Greg Sargent over at Talking Points Memo has an excellent piece today on Maureen Dowd's column in the NYT.
In her latest column on Hillary, Maureen Dowd quotes New Republic editor Leon Wieseltier as follows:
'Others do not underestimate her relentlessness. As Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor of The New Republic, once told me: "She’s never going to get out of our faces. ... She’s like some hellish housewife who has seen something that she really, really wants and won’t stop nagging you about it until finally you say, fine, take it, be the damn president, just leave me alone."'
Sargent further quotes Dowd:
The town is divided into two camps: those who think that, after 16 years of Hillary pushing herself forward, the public will get worn out and reject her, and those who think that, after 16 years of Hillary pushing herself forward, the public will get worn down and give in to her.
As Sargent states:
You don't have to like Hillary -- a Yale law grad and twice-elected U.S. Senator who is the first woman with a reasonable shot at becoming President -- to find this a tad off-putting.
Just imagine someone accusing Guiliani of "nagging" us into submission (which, come to think of it, he tries to do!).
Relentless, forceful, ambitious, etc. are all terms I would use to describe Hillary. She's my #3 choice, but that doesn't mean that I don't respect her and that I don't feel resentful of this kind of crap.
In fact, reading stuff like that makes me feel MORE supportive of Hillary Clinton. I wonder if this will cause a backlash in others also.
My criticisms of Hillary include her courting of corporate supporters, her willingness to combine forces with people like Murdoch, her recent vote FOR the anti-Iranian resolution, her unwillingness to admit she should have questioned Bush more before voting to authorize the invasion of Iraq (and particularly after watching Bush for more than 6 years, the willingness to admit a mistake ranks high with me as a sign of character).
I don't think a slur on Hillary based on her being a woman, or, for that matter, a slur on housewives, is reasonable political discourse. Dowd might as well criticize Hillary for not "staying home and baking cookies," (remember that one) -- it wouldn't be that different.
[And of course, the whole cookie-baking thing between her and Barbara Bush had a great deal of irony since Barbara Bush, who both grew up in and married into an enormously wealthy family, probably never learned to cook since she always had a cook. When she finally published a cookie recipe, it was one from her cook. Hillary, OTOH, comes from a middle-class background and probably did a fair amount of cooking before Bill became governor of Arkansas. Maybe she even baked cookies!].