A Woman’s Dilemma

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Surrounded by pink flowers and an audience of reporters, First Lady Hillary Clinton sat by the fireplace in the State Dining Room, wrapped in a piped pink sweater, her lips covered in a thick red gloss, her forehead hidden behind a wall of bangs.

The date was April 22, 1994, and Mrs. Clinton had convened her first official press conference to address growing concerns over the Whitewater Affair.

Clinton skillfully deflected the reporters’ questions, using a breadth of details that reminded every viewer of her lawyerly past. But the next day’s headlines focused largely on the cosmetic details: the Barbie Doll top, the black skirt bottom, the flattened bangs, the warm lights that made the First Lady glow.

The media found itself in tricky and uncharted territory: How do you report on a politically savvy and professionally accomplished First Lady—often vilified for overstepping her bounds as the wife of a president—who went to tremendous lengths to show that she was a fashion-conscious, lipstick-wearing, pearl-toting woman?

But that was 1994. Today, Clinton finds herself in a much different position with a much different challenge. As a senator with $22 million in her campaign bank account and a 54 percent national favorability rating according to ABC News’ May 28 poll, she is no longer expected to hide her intelligence behind a façade of makeup. She does face, however, the challenge of convincing the American people that she—a woman!—deserves to return to the White House, this time at its helm.

Over the past two months here in Washington, I have seen her enrapture an audience of evangelicals, command a meeting of the NAACP, and passionately testify before a commission on Hurricane Katrina in a church basement.

And though at times she struggles—she still inflects awkwardly when delivering punch-lines and her laugh sometimes seems forced—the mix of her striking intelligence, her newfound confidence in taking political risks, and her personable manner exude a presidential mystique.

Already, many Americans feel this aura as the ABC poll suggests: 37 percent of Democrats (and 19 percent of the general population) are already committed to a Clinton campaign for president.

But if she is to win the White House in 2008, Clinton must forge ahead with the spirited, policy-oriented appearances that have won her respect from fellow senators and not succumb to the pressure of image consultant who promoted the “pink press conferences” of her First Lady days.

Inevitably, some of her advisers will push the womanly image that won many votes during her 2000 Senate campaign. But in the fight for the presidency, voters do not want a victim, which she played well in 2000 when her opponent, former Rep. Rick Lazio (R-NY), nearly attacked her during the pair’s first debate or when her approval soared to all-time highs across the nation post-Monica.

As the country saw in the downfall of the weak-kneed Kerry and the staid Gore to the cowboy Bush, though, the way to the White House is paved in images of determination and strength, particularly in times of indefinite war.

In a Gallup July 20 poll on Clinton’s “strengths and weaknesses,” only 32 percent of independents said that Clinton’s gender improves the likelihood of voting for her, to which only 24 percent of men agreed. Instead, these two swing groups are attracted to her centrist position on the war on terror and her “forthright/outspoken/direct” manner, not her ability to channel country-girl paradigms by dressing in pink on rare occasions.

Clinton cannot alienate already wary voters—including many suburban women—with comments like 1992’s jab at mothers who make “cookies and tea.” But the fear of losing support from those women should not make Clinton run from her “First Lady Macbeth” image, crystallized by the New York Times’ Michael Kelly and Maureen Dowd at Mr. Clinton’s first inauguration, in this election cycle.



The need to play to Oval Office stereotypes is unfortunate, but I can write these words without reservation because I believe that Mrs. Clinton’s personality fits more with America’s idea of “the President” than it does with the “First Lady.” She has always struggled over the course of her husband’s political career to make America believe that she really is a Barbara Bush-type supporter, that she really wants her husband to succeed in front her.

And that is what she needs to play up—rather than push down—as she steps into the country’s brightest spotlight. Certainly, many Americans have learned that she’s not a “cookies and tea” woman. Many know she’s tough and know she’s smart, but it’s going to take a lot more than pink sweaters and red gloss to convince the rest of America that Hillary Clinton is the right person to run the White House.



Andrew D. Fine ’09, a Crimson editorial editor, is a social studies concentrator in Eliot House. He is currently interning for ABC’s political unit.