November 24, 2008--But What About Condi Rice?
Gloria Steinem got it right.
As word spread that Hillary Clinton was going to be named Secretary of State, she saw its significance and compared it to being Vice President—a job presumably not offered to Senator Clinton, which at the time angered many women. Steinem said: “Secretary of State is far superior to Vice President because it’s involved in continuously solving problems and making policy, and not being on standby.” (See NY Times article linked below.)
Though Dick Cheney would disagree about the just being a standby part—ask Colin Powell about all the continuous problem solving in which he was involved—Gloria Steinem is correct about how much better a job it is than being New York’s junior senator. Underline junior.
But others got it wrong. Ironically, wrong in feminist terms.
For example, Marie Wilson, former head of the Ms Foundation and currently president of the White House Project, a women’s leadership program, said, “I feel real mixed about this. I think it’s better for women to be their own boss.” Adding that she would have preferred to see Hillary Clinton remain in the Senate and become Majority Leader.
A few things about this: You don’t become Majority Leader just because you want to be or you want to be a “boss.” You earn it through a combination of senate seniority (Hillary is years away from that—she doesn’t even now chair a committee) and being voted into the job via secret ballot by your colleagues. Then, if you manage to make it that far you in effect have two bosses—your Democratic colleagues who can vote you out and of course your ultimate boss, the voters, who can toss you out when you seek reelection.
When Hillary lost the nomination many activist women saw that, to quote the Times, “as an accumulation of all-too-familiar sexist slights.” At the risk of getting myself into trouble here, did any who expressed this concern concede that Hillary Clinton became a senator and then the almost-nominee in large part because of her last name? Her so-called married name?
She played with the idea some years ago of jettisoning the “Clinton” and restoring “Rodham” as her surname, but for reasons that should be obvious did not follow through. In politics, name recognition is the name of much of the game.
None of this is to say that she hasn’t been and effective senator or a formidable presidential candidate. As she said when she conceded, she put 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling.
A final thought—if we want to apply a feminist gloss to any of this, even forgetting Madalyn Albright who served as our first female Secretary of State, what about poor Condi Rice? Shouldn’t there have been more shout outs when she was named head of the National Security Council and then the first African-American female Secretary of State? I don’t remember hearing all that much about that.
As a liberal, I wonder if it would have helped if she also had been a liberal, or, perhaps as important, a Democrat. Just wondering.
As word spread that Hillary Clinton was going to be named Secretary of State, she saw its significance and compared it to being Vice President—a job presumably not offered to Senator Clinton, which at the time angered many women. Steinem said: “Secretary of State is far superior to Vice President because it’s involved in continuously solving problems and making policy, and not being on standby.” (See NY Times article linked below.)
Though Dick Cheney would disagree about the just being a standby part—ask Colin Powell about all the continuous problem solving in which he was involved—Gloria Steinem is correct about how much better a job it is than being New York’s junior senator. Underline junior.
But others got it wrong. Ironically, wrong in feminist terms.
For example, Marie Wilson, former head of the Ms Foundation and currently president of the White House Project, a women’s leadership program, said, “I feel real mixed about this. I think it’s better for women to be their own boss.” Adding that she would have preferred to see Hillary Clinton remain in the Senate and become Majority Leader.
A few things about this: You don’t become Majority Leader just because you want to be or you want to be a “boss.” You earn it through a combination of senate seniority (Hillary is years away from that—she doesn’t even now chair a committee) and being voted into the job via secret ballot by your colleagues. Then, if you manage to make it that far you in effect have two bosses—your Democratic colleagues who can vote you out and of course your ultimate boss, the voters, who can toss you out when you seek reelection.
When Hillary lost the nomination many activist women saw that, to quote the Times, “as an accumulation of all-too-familiar sexist slights.” At the risk of getting myself into trouble here, did any who expressed this concern concede that Hillary Clinton became a senator and then the almost-nominee in large part because of her last name? Her so-called married name?
She played with the idea some years ago of jettisoning the “Clinton” and restoring “Rodham” as her surname, but for reasons that should be obvious did not follow through. In politics, name recognition is the name of much of the game.
None of this is to say that she hasn’t been and effective senator or a formidable presidential candidate. As she said when she conceded, she put 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling.
A final thought—if we want to apply a feminist gloss to any of this, even forgetting Madalyn Albright who served as our first female Secretary of State, what about poor Condi Rice? Shouldn’t there have been more shout outs when she was named head of the National Security Council and then the first African-American female Secretary of State? I don’t remember hearing all that much about that.
As a liberal, I wonder if it would have helped if she also had been a liberal, or, perhaps as important, a Democrat. Just wondering.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
9:31 AM
1 Comments:
Praise was withheld from Rice precisely because she was both conservative and Republican.
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