Posted on 05/09/2007 9:50:58 PM PDT by Cincinna
Elections abroad featuring female candidates, including this week's contest in France, don't answer the question of how open Americans are to electing their first woman president. But they do offer this hint: Voters have become more receptive to females who project gender-bending strength and substance, as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton tries to do, and more likely to reject those who don't.
Socialist Ségolène Royal lost her bid to be France's first female president after a campaign in which she played up her motherhood and underplayed policy details, while conservative winner Nicolas Sarkozy emphasized a hard-line platform against crime and immigration. In contrast, Angela Merkel won election in 2005 as Germany's first female chancellor with a campaign so focused on the dry economics of tax rates and labor rules that female commentators complained. "She has not shown any enthusiasm for so-called women's politics," Germany's best-known feminist, Alice Schwarzer, sniped at the time.
Now, as Mrs. Clinton seeks the Democratic nomination, and the chance to make U.S. history, the dicey politics of gender are central to the New York senator's strategy. She uses her gender to advantage where she can. "This is going to be an election about change," and "one big one is Hillary's gender," says Ann Lewis, a top Clinton strategist. "The excitement she engenders among women is an important asset."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I think her "husband", the powerful President of the Socialist Party, Francois Hollande, was viewed as the puppetmaster. Many feared it would be he who controlled the power, not she.
Hillary and her HINO have a similar problem.
No one these days wants "buy one, get one free" ,as the Arkansas Grifters arrogantly presented themselves. One can only hope!
Interesting article by Dick Morris on this very topic.
COMME SEGOLENE, LIKE HILLARY
By DICK MORRIS
Published on TheHill.com on May 9, 2007.
This week brought good news for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) — post-debate polls all suggest that she scored a significant victory in the first meeting of the Democratic candidates. For the moment, at least, she seems to have arrested Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) momentum and re-established a lead.
But the defeat of Segolene Royal in France at the hands of Nicolas Sarkozy may be a bad omen for the long-term health of her candidacy. Royal’s defeat was not primarily due to ideological issues. French President Jacques Chirac has long since worn out his welcome and Royal’s Socialist Party would, all other things being equal, have been in a position to exploit his unpopularity. But instead Sarkozy, like Chirac from the RPR Party, won the election. While Sarkozy has long been at loggerheads with his president, his victory cannot be attributed to party or ideology. Nor is it a latent manifestation of heretofore dormant love of the United States in the heart of the average Frenchman.
No, Royal lost because she was a woman.
And, as always, a woman does not lose an election because of overt sexism. In fact, when she commenced her run, Royal surged to a lead on the wings of a national rush of excitement at the prospect of a woman president. Just as with Hillary, her vote share among women was very high in the early going.
But it is an axiom of politics that women accumulate highly personal negatives at a faster rate — negatives that prove more long-lasting than those regarding male candidates. As I read Walter Isaacson’s magnificent biography of Albert Einstein, I find myself wondering if he could reduce this phenomenon to a mathematical formula.
For Royal, the moment when her negatives began to build was a trip to the Middle East in which she was seen to slight Israel and pour unmerited praise on the Palestinian government. But rather than being looked upon as a move to the left, explicable in the case of a Socialist, they were seen, unfairly, as a faux pas, indicative of a volatile, emotional, impulsive, ill-informed and unseasoned female candidate.
In Hillary’s case, the highly personal negatives she has accumulated are not related to a perceived lack of ability or insufficient gravitas to serve as president. Indeed, her debate performance showed how well-prepared and -equipped she is to fend for herself at this level. But the most recent Gallup Poll unearthed a bitter harvest of negative phrases voters used in open-ended questions to say why they disliked her.
To be sure, a great many voters gave favorable responses, praising her strength, stamina, determination, tenacity, outspokenness, willingness to stand up for her beliefs, intelligence, and level of knowledge.
But it is the lot of a female candidate to be judged, harshly or enthusiastically, on her personality, and to an extent quite unlike that visited upon men.
Royal also illustrates how important a female candidate’s marriage is to her campaign if her husband is high in profile. Although they are not legally married, Royal’s long-term live-in partner and the father of her children is Francois Hollande, the head of the Socialist Party. Her candidacy was not helped by the perception that he had given her the nomination in lieu of a wedding present and that he would seek to control her and pull the strings were she elected.
Royal’s defeat illustrates the vulnerability of women who run on the national stage accompanied by high-profile husbands. While Hillary’s uniqueness as the first viable female candidate for president has its uses, it also brings with it detriments.
Hillary stood out among the six candidates debating in South Carolina. As the only woman, she had no difficulty distinguishing herself and winning points for a good performance.
But the trajectory of Royal is not comforting to Hillary. Negatives adhere quickly to women running for office and, in the opening months of her candidacy, she appears to have attracted more than her share.
“I don’t think Royal lost because she is a woman. I think she lost because she is a woman with bad ideas.”
BINGO!
The thought of putting someone in the most powerful position on the earth, BASED ON GENDER, is not only frightening but grossly irresponsible.
DICK MORRIS IS A MORON!
OK, I'm puzzled. In Hitlery's case, then, how does one judge a void?
After all, nature, as they say, abhors a vacuum...so what are we to think of Hitlery, on that basis?
And .. not only that .. so far we’re seen 2 democrat women who’s states were devastated by storms .. and the only response they have is to blame it on Bush.
Good grief! No stinking DEMOCRAT is fit to be running this country .. and if America is so stupid as to elect her .. they will regret it until their dying day.
I’d hate Hillary no matter what sex she is.
This just in from The Tocqueville Connection:
” The defeated Royal and her partner, Socialist Party leader Francois Hollande, were meanwhile planning legal action over a book alleging their relationship is on the rocks, their lawyer said Wednesday.
The book, titled “The Femme Fatale”, alleges the couple — who are not married but who have four children aged 14 to 22 — violently fell out last year over Royal’s decision to contest the presidential race.
Hollande — who as party chief had been seen as a possible president himself — was eclipsed by his partner’s rise, and had to swallow hard as her policy pronouncements often challenged party orthodoxy.”
The novelty of Hillary! Rodham Clinton, and the fact that she is, presumably, a woman, has long since worn off for American voters. There is no excitement that this particular woman might be elected President of the United States.
To my mind, the most telling parallel between the United States and France is that as few as three months ago, it was universally agreed in every media outlet that Segolene Royal was going to be elected President. Her victory was seen as inevitable. You got the impression from the stories that she was running almost unopposed. We hear similar stories about Hillary! Rodham Clinton today.
We have proved here in Michigan that voters will elect a female for no other reason than it’s a female.
Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who blessed Michigan with the highest unemployment in the nation and frightened tens of thousands of citizens to flee her idiotic socialist rule, was re-elected with 57% of the vote, proving that morons will elect a woman just because she’s a woman, even though she’s a communist first and a woman second.
If Dick Morris sez so, well, now I’m more worried.
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