During the 2000 New York Senate campaign, then-First Lady Hillary Clinton squared off against Rep. Rick Lazio in a debate that proved pivotal. In order to make a point about Hillary’s lack of candor, Lazio moved toward her on the stage in a way that seemed physically intimidating. In an instant Lazio blew up his political career. Everything else in that debate—from the long-forgotten “soft money” question that sparked his gambit to Tim Russert’s invocation of Monica Lewinsky—faded away, along with any chance Lazio had of winning the votes of women.
Seven years later the role Hillary’s sex played in a debate is back in the news, only this time the fallout is at least marginally harming Hillary. It’s a gender fender bender, with each side pointing fingers over who did what in that pileup in Philadelphia. The fight includes phony claims of injury, evolving testimony about what happened, a trial lawyer (John Edwards) and a jury not quite sure what to believe.
The collision took place on a slick road, where nobody quite has full control of the vehicles. Sexual politics in America are in transition, and the fate of Hillary Clinton will depend in part on how she handles them.
The first thing to understand is that Hillary’s wide lead among Democrats in the national polls is mostly the result of her support among women. With women making up more than 50 percent of voters in every state (in some states it could go as high as 60 percent), that’s one hell of a base. The Clinton campaign has been targeting them, and it’s paying off. Whereas women candidates in Democratic primaries for governor and senator have seldom enjoyed a demonstrable edge because of their gender, Hillary appears to be defying history. The pride women take in her, especially younger women, is palpable on the campaign trail.
That pride kicked in after the debate, when even those observers who thought Hillary got shellacked raised the issue of her standing up to the boys. Two days later Hillary went back to Wellesley and bragged about how her education in that all-girls school had prepared her perfectly to thrive in a man’s world. This was a perfectly appropriate thing to say at her alma mater, but it didn’t wear well over time. The following day in New Hampshire, as she filed papers in Concord to go on the primary ballot, she quoted Harry Truman’s famous maxim, “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen,” then added that she had “always been comfortable in the kitchen.”
This was a twofer: it showed that Hillary is tough and can take the heat, and it helped erase the image of a woman who in 1992 got herself into trouble by saying that she had not sat “at home baking cookies,” as if there was something wrong with that. (Hillary spent months afterward perfecting her cookie recipe and bringing the results to NEWSWEEK and other news organizations to try to make amends.)
But even as she and her campaign tried to spin a clear debate loss as a mugging (including a clever “Piling On” video), they sensed that they might have gone overboard playing the victim. By the end of the week Hillary insisted that her rivals targeted her “not because I’m a woman but because I’m winning.” This was indisputably true. Front runners all become lightning rods; it is as much a part of the process as shaking hands and kissing babies. Unfortunately for Clinton, not everyone got the memo.
Former vice-presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, a Clinton supporter, told the New York Times, “John Edwards, specifically, as well as the press, would never attack Barack Obama for two hours the way they attacked her. It’s OK in this country to be sexist.”
Ferraro’s line felt awfully 1970s. No one of any consequence endorsed the idea that the other candidates were sexist. Furthermore, she got the facts wrong. Obama was indeed sharply attacked in earlier debates, with Hillary herself calling him “irresponsible and naive” for wanting to talk directly to dictators. The Illinois senator rightly pointed out that at the time neither he nor anyone else claimed that he was being picked on because he’s black.
Rivals and male commentators weren’t the only ones decrying the use of “the victim card” and suggesting that Hillary wants it both ways. “When unchallenged, in a comfortable, controlled situation, Senator Clinton embraces her political elevation into the ‘boys club’,” Kate Michelman, the former president of NARAL Pro-Choice America and an Edwards supporter, wrote on the liberal blog openleft.com. “But when she’s challenged, when legitimate questions are asked, questions she should be prepared to answer and discuss, she is just as quick to raise the white flag and look for a change in the rules.”
Michelson’s wrong on one point: Hillary Clinton doesn’t raise white flags. She and her people contest everything, every step of the way. But from now on they will have one less powerful weapon. Unless another candidate pulls a Rick Lazio (or an Al Gore against George W. Bush in a 2000 debate) and tries to physically intimidate Hillary, all of her rivals are free to fire at will on the front runner, as long as she remains the front runner. Hillary’s supporters can reply on the merits, or claim that Obama is betraying the politics of hope (though this line, repeated about 100 times, is awfully shop-worn already). But they will no longer be able turn it into a gender thing. They lost that argument, along with the debate itself.
