More important than her sex is her long history of lying, pay-for-play politics, and mockery of women who accused her husband of assault or rape.
It is hard to imagine a more immature or morally primitive stance than that of progressive women (and men) who argue how important is to support Hillary Clinton because, as your local college would put it, she identifies as a woman.
One perfect example of such thinking was the recent statement made by former secretary of state Madeleine Albright at an event on behalf of Mrs. Clinton. Albright announced that “there is a special place in hell” for women who don’t support women, meaning, in this instance, for women who don’t vote for Hillary Clinton.
Such immature thinking, it is important to note, is to be found only on the left. Racial solidarity, ethnic solidarity, class solidarity, and gender solidarity all matter greatly to the Left, not the Right. When Margaret Thatcher first ran for prime minister, she would, if she won, become the first female prime minister in British history. But British conservatives, including women who supported Thatcher, rarely mentioned her gender, let alone offered it as a reason to vote for her.
Conservatives in the U.K. and in America vote their values, not for the gender or ethnicity of politicians.
Then there are all those parents of girls who yearn to tell their daughters that with the first female president, there will truly be no accomplishment in life to which their daughter cannot aspire.
But that message is as morally problematic as Madeleine Albright’s.
Offering Hillary Clinton to one’s daughter as a model to aspire to is telling girls that gender trumps decency.
Offering Hillary Clinton to one’s daughter as a model to aspire to — given the former secretary of state’s long history of lying; her mockery of all the women who accused her husband of sexual harassment, assault, and even rape; and her recent history of selling the power of her office to enrich herself and her husband — is telling one’s daughter that gender trumps decency. As such, it speaks volumes about how insignificant character is to Clinton supporters.
In addition, putting aside the amorality and immaturity of gender solidarity, having a female president will be as useless to women as having a black president was to blacks.
In 2008, we were repeatedly told that electing a black president would be a tremendous gain for black–white relations and for black life generally.
But black–white relations are worse than in most living Americans’ memory — in large measure thanks to Barack Obama and his race-baiting, which has included repeatedly inviting the greatest living race-demagogue, Al Sharpton, to the White House; insulting the Cambridge, Mass., police in its dealings with a black Harvard professor; and intervening in the Trayvon Martin and Ferguson cases. Consequently, instead of acknowledging that America is the least racist multiracial, multi-ethnic country in world history, more blacks than at any time since the civil-rights era believe that America is a congenitally racist country.
We were also told that with an Obama victory, young black men would see a black man in the White House and then model their behavior after his. But despite President Obama’s personal example of marriage and devoted fathering, the black out-of-wedlock birthrate remains above 70 percent; and crime rates in the inner-city areas of Baltimore, Chicago, and other major cities are up, with black men committing murder and getting murdered in greater numbers than before the Obama presidency.
Furthermore, under Obama’s economic policies, blacks have lost ground in every measurable economic category over the last seven years. Compared with the pre-Obama era, more blacks are in poverty, unemployed, in prison, or on their way to prison.
In other words, having a black president has done nothing for blacks. Likewise, the dozens of black members of Congress and mayors of major cities, blacks as attorneys general and in other cabinet positions have done nothing to improve black life.
It is only the Left that claims that it’s important to have members of one’s own gender or of one’s ethnic or racial group in political power. This claim is fraudulent. One of the most successful ethnic groups in American history, Asian Americans, has virtually no political power. Has that deleteriously effected Asian Americans?
So how will having a woman in the Oval Office actually help women? It will only make more and more women depend on the government rather than on a husband or on themselves. It will do as much for women as black leaders have done for blacks. In other words, unless you think that dependency is good thing, it will do more harm than good.
Let me end with a heretical thought:
America would be a far better place — meaning there would be many more happy Americans and many more decent Americans — if more parents told their daughters that they might consider becoming a great mother and a great wife in addition to or even rather than becoming a great lawyer, CEO, or president.
Our society doesn’t lack women (or men) who wish to be president nearly as much as it lacks women (and men) who want to be mothers and wives (or fathers and husbands).