I was very interested in the "stand up" guy Rudi Guiliani on Larry King the other night. Larry says, "Rudi, now what about Bernie?" and Rudi says, "Larry, I made a mistake. I've made a lot of mistakes in my life, and this is one 'em." Now what a stand up guy Rudi is.
But does the same rule apply to Senator Clinton? I have a little bit of reasoned discussion on this topic below. Let's be academic about this, OK?
I have it on good authority -- two top executive women, one in Wall Street one in Philanthropy, one a strong advocate of the Senator, the other interested -- and both seem to think that there's a double standard here. If a man does it, he's a big guy, stand up, take the hit, move on. But if a woman did the same thing, she is weak, not decisive, can't make up her mind, maybe afraid, etc. This is from their experience as women leaders.
Absolutely none of these adjectives apply to Senator Clinton. So she should not be judged that way, of course. That's an objective truth.
But we're not talking about what we would do. We are trying to see what the "perception" would be -- and I think that "perception" is a slimy thing, formed by all the forces in society that shape perceptions, such as prejudices, media bias, and so on. In short, the things that would shape the perception of a statement by a woman would include all the biases and double standards that plague our society today.
So now we have Senator Clinton in a situation. We want to read into her statements on her vote re the Iraq resolution something really complicated. Are we trying to treat her as a man? Are we acknowledging the force of bias and sexism in what would happen to a statement that she might make that would be more pleasing here -- but totally distorted and misunderstood out there? Are we not actually participating in that double standard of criticism?
Perhaps there's really not that much difference between "in here" and "out there".
Perhaps we're not really ready yet to listen to a woman. (I'm not saying "definitely"; I'm saying "perhaps".)