I’m getting a little tired of the Women’s Libbers who play the sexism card as a cover for ineptitude and arrogance. “It does seem as though the press at least is not as bothered by the incredible vitriol that has been engendered by the comments by people who are nothing but misogynists,” Hillary Clinton angrily charged last week.
While I have high regard for Mrs. Clinton’s ambition, if she hadn’t been a feminist, she likely would have prevailed in the contest. She had the media coverage, fund-raising machinery, and connections with the Democratic Party establishment all going for her. So how did her feminist credentials doom her candidacy?
The answer can be summed up in three words: staff, strategy, and authenticity.
Clinton’s first gender-bender was the selection of her staff. The members of her inner circle were chosen because of their commitment to the feminist cause and loyalty to Mrs. Clinton. Their tableau graced the front page of the June 21, 2007 issue of the Washington Post: Patti Solis Doyle, Ann Lewis, Capricia Marshall, Mandy Grunwald, and the rest – all of them female.
Mrs. Clinton moved heaven and earth to portray her staff as more dedicated and competent than the competition. When Gentleman’s Quarterly planned to run an exposé on the infighting at Hillaryland, she went ballistic, threatening to deny the magazine access to husband Bill for an upcoming cover story.
But six months later the New York Times finally blew the lid off the story, running a front-page account detailing how the Clinton campaign was bereft of leadership and had “set itself apart for its level of disorder and dysfunction.”
Clinton’s second feminist-driven blunder was her demographic strategy. “Pander to the female electorate and to hell with the white males” seemed to be the campaign’s guiding principle.
Not only that, but regale your audience with stories that ridicule men. “Whenever you have trouble coping, just think of Snow White. She had to live with seven men.” was one of Hillary’s favorites.
That strategy translated into the overarching theme that women still get the short end of the stick – that in a country where women now dominate in colleges and universities, outlive men by four years, and control most of the discretionary spending.
Dissing the white male vote proved disastrous. Of the 16 primary races that Obama won by May 6, white males played a decisive role in 9 of those contests, compared to only 3 races in which a plurality of white females made a difference.
Hillary Clinton’s biggest problem, though, was her campaign lacked authenticity. Here’s a person whose entire career rode the coattails of husband Bill. Her political accomplishments were as scarce as an uncommitted super-delegate. Worse, author Carl Bernstein had rendered this damning verdict about her days as first lady: “For the first time in American history, a president’s wife sent her husband’s presidency off the rails.”
Despite that dismal record, Hillary’s campaign ironically harped on the theme of empowerment: “I am woman, hear me roar.” Remember the time she compared herself to JFK?
Yes, really.
The message of female empowerment often morphed into the narcissistic, “I am woman, I deserve to be president.” The heady mixture of gender empowerment and self-entitlement eventually came across as plain arrogance.
And whenever her girl-power campaign hit rough sledding, Hillary became the pitiable damsel-in-distress. Whether it was her “politics of pile-on” lament, the proud recounting of her psychological wounds, or her misting-up moment at a New Hampshire café, Mrs. Clinton never hesitated to play the victim card.
As her nomination prospects dimmed, Hillary’s image fell increasingly out of character. In the end she tried to channel Rocky Balboa — swigging a shot of Crown Royal, recalling fond childhood memories of learning to shoot a gun, and threatening to “totally obliterate” Iran.
Hillary Clinton once said she was running in order to “break the highest and hardest glass ceiling” in American life. But her numerous miscalculations prove there is no glass ceiling — only a divisive gender ideology that fosters a victim mindset and serves to keep women dependent on government largesse.
No comments:
Post a Comment