Woman for President---Why Not?

Of course this is a stupid question. As a woman, raising a boy, I still find it amazing, if not bordering on shocking, how more than half the world is governed by men. Really, have you seen them as a five year old? It's unbelievable that the spastic boy, skipping, karate-chopping his way down the sidewalk could, one day, be the President of the United States. When this spinning dervish is cutting a swath down any sidewalk in our neighborhood, I pretend he belongs to someone else, and not me. Believe me, it's much easier and less embarrassing this way.

So, why not a woman for President? Haven't we waited long enough for this moment? Geraldine Ferraro was more a symbol than a real possibility. And in truth, our country wasn't ready at that time to wrap their heads, male and female, around the possibility of the White House having to contend with PMS and other known stereotypes of "womanhood." Yes, the Brits had had Thatcher for years, but again our country is so much more entrenched in patriarchal models than other nations.

I guess my real question is not why not, but rather why her? She being Hillary Rodham, then known as Hillary Rodham Clinton, and now just known simply as Hillary Clinton. I am an ardent foaming-at-the-mouth feminist. Add French Deconstructionist, Marxist, and you may have an idea of my militancy. In high school, I was chosen by my school to attend a symposium held at the UN where high school delegates from all over the country would listen to speakers on the topic of the symposium, which in my year was: Feminism in the World. It was in the great UN General Council hall, at the same podium where world leaders have spoken, berated, or begged their international brothers and sisters, that Betty Friedan and other noteworthy Feminists espoused their derision for the male species. I was asked to give a speech at this conference in the UN General Assembly, addressing my view that Feminism was a Western middle-class construct, and therefore not to be exported in its singularity all over the globe. Yes, I really did give such a speech in high school.

I've thought a great deal about Hillary Clinton, and why it is I'm exhausted by the thought of her running this country. Yes, if she weren't up against the superstar of a Barak Obama, maybe I would be less ambiguous about her as a candidate and as a President. But then I recall our first introduction to Hillary Rodham, claiming rather defensively she didn't "stay home and bake chocolate chip cookies," since she was out busy fighting for woman's rights, and fighting in general to make sure her husband would become the most powerful man in the country. The backlash from this statement, the message of which was not lost on a great many women, was that Hillary Rodham quickly became Hillary Rodham Clinton. Then there was the Hillary Rodham Clinton, who defended her philandering husband by stating, again rather defensively, she was "not some little woman standing by her man". And now we have Hillary Clinton telling us, urging us, to believe in her ability to lead this nation, all the while sending out her husband as an attack dog. Hmmm...Does give one pause, right?

True, she was the first, First Lady to have an office where more was being done than simply scheduling state dinners. Remember the mess she made of the health care issue? But those eight years, the crowning moment being the impeachment trials, and then the charges they had plundered the White House on their way out, and the country's fatigue with all things Clinton (the result of which has been the last eight years, along with our current First Lady, who by all measure, is supposedly smart, if not mute) has brought us to a point where the country is begging for something more, something different.

I wish I could love the first woman, who has a real shot at being President. What a significant moment this is for us, but again I'm plagued by my ambivalence about, and toward, Hillary. The transparency of her ambition, which should be viewed as a positive attribute, has the exact opposite effect. Instead of applauding her chutzpah and drive, I am made uneasy by it. Why? Are the subconscious messages of the archetypes of the powerful woman as a sinister figure, just remember Medusa and Lady MacBeth, so ingrained that I'm made to question this smart, driven, woman, who just happens to want to be President? Does my uneasiness make me less of a Feminist? Or is there something more behind my uneasiness?

Or is it that she is a feminist of her particular generation, thereby making it harder for me to understand the stridency and urgency behind all that she had accomplished? Do I suffer from the luxury, made possible by Hillary and her cohorts, of having less to prove, thereby left with the need to have a more nuanced approach to the battles between the two sexes? Whatever the causes behind my ambivalence, I am left grappling with the complex emotions, rather strong, that she brings out in me. Believe me when I say I so wish I didn't feel this way. No matter what happens, she's already done more to break that final glass ceiling in our country. She's made it possible for us to consider, rather seriously, a woman as Commander-in-Chief of this nation. I do believe what we need the next time out is a superstar of Barak Obama's caliber, a woman who can transcend gender. Unfortunately for Hillary, she ain't it. That, I do believe, will happen with someone who will be more my contemporary.