Hillary Clinton, the Candidate We Know So Well — And Don’t
In this Sunday, April 24, 2016 file photo, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks during a campaign stop at the University of Bridgeport in Bridgeport, Conn. (Photo credit: Matt Rourke / AP)
By Jocelyn Noveck
July 13, 2016
Excerpts
For the last 14 years, and 20 overall, Americans polled by Gallup have named Clinton their most admired woman in the world. But consider some other titles attached to her over the years: Lady Macbeth. Washington insider. Robotic. Wildly ambitious. Congenital liar. (Or Donald Trump’s current favorite, “Crooked Hillary.”) …
“It’s an amazing life,” says biographer Carl Bernstein, who wrote a 600-page book on her and says he still struggles to define her. “You could not make any of this stuff up.” …
[T]he ambition tag has dogged Clinton, 68, throughout her career, as if it were a bad quality rather than a necessity in high-stakes politics. The satirical website The Onion captured the irony in a 2006 headline: “Hillary Clinton Is Too Ambitious To Be The First Female President.”
That gets a knowing laugh from Melanne Verveer, Clinton’s chief of staff from her first lady years.
“If a guy is described as ambitious, it’s a noble attribute — he wants to put himself ahead,” says Verveer. “But if a woman is ambitious, it’s not an attribute, it’s a negative, a pejorative. It’s not proper somehow.”
Former Rep. Patricia Schroeder thinks the ambition factor is — unfairly — key to Clinton’s challenges connecting with the electorate.
“We still don’t like a woman who is showing ambition, especially for that level of a job,” says Schroeder, who famously explored her own presidential candidacy decades ago. “It’s: ‘I’d like her if she weren’t so damned ambitious. How come she wants all that power?’” …
Part of the narrative on Clinton has been her trouble connecting to the public. “I am not a natural politician, in case you haven’t noticed,” she said recently, “like my husband or President Obama.” …
Others note that Clinton has naturally become very guarded, given that she’s been judged, relentlessly and often unfairly, “on a huge stage, for all of her life,” in Bernstein’s words. …
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