I keep reading about Hillary Clinton’s “failed presidential bid,” but there was no such thing. Clinton’s presidential bid was spectacularly successful, albeit not at making her president.
The most immediate thing Clinton’s bid did was help get Obama elected by inducing McCain’s staff to choose Palin as his running mate. Without Clinton as a strong contender in the primaries, McCain might very well have picked a youngish (male) Latino running mate who was actually knowledgeable and/or unobjectionable and/or capable of keeping his mouth shut, and it’s entirely possible McCain would then have won the election. (Yes, the Republicans lost many representatives in 2008, but the presidential election was only won by a margin of about 3% of the popular vote. It could have gone the other way.) I have never been Obama’s #1 fan, but I think McCain (and, more pertinently, his Republican advisors and lobbyists and inevitable Cabinet) would have been catastrophic, continuing rather than trying to counteract the Bush disaster. So by running for president Clinton contributed to Obama’s win, i.e. a chance to keep the entire country from continuing the down-the-toilet path Bush started us on.
Clinton’s run for president also led to her recovering much of her old visibility and building a following. Unfortunately this could not be converted into a position of power and responsibility in the Senate because of its seniority rules, but it did lead to a high-level Cabinet position. I think Clinton is very smart and highly competent, and while her interests and strengths seem to be more domestically oriented than her current position, it is my opinion that the more influence she has the better off we will all be.
The longest-term result of Clinton’s primary campaign, however, was an improvement in the outlook for women in politics. It’s important that politics be accessible women because half of the potential competent politicians in this country are female. Half of the potential good ideas about how to run the country, get along with the world, fix the economy, and regulate the environment, are good ideas had by women. But women do not make up half of all politicians, and those women who are politicians are subject to more than their share of what-is-she-wearing-and-is-she-starting-to-look-her-age scrutiny. I have no idea what Dick Cheney’s taste in clothing is, but I have seen multiple articles about Condoleeza Rice’s attire and what it purports. Moreover it is possible I know more about Rice’s sartorial vision than her statecraft, despite the fact that her abilities are presumably concentrated in the latter arena. This is partly my fault, of course, but it is not like I am seeking out articles about her clothing. They are just there.
They will probably always be there, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We’re interested in what powerful people are like as people. But maybe as more women run for and enter high office, we won’t be so overwhelmed by their femaleness that we lose track of their ideas. Of course a female president would have contributed more to this than another female Senator or Secretary of State, but I think just by running for President, Clinton gave herself a lot of visibility. She campaigned so much that people ran out of things to say about her pantsuits and started talking about her policies.
Which is the only way it’s going to happen. It seems too much to hope that, anytime soon, an intelligent and powerful woman will cease to be perceived as unusual. But perhaps one day in not too many years, she can be boring. We can all be so used to seeing women of all colors and shapes and ages and sizes, wearing all kinds of clothes, with all kinds of wrinkles and hairstyles and beauty regimens, doing hard and important things, that we can just get tired of talking about how they are women, and they are wearing such-and-such clothes and have done such-and-such with their hair and their voices do not sound like men’s voices, just the way we would be bored talking at length about the clothing and hairstyles and voices of most male politicians (excepting embarrassments, which will always occur with some frequency for both genders). Once we have run out of new things to say about the physical manifestation of women in politics (and other positions of power and potential power) maybe we can start paying better attention to the things they say and do.
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