it will be her failure, not ours.

You don't have to love Maureen Dowd (we don't) to admit she's pretty much nailed it.  From the get-go, for many of us, Hillary has been living (and selling) a lie.  Genuine strength of character, not just gutsiness or tenacity (see Bush), are what we want in a president.  Which is not to say Hillary Clinton hasn't been up against the hilarious and awful prejudice implicit in this story which Dowd picked up from New York Sun reporter, Russell Berman:

Elaine Sirkis, 77, an Obama supporter, confided that she just isn’t sure she’s ready for a woman president. Betty Conway, 83, a Hillary supporter, confided that she just isn’t sure she’s ready for a black president.

As Conway walked away, Sirkis smiled sheepishly. “I’m sorry,” she told Berman sweetly about her friend. “She’s a bigot.”

Women are at least as responsible for limiting the expectations of other women as men are.  That's the next-to-last big hurdle.  The big one consists of self-limitation.  Any day now a woman who has "carved out a separate identity" will run for president.  Then the difference between ersatz "women's liberation" and the real thing should become very clear.

Comments

[Alicia]

This article is a bunch of biased criticism based on opinion rather than fact. Furthermore, if she is referencing the scandals of the past with Bill it should be noted that it takes a strong person to forgive and a weaker person to judge. Maureen Dowd is not half the woman Hillary is and frankly I am ashamed of this kind of weak display among the media. I hope someday the media will try to focus on honesty rather than juging people and therefore playing God. Let the people make up their own decision without throwing gunk into the water to blur the vision of truth.

[PW]

Trouble is, Alicia, that's the way Hillary has been perceived by many for longer than she's been a senator. I'm not "the media," just a reasonably well-informed individual. I'm not a fan of Maureen Dowd's. But she's right this time. She simply stating what many have found to be the truth about Hillary's claim to strength and independence. Her husband's behavior(s) during her campaign and Senator Clinton's apparent acquiescence in those behaviors haven't made things any better for her.