Big Lizards:Blog:Entry “She Needs a Man”

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February 14, 2008

She Needs a Man

Hatched by Dafydd

Bear with us for a bit...

Hillary Clinton is our first serious (?) female candidate for president.

Feisty (fisty?) Hillary

From Day-1, her campaign has been run by Patti Solis Doyle, Hillary's longtime -- uh -- friend:

Patti Solis Doyle

But Solis Doyle was just ousted, and now Hillary's campaign is run by Margaret "Maggie" Williams, Hillary's former chief of staff and loyal to the core:

Maggie Williams

What do these three people have in common, besides being fanatically loyal to Hillary? Let me give you a broad hint... it has something to do with gender.

Of course, she does have pollster Mark Penn working for her, along with other males; but they are subordinated to the folks above... and Penn, at least, appears to be growing increasingly frustrated by the inept campaign.

But let's step back a bit in time. Most accounts I have read say that it was Hillary who insisted that President Bill Clinton name a woman -- one willing to be a sock puppet for Hillary -- as attorney general. First he tried Zoe Baird, but she turned out to have hired an illegal alien to be her chauffeur and another to be nanny to her child, not even paying Social-Security taxes on their wages.

Zoe Baird

The second try was Kimba Wood; she too turned out to have an illegal-alien problem.

Kimba Wood

The third time was the not very charming Janet Reno. Reno had no illegal-alien nannies -- probably because she had no children -- so she was confirmed. She subsequently transmogrified, a few years later, into the de facto counsel for Bill and Hillary Clinton, while still remaining on paper the attorney general... but that is beyond the scope of this post.

Janet Reno

Reno's top deputy was Jamie Gorelick; she was also generally considered Hillary's "political officer" (in the Stalinist sense) within the Justice Department. Certainly Justice staffers were more afraid of Gorelick's wrath than that of the attorney general herself.

Jamie Gorelick

Gorelick, you will recall, published a memo in 1995 directing the US Attorney and the FBI, then investigating the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, to essentially erect a wall between intelligence-gathering and law-enforcement, not allowing side either even to communicate with the other. This stupid idea went far beyond the law's requirement (as she admitted in the memo) and almost certainly led, in part, to many terrorist attacks on the United States, including the 9/11 attacks themselves (which she continues to deny to this day).

It became clear during the run-up to the 9/11 Commission (on which Gorelick served) that Hillary, not Reno, was behind the memo that created "Gorelick's wall."

Then there was Susan Thomases, a New York corporate lawyer with little government experience and but a small bit of political experience -- but Hillary's closest friend from the 1970s.

Susan Thomases

Thomases had a slightly better political resume than others in "Hillaryland" (Patti Solis Doyle's term): She had been a scheduler for Vice President Walter Mondale and had run the Senate campaign of Bill Bradley in 1978, and she was a successful Manhattan attorney. Still, this seems a bit slim to qualify her for her role as Hillary Clinton's closest advisor, troubleshooter (mainly on Whitewater allegations), personal lawyer, scheduler to the President of the United States, and unofficial "enforcer" of Hillaryland.

She later became famous for testifying more than 180 times during the congressional Whitewater investigation that she did not remember key facts or incidents, so couldn't answer whatever question she had been asked. (Pundits called it the "Alzheimers defense.")

I asked before what these Hillary appointees have in common; let me be more specific about the answer: It's not just that they are all women; the real similarity is that they were all chosen by Hillary Clinton precisely because they were women. she appears to have only two criteria for her appointments. The appointee must...

Be fanatically loyal to Hillary Clinton;

And be a woman.

Does anybody imagine that in 1993, the top three candidates for Attorney General of the United States were all women? Does anyone believe that the best choice Hillary could have made for campaign manager was Patti Solis Doyle... who had run a (virtually unopposed) mayoral campaign for Richard Daley in Chicago and two (virtually unopposed) Senate campaigns for Hillary, but who had never, ever held a significant position in either a presidential campaign, or even in a campaign of any sort against a tough opponent -- but who just happened also to be a woman?

Maggie Williams is now running Hillary's presidential campaign. So far as I can tell, she has never served on any other campaign; she was a "senior advisor" to the campaign before Solis Doyle was ousted... but Williams was earlier Hillary's chief of staff (fanatical loyalty); and of course, she is a woman.

Zoe Baird, Kimba Wood, Janet Reno, Jamie Gorelick, Susan Thomases -- pretty much the same evaluation: Not particularly qualified, except in the all-important loyalty and gender checkboxes.

Hillary Clinton has always been proud to call herself a feminist (one of those feminists who owes everything she has or is to a man, her husband), but she is a particular kind of feminist: She is not what Christina Hoff-Sommers would call an equity feminist, one who wants only equality of opportunity for women; Hillary is what Hoff-Sommers calls a gender feminist... that is, a tribalist whose "tribe" is women.

Hillary enthusiastically supports anything that helps women or girls, whether fairly or unfairly; thus, she still applauds university admissions standards that give preference to women, even though women outnumber men on college campuses by a substantial margin. Likewise, a gender feminist like Hillary champions any policy that hurts or retards men and boys relative to women and girls.

Contrast Hillary's female appointees to George W. Bush's appointment of Condoleezza Rice first as National Security Advisor, then as Secretary of State, and his nomination of Harriet Miers as Supreme Court justice. Or for that matter, with Bill Clinton's appointment of Madeleine Albright as Secretary of State. Bush certainly did not pick Rice just to pick a woman; she had previously served as special assistant to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. William J. Crowe, Jr; then she served on the National Security Council as the senior advisor on Soviet and East European Affairs. She was Bush's senior foreign-policy advisor during the campaign; so it was perfectly natural that he name her his NSA.

Harriet Miers was the president of a large Dallas law firm; then president of the Dallas Bar Association, then the Texas State Bar Association and chairman of the Board of Editors of the ABA Journal. Most important, she was chief counsel to Governor Bush's transition team in 1994, and she became Bush's personal attorney while he was governor. She headed the Texas Lottery Commission, a fairly large bureaucracy, and reportedly did a very good job.

Yet despite the fact that she was well qualified and a very close friend of the president, he did not name her Attorney General of the United States; that honor went to Sen. John Ashcroft. She did eventually become White House Counsel in 2004... and it was from that position -- and her role as head of Bush's selection committee to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor -- that Bush's eventual nomination came of Miers herself to replace O'Connor.

He said at the time he specifically wanted to pick someone who did not come from the appellate courts. When conservatives objected, he withdrew Miers (after a long struggle) and picked Judge Samuel Alito... from the Third Circus Court of Appeals. So it goes.

And even Madeleine Albright had a stellar academic career, and served as Clinton's Ambassador to the United Nations for four years, before he named her Secretary of State. There is no indication that Bill Clinton named her just because she was a women, though I'm sure he was not blind to the PR aspect. (Bill Clinton has a rather different set of political sins than does his wife.)

But Hillary Clinton is determined that her campaign will be run by and for women, regardless of whether there are better qualified and more experienced campaign managers who happen, sadly, to be male. And we see the consequences of Hillary's tribalism today: Despite every institutional advantage one can imagine, she is being slowly ground into hamburger by a complete lightweight no-name with even less experience than she has.

Her campaign is in free-fall not because it's run by a woman, but because it has all along been run by people selected primarily because they are women. Hillary's gynocentrism has probably thwarted her political aspirations, unless she gets amazingly lucky -- and both Barack Obama and John McCain make catastrophic, career-killing mistakes ("Macaca!").

The only way I can think for her to turn her candidacy around would be to hire a male campaign manager... not because a generic man would be better than Maggie Williams or Patti Solis Doyle (although that's probably true), but because such an appointment would signal that Hillary had actually changed her own psyche from gender feminism towards an equity position, selecting not "the best woman" for the job but "the best person."

But considering the psychology of the individual, I consider that a very slim possibility indeed. Hillary would rather lose while surrounded by a pavillion of women than put a man in charge -- and win.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, February 14, 2008, at the time of 7:24 PM

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Comments

The following hissed in response by: Bookworm

Great post.

You said: "Hillary Clinton has always been proud to call herself a feminist (one of those feminists who owes everything she has or is to a man, her husband), but she is a particular kind of feminist: She is not what Christina Hoff-Sommers would call an equity feminist, one who wants only equality of opportunity for women; Hillary is what Hoff-Sommers calls a gender feminist... that is, a tribalist whose "tribe" is women."

First, Christina Hoff-Sommers' book about feminists was one of the best books I've read, and helped shape my current political positions.

Second, it's ironic that the tribe, having concluded that Hillary will not run, is abandoning here, but is able to do so only by announcing that Obama is, in fact, also a member of the tribe: he's a woman.

The above hissed in response by: Bookworm at February 14, 2008 8:29 PM

The following hissed in response by: hunter

I think it is very likely there is something far more base behind her choices.

The above hissed in response by: hunter at February 15, 2008 3:55 AM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

Hunter:

I think it is very likely there is something far more base behind her choices.

That's odd, since she has such an acid tongue.

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh at February 15, 2008 5:07 AM

The following hissed in response by: levi from queens

I used to work in the same office tower where Senator Clinton had her Manhattan office. An overheard elevator conversation between two young women who worked in her office: "I got off on the wrong floor, but I immediately knew it wasn't our office when a man appeared at the door."

The above hissed in response by: levi from queens at February 15, 2008 8:16 AM

The following hissed in response by: hunter

Dafydd,
You are very very bad.
Tehre are mosre specifics on this, but I do not blieve they are appropriate in open blogging.

The above hissed in response by: hunter at February 15, 2008 10:55 AM

The following hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh

Hunter:

Don't worry; I hear all about the specifics of why I'm very, very bad every time I read the SFWA bulletin board!

(If you instead meant specifics on why Hillary Clinton selected those particular women, unless it's actually actionable -- as in, we're going to get prosecuted or sued -- go right ahead and post a comment about them. Or else post a link in a comment, and we're all safe!)

Dafydd

The above hissed in response by: Dafydd ab Hugh at February 15, 2008 2:24 PM

The following hissed in response by: hunter

Dafydd,
I am clearly too distracted at work today to post anything like a coherent set of thoughts.
That prior post of mine may be the worst post I have made here in a long time. And I was not even drunk.
lol.
I was referring to Hillary's specifics, of course.
I will post later, when I can.

The above hissed in response by: hunter at February 15, 2008 2:53 PM

The following hissed in response by: hunter

Less distraction.
In 1993, I ate lunch with some long time friends. The wife had worked for a part of the Federal Govt. that had set up the WH office for the Clinton Admin.
This was before the scandals, before Monica, and right after Clinton had actually made a strong visit to the Korean DMZ and told NK to watch out.
The comment about the Clinton's from this lady who was not political is that she was amazed at how stupid Bill was, at how mean and in charge Hillary was, and how both were busy running women in and out of the WH.

The above hissed in response by: hunter at February 16, 2008 11:31 AM

The following hissed in response by: Beldar

I'm professionally acquainted -- albeit at a distance and from the late 1980s (through a multi-state antitrust case in which they and I and many dozens of other lawyers all represented co-defendants) -- with both Kimba Wood and Zoe Baird.

Either would have made a vastly better Attorney General than Janet Reno. It is true, however, that neither likely would have been considered for the AG slot had they had a Y-chromosome; i.e., on a sex-neutral list of AG candidates, ranked by objective experience and qualifications, who were likely to be considered by a Democratic president, neither would have been in the top 20, but both would have been somewhere in the top 100, and that's a pool at which the "qualified enough" cut-off would have been somewhere below 200. I'm not sure whether either Wood or Baird fits with the general hypothesis of this post, with which I'm otherwise inclined to agree.

The above hissed in response by: Beldar at February 17, 2008 6:43 AM

The following hissed in response by: hunter

Beldar,
I still think there is a darker and more base explanation for the choices Hillary makes.
The damage Gorelick did to this nation is of an historic nature.

The above hissed in response by: hunter at February 19, 2008 3:54 PM