The idea that, at this point, there is some version of Hillary Clinton that we haven’t seen before feels implausible. Often, it feels like we know too much about her. She has been around for so long — her story, encompassing political intrigue and personal drama, has been recounted so many times — that she can seem a fictional character. To her critics, she is Lady Macbeth, to her adherents, Joan of Arc. As a young Hillary hater, I often compared her to Darth Vader — more machine than woman, her humanity ever more shrouded by Dark Side gadgetry. These days, I think of her as General Leia: No longer a rebel princess, she has made a wry peace with her rakish mate and her controversial hair and is hard at work, mounting a campaign against the fascistic First Order.
The dichotomy between her public and private presentation has a lot to do with the fact that she has built such a wall between the two. Her pathological desire for privacy is at the root of the never-ending email saga, to name just one example. But how do you convince a woman whose entire career taught her to be defensive and secretive that the key to her political success might just be to lay all her cards on the table and trust that she’ll be treated fairly? Especially when she might not be.
She had good reason to be scared. By 1999, even without having pursued her own political path, Clinton had learned what it might entail to be a woman who competed: She had taken her husband’s last name after his 1980 reelection defeat in Arkansas had been blamed on her independence; she’d done cookie-bake-off penance for her remarks about prioritizing career over domesticity; everything from her friend Vince Foster’s death to the wandering attentions of her husband had been tied to her purported ruthlessness.
Rebecca Traister
Reading this in-depth account of the Hilary Clinton presidential campaign, I couldn’t help comparing it with House of Cards, especially the character Claire Underwood, a hyper-competent and ambitious woman who has to act in the shadow of her husband, hoping (and scheming) to someday get her chance to step up and seize power. There may be something more than simple coincidence here since, according to Wikipedia, the screenwriter Beau Willimon has previously served as an aide to Hillary Clinton.
Voters don’t want America’s nicest grandma. They want the wolf with bits of grandma in its teeth. #NotoriousHRChttps://t.co/btkZs9ctKW
— Bill Maher (@billmaher) July 30, 2016
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