June 29, 2006
NOONAN!
Commentator Peggy Noonan hits the nail on the head today, so to speak, arguing that Hillary Clinton's problem as a politician isn't that she is perceived as too soft because she's a woman, but that she is the least human of any popular candidate:
She doesn't have to prove she's a man, she has to prove she's a woman. No one in America thinks she's a woman. They think she's a tough little termagant in a pantsuit. They think she's something between an android and a female impersonator. She is not perceived as a big warm mommy trying to resist her constant impulse to sneak you candy. They think she has to resist her constant impulse to hit you with a bat. She lacks a deep (as opposed to quick) warmth, a genuine and almost phenomenological sense of rightness in her own skin. She seems like someone who might calculatedly go to war, or not, based on how she wanted to be perceived and look and do. She does not seem like someone who would anguish and weep over sending men into harm's way.
That's not something that would go over well in a debate from an opponent, but goddamn that is funny and true.
Tagged:Posted by Lexiphane at June 29, 2006 6:30 PM
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