And ‘Bitter’ Modifies - Part 2
I may have to apologise to the Age. They may have just had a moment of insight over what the rest of the week would bring. Probably not.
My critique of the Clinton campaign, as I’ve expressed to many of you, has been with the campaign itself. I love the candidate, but don’t like her staff and some of the strategies they’ve chosen to pursue. But today, I actually have to say ‘boo’ at Clinton herself.
The two candidates are in a dust up in Ohio over mailers sent by the Obama campaign that criticize Clinton on health care and NAFTA. They may or may not be fair, I haven’t seen them, so I don’t know.
Here’s a really terrible way to handle a dispute though:
Before speaking to reporters, Clinton sought to draw parallels to an untested Bush in 2000 and Obama.
…
“He promised change as a compassionate conservative and the American people got shafted and we’re going to have to make up for it,” she said.
Ew. It’s similar to Obama’s smug little move in the debates, saying to Clinton, ‘you’re likable enough.’ It was childish, and showed a side of him I’d like not to see too often. But, I don’t know, ’shafted’ isn’t the kind of language I want to hear out of someone who wants to be president. It sounds odd, considering I have a mouth like a pirate, but it just strikes me as incredibly unstatesmanlike.
The part that really bothers me, though, is that it makes her seem like she’s flailing. Her campaign’s been a little off lately, but Clinton is a polished politician. She may be frustrated that the American people are trending Obama at this point, but going nasty in tone and language isn’t going to get her show back on the road. Look, she’s not even wrong about the ’shafted’ thing, but she knows that making comparisons to Bush will hurt the party if Obama’s the nominee. And she did it anyway, and in a distasteful manner.
If she goes down - and, as Sara rightfully points out, this thing isn’t over - I will be so disappointed if she goes down badly. An interesting piece in the Age yesterday talked about the fact that there’s no mold that comfortably holds ‘Hillary.’ Whereas Obama fits in the ’strong male leader’ meme, she’s not Eleanor Roosevelt or Margaret Thatcher.
I would argue that Clinton is the mold. And right now, she’s casting it: the American female presidential candidate. There’s a responsibility that she, unfortunately, has to carry. If she is not the nominee, the lasting image of her as a candiate is going to reflect upon every other woman who runs for US President.
She sounded bitter in this comment. This kind of behavior not only harms her chances to be president, but harms the chances of the next woman who is audacious enough to challenge the status quo. There’s no doubt that the amount of attention this story has gotten is because she’s a woman and because she used such a gendered term. But she’s smarter than this, and needs to keep her head in the game.
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