She's on the cover of New York Magazine this week, a magazine I loved already but love just a little more this week; the headline "Hillary Clinton, Superstar" may have played some role in that. a clip from the article:
"On the night she pulled off her unlikely twofer, she opened her victory speech with this refrain: "For everyone here in Ohio and across America who's ever been counted out but refused to be knocked out, and for everyone who has stumbled but stood right back up, and for everyone who works hard and never gives up, this one is for you."
With that speech, Clinton had finally found a theme: the resilient fighter, the underdog, the victim. And with each successive contest, as the calls for her to fold grew louder even as she continued winning (nine of the final fifteen primaries, for the record) that theme only became sharper. Having abandoned her corporate, Establishment campaign, she seemed more than liberated; she seemed intoxicated. Suddenly, she was giving terrific, well-modulated Election Night speeches--speeches that were every bit as good, in their way, as Obama's more-celebrated orations. Suddenly, she was loving the rope lines, working them feverishly, hungrily, as if...well, as if she were her husband. Suddenly, the hustings were no longer for her a royal pain in the ass but instead a source of sustenance, vitality, and even joy.
What changed? What turned her from someone roundly dismissed as an automaton into a campaigner whose skills were routinely given props by the likes of Pat Buchanan?"
I love the game of politics for a million reasons, but most of all I love how something that is such a complicated and at times ruthless game can parallel life in general. At some point Clinton treaded and eventually crossed that fine line between tough automaton and human being, and became immensely more successful for it. it's something I've been even more fascinated by in the last few days for how common a theme it seems to be in so many people's lives and work and mostly in AIESEC. It made me think back to the near argument I had with a trainee months ago about whether people know when to cross that line and stop being all business and start being human. It definitely has been on my mind a lot in the last couple weeks as I have questioned whether some of the AIESECers closest to me have a very tight grasp (if at all) on where that line between the two stands, and whether falling too far to one side can hurt your relationships-- or hurt the success of the organization. How long can you keep playing the "professionalism" card and when does it go too far?
Presumably in part because of sexism (and also because of self-selection), women today are still hugely underrepresented in the political arena. Women constitute about 23 percent of legislators in the 50 states, a proportion that has risen only slightly in the last decade. In addition, the political commentariat is overwhelmingly male, which is one reason that Mrs. Clinton's supporters felt unfairly battered.
We aren't always aware of our own biases. Some of Mrs. Clinton's supporters are sure that she was defeated by misogyny, while those who voted against her invariably are dismissive: The reason I didn't vote for her isn't that she's a woman. It's that she's a dynastic opportunist who voted for the Iraq war and...
The catch is that abundant psychology research shows that we are often shaped by stereotypes that we are unaware of. Many studies have presented research subjects with the exact same C.V., alternately with a male name and a female name. Usually, the male is perceived as a better fit for executive posts--even among well-meaning people who are against gender discrimination, and even among women.
At the end of the day, none of this proves or disproves the thesis that gender bias played a role in the election. But if Mrs. Clinton was hurt by gender, her problem wasn't misogynists so much as ordinary men and women who believe in equal opportunity--but also are conditioned to think that a president speaks in a gravelly voice."
--Nicholas Kristof, New York Times
