Women in Power

by Julie Biando Edwards, Mansfield Library, University of Montana, USA

1     Towards the end of the first Republican Presidential debate, moderator Chris Matthews asked the candidates the following question, "Seriously, would it be good for America to have Bill Clinton back living in the White House?" The question, which drew laughter from the men standing at the podiums, is neither as ridiculous nor as innocuous as it may at first appear. The former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney, responded with a question of his own, an incredulous "You've got to be kidding?". By way of elaboration Matthews, who had asked the question with a straight face, replied "No, I'm not. His wife's running — have you heard?" It can be argued that such a question, and Matthews's subsequent point of clarification, set the tone for the ways in which the complex issue of gender will be handled in the 2008 Presidential Election. With that single inquiry into the candidates' thoughts on Bill Clinton, Matthews at once evoked the most powerful Democratic candidate, and the party frontrunner, without mentioning her name or asking the Republicans to engage with her as a political rival. Instead, Hillary Rodham Clinton was relegated to that role which has been for years her greatest source of political and personal trouble — Bill Clinton's wife.

2     While it could be argued that such an inquiry is simply ridiculous, the fact remains that the very act of asking reveals the ways in which gender both currently informs and will continue to shape this election. What looks on the surface like a simple, though silly, question, actually illustrates the troubling ways in which a candidate's gender can overshadow any real focus on issues or political platforms. The problem is further complicated by the fact that Hillary Rodham Clinton is being referred to not exactly based on her gender — she is not being held up as a female candidate — but by that most gendered of terms — wife. Those who have watched Rodham Clinton over the years recognize the special weight that this term carries. Among the various roles she has played — lawyer, mother, First Lady, Senator — that of wife has always been most problematic. Whether it is as the "high-powered career wife" (Kingston 86) who doesn't know her place (such wives were later to be christened "Hillary Wives" by the Wall Street Journal [Kingston 86] the political wife who never could quite master the art of smiling and staying silent; the Baby Boomer wife struggling to balance work, family, and personal fulfillment; or the cuckolded wife — ironically the one iteration of the role that brought her both support and sympathy — Rodham Clinton has never seemed entirely comfortable when defined in terms of her husband. Quite simply, she has never been able to finesse the behavior that people expect — and demand — from a wife. By framing her as Bill Clinton's wife, rather than as a political candidate in her own right, Matthews evokes all of the tortured history of her relationship with her husband while at the same time casting her in the role in which she seems least comfortable.

3     Because of the complex relationship with her husband and her discomfort with wifely roles, casting Hillary Rodham Clinton merely as Bill Clinton's wife is hugely problematic. The issue is further complicated though, by the fact that Rodham Clinton herself has relied on her connection to her spouse when she has found it to be politically expedient. She has, throughout her campaign, repeatedly referred to her husband's time in the White House, and subsequently to her own time there as First Lady, implying that her tenure as First Lady — as Bill Clinton's wife — has given her a degree of experience in politics that will serve the country well. Her use of her husband, a successful President still wildly popular with American Democrats, is pragmatic. After nearly eight years of deception, economic downturn, and war, hearkening back to the Clinton years is an understandably attractive way to shore up votes. Realistically, of course, one can't ignore the fact that indeed Rodham Clinton is the wife of a former President and, regardless of her comfort level with that position, she cannot feasibly run a campaign without mentioning this fact. The problem, though, is that in much the same way that Matthews chose to cast her as a wife and not a candidate, her own positioning of herself as Bill Clinton's wife downplays her significant contributions to politics and casts her as an object, not as a subject, in this presidential race.

4     This paper will examine the various ways in which Hillary Rodham Clinton has been positioned as a wife by both Republicans and Democrats and will analyze why this bipartisan positioning, though politically shrewd, is nonetheless problematic from both a political and a feminist perspective. It will examine the role that gender plays in this election and the effect that gender is having on the ways in which her Democratic challengers are being perceived and are constructing their own images. Finally, some of the problems with the way in which gender is being discussed — or not — in the 2008 presidential election will be explored.

Rodham Clinton as a Woman and Wife

5     Few other modern American women have captured public imagination in the way that Hillary Rodham Clinton has and no other woman in modern politics provokes such a range of emotions in such a variety of people. She has had the hope of feminists pinned on her, only to see much of that hope turn to criticism in the wake of her husband's sex scandal and her decision to stay married to him (recall how she told 60 Minutes, in response to allegations of sexual misconduct on the part of Bill Clinton, "I'm not sitting here as some little woman standing by my man" [Clinton, 60 Minutes], making her choice to do exactly that all the more unpalatable to some feminists). Likewise, some conservatives have held her up as the worst example of the modern woman, one who values her career over her family, is openly ambitious, and doesn't know her place. Despite being a champion for women's rights as human rights, much of her criticism comes from women who feel that she is too harsh, too cold, too unfeminine, and who have repeatedly said that she doesn't relate well to ordinary women or truly understand their concerns. On the other hand, her success in politics has made her a target of those who say that she is no better than the good old boys who have run Washington for decades.