It's getting to be a habit here to go after Hillary so we'd like to admit that some of her policies are more than acceptable. Some of what's standing between us and the former first lady is her posturing. Michael Kinsley expresses some of our misgivings. In a piece for the Washington Post about the experience issue, he writes:
With her "on-the-job training" jab, Clinton was clearly referring to work experience. But there is also life experience. Being first lady is sort of half job and half life but good experience in either case.
She has to be careful about making a lot of this. Many people resent her using her position as first lady to take what they see as a shortcut to elective office. More profoundly, some people see her as having used her marriage as a shortcut to feminism.
We admit to having spent a couple of decades in countries where feminism has been both more ingrained and less self-conscious than in the US, we cringe a little at American feminism which manages to include cookie-baking or its equivalent as a criterion. "Using her marriage as a shortcut to feminism" is a real knock and a justifiable one. Marriage doesn't exclude feminism but it does demand that a woman be able to demonstrate her independence clearly. Hillary Clinton is not convincing in that respect. She doesn't get our Eleanor Roosevelt medal.
In the same way, she has not convinced enough of us that she is a progressive. Some believe (hope) that her evident corporatism is just a campaign necessity and that, as president, she'd swing back to true left. That's a fair possibility. But it's not particular reassuring. Hillary Clinton's campaign tactics seem to have been designed by others. They don't seem to belong to the candidate herself. Real guts, like really being independent personally, politically, and as a woman, means being able to stand up independently for what you believe in. Who's in charge of Hillary?
