aTypical Joe: a gay New Yorker living in the rural South

Saturday, July 30, 2005

Rhymes with witch

Give me a break! Jacob Weisberg writing in Slate on Why Hillary Clinton Can’t Win the ‘08 nomination:

Plainly put, it’s her personality. In her four years in the Senate, Hillary has proven herself to be capable, diligent, formidable, effective, and shrewd. She can make Republican colleagues sound like star-struck teenagers. But she still lacks a key quality that a politician can’t achieve through hard work: likability. As hard as she tries, Hillary has little facility for connecting with ordinary folk, for making them feel that she understands, identifies, and is at some level one of them. You may admire and respect her. But it’s hard not to find Hillary a bit inhuman. Whatever she may be like in private, her public persona is calculating, clenched, relentless-and a little robotic.

That’s it. That’s his reason. He grants that she “isn’t as obnoxious as Gore or as off-putting as Kerry,” but I have to wonder has he fallen prey to the old “if it’s a man he’s ambitious, a woman she’s just pushy” dichotomy.

Weisberg offers no justification beyond what’s quoted here. That she’s unlikable is just a given. But the people of New York, no easy sell for a politician called a carpetbagger, apparently liked her. They still do. And I think America may one day too.