The White House Project.org states it is “99% certain” that a woman will run for president in 2008. When I first read that statistic, I wondered what planet these folks inhabited. But then, I realized that a female presidential candidate is hardly unique. We’ve had one in each of the last two elections: Elizabeth Dole’s poverty-shortened bid for the 2000 Republican candidacy, and Democrat Carol Mosley Braun’s in-your-face try in 2004. In fact, women have been throwing their bonnets into the presidential ring since 1872. Admittedly, going back into the archives, there was no lady candidate whose name (or party) I recognized, before the sexual revolution emboldened the likes of Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug, and Patsy Mink—competent legislators, all—during the 1972 campaign. Unfortunately, women of the two major parties appeared to fall off the edge of the earth until Dole’s barely audible squeak nearly thirty years later, followed by Braun’s slightly louder hurrah in 2004. But it’s a pretty safe bet that at least one woman will manage to get her name on some of the primary ballots in a few states in 2008.
But that’s not what we really mean by “running for president,” is it? We’re talking about the possibility of a woman…Running For President. That is, being the candidate who comes out on top at one of the two major political conventions in this country. How likely is that, really, in 2008? And who are the women whose names are being swatted around in political/media circles as the “Girls Most Likely To…”?
Since this blog is called “The Blue Voice,” let’s deal with Democratic likelies. If Elizabeth Dole were inclined to run again, I might consider floating a few paragraphs in the direction of the Dark Side, but I won’t go anywhere near there if Condoleeza Rice is the only credible name on the GOP list. The mere thought of a Condi Rice presidential bid is enough to make me seriously consider resigning my American citizenship.
As far as female Democratic candidates are concerned, the elephant(ess?) in the room is Hillary Rodham Clinton. The press calls her a candidate, the opposition calls her a candidate…even her husband invites speculation in that direction. But how does Senator Clinton see herself?
Hillary Clinton has been there and done that. She has been subjected to the worst that the opposition has to offer; never let it be said that this Wellesley valedictorian and graduate of Yale law school is dense. At 58, she is not yet too old a dog to learn all the tricks. She is an expert gambler…master of the poker face, masked behind the (non reflective) dark glasses, zealously adept at guarding her hand. No doubt she has already made up her mind about a presidential bid in 2008, but she’s nothing if not patient and disciplined. She realizes she still has several months of licking her finger and holding it up to test the political winds before she needs to publicly commit herself one way or the other. Methodically, she has set herself to achieving her primary goal—re-election to the US Senate. She knows this is her first hurdle. If she doesn’t apply herself to this task as if it was the only prize upon which she has set her eye, she will forfeit a lofty platform from which to launch a presidential bid. And without her senate seat as a fall-back position, her reward for risking it all on an unsuccessful presidential gamble would likely be political extinction. One can hardly see her going “all or nothing” at this point in her political career.
Unfortunately for Senator Clinton, the opinion most often expressed by thoughtful people looking toward the defeat of the GOP in 2008 is…that she is political poison. Still. It’s unfortunate that the person with whom she chose to partner for life—former president Clinton—remains one entity the Republicans can invoke to agitate the political waters and send them crashing against any tentative resolve those hotly-contested “swing voters” have begun to build against the startlingly inept incumbent right-wing administration. For whatever reason, the American electorate still has not entirely forgiven Bill Clinton for being human…for diddling away the dignity of the Office of President.
But if it was only that, if it was only that Hillary was consort to the first president impeached for lying to Congress about an extra-marital affair, perhaps she could have weathered that storm by now. She could have been quite the sympathetic figure, had she chosen to play it that way. Instead, she has had the audacity to be “ambitious.” And able. The President’s wife has no business being powerful and politically competent in her own right. The American people were not sure how to think of her, during her tenure as First Lady. That is, until the strident right-wing pundits told them how. And she carries that stigma still.
Add this to the fact that, post 9/11, she has positioned herself several ticks right of center when it comes to the “War on Terror,” (which may be politically expedient for a senator from New York, but plays poorly with the Democratic mainstream’s increasingly dim view of the Bush administration’s disastrous gaffe in Iraq) and you have moderates, left-wingers, and in-betweeners crossing their fingers that Senator Clinton will size up the current political climate and understand that it is not favorable for her to entertain presidential aspirations at this time. Hillary Clinton is a bright, competent, politically savvy woman, with more experience and insight into the demands upon the Commander-in-Chief than perhaps any other Democrat on the current political scene, male or female, could ever hope to possess. But she is not the answer this time around…and it is to be hoped that we can count on her patience and political instincts to prompt her to opt for the ultimate good of the party—and the country—and stick to the sidelines in 2008.
Then again… We’ve done Clinton-Gore. How does Gore-Clinton sound?
