Last week, an article appeared on Time.com by Dr. Julie Holland entitled “Hillary Clinton Is the Perfect Age to Be President.” But in idealizing the particulars of Hillary Clinton’s age, Dr. Holland calls into question the qualifications of younger women.
Age has always been a consideration for President of the United States. Our Constitution requires that a person be 35 years of age to hold that office. The idea behind that requirement is that with age comes wisdom, or at least one can hope. The offset is that with age, there can be a decline in energy and mental acuity. We do not want to elect someone President who is likely to become feeble or senile while in office. Moreover, we wish to avoid the possibility of the President’s dying while in office. Such an event is disruptive under the best of circumstances, and Vice-Presidents are often selected with less care, the most outrageous example being that of Sarah Palin as the running mate of John McCain, a man whose age was such as to make his death in office a distinct possibility. Given that Hillary Clinton, if she were to be elected President, would be 69 when she took office, her age is naturally a consideration in this respect.
As might be expected, Dr. Holland compares Hillary Clinton to Ronald Reagan, who was also 69 when he took office. One problem with this comparison is that many suspect that Reagan was beginning to suffer from the early stage of Alzheimer’s disease during his second term. With that in mind, Dr. Holland points out that Hillary’s life expectancy would be longer than Reagan’s was at 69 on account of her sex. Still, comparisons to previous Presidents are ill-advised. I am sure that Hillary would be smart enough not to make the mistake Dan Quayle made in justifying his age as a qualification for Vice-President by comparing himself to John Kennedy. And even if she did compare herself to Reagan, that comparison might exasperate Republicans, but she is definitely in the same league with Reagan. Still, whenever I see an advertisement for a movie that compares itself to another movie, I figure it is going to be inferior. And I never compliment someone by telling him that he looks like a movie actor, however good looking that actor may be, because the person being complimented knows that his looks do not really measure up to that of the actor with whom he is being compared. It should be enough that Hillary is able to present herself as healthy and mentally alert without resorting to comparisons that might make her look second rate.
Where Dr. Holland’s article really begins to go wrong is when she starts talking about Hillary’s hormones. It reminds me of Joe Biden’s remark that Barack Obama was clean. He intended this to be a compliment, but it was actually an inadvertent insult to African Americans generally. It suggested that so many African Americans are dirty, that when one of them is clean, it is worth remarking on. I am sure that Dr. Holland intended her article to be in support of Hillary’s eligibility, but it has some disturbing implications for younger women.
The main thrust of her article is that by being postmenopausal, Hillary’s hormones are just right for being President. But this calls into question the hormonal situation of women who have not yet reached this stage of life. Consider, for example:
The long phase of perimenopause is marked by seismic spikes and troughs of estrogen levels, which can last for more than a decade in many women. But afterward, there is a hormonal ebbing that creates a moment of great possibility.
Dr. Holland adds that postmenopausal women are “primed to handle stress well.” The point, of course, is that the ebbing of Hillary’s estrogen level creates within her this moment of great possibility, but it makes us worry about those “seismic spikes and troughs” of younger women, who, by implication, are not as well able to handle stress. We have all heard the jokes about how women cannot be trusted in positions of power because they might start a nuclear war when they are in that time of the month that all men fear. And while such jokes may represent the attitudes a lot of men actually have about women, that they are biologically unsuited for the job of President, they remain jokes that may be laughed at or despised, but in either event, not taken seriously. By presenting a serious argument that, with Hillary’s being postmenopausal, we do not have to worry about her wildly fluctuating estrogen levels any more, Dr. Holland is raising to the level of scientific, rational debate the consideration that younger women are not fit for the job.
She continues:
Estrogen is a stress hormone that helps a woman be resilient during her fertile years. Its levels rise and fall to help her meet her biological demands, which are often about giving to others: attracting a mate, bearing children and nurturing a family. When estrogen levels drop after menopause, the cyclical forces that dominated the first half of our lives have been replaced with something more consistent. Our lives revolve less around others and become more about finally taking our turn.
Once again, while Dr. Holland is focusing on the benefits of being postmenopausal, she is undermining women who might want to run for President while still being fertile. One of the prejudices against women is that just when a woman gets promoted to an important job, she up and gets pregnant. And then she gets herself a whole new set of hormones, which make her want to be a nurturing mother. And even when the kids are older, she spends half the day on the phone trying to run a family from the office, and taking off early to take her kids to ballet lessons or baseball practice. By saying that Hillary is past all that, she impugns the women who are not.
Furthermore, there are strains of biological determinism in the previous quotation. She speaks of “biological demands” and the “cyclical forces that dominate the first half” of a woman’s life. While free will is undoubtedly a fiction, it is a fiction that has its time and its place. In particular, we like to think of the men we elect as President as being capable of rising above the demands of desire and doing what is right and just, of acting in accordance with reason. We never hear about their biological demands or cyclical forces, unless one of them gets caught with his pants down. Unfortunately, Dr. Holland’s article deprives women of also being thought of as rational agents, at least until they become postmenopausal, at which time the estrogen level has finally dropped to the point that a woman can transcend her biological destiny. The fact that this article was written by a woman is probably the main reason that it has gotten a pass. I shudder to think what would have happened if a man had written it.
There is no question that there are many prejudices women must overcome in trying to become President. People expect a candidate for President to be married and have children. But if that candidate is a woman with a baby or young child, she may end up looking like a bad mother who is failing to provide that child with the proper nurturing while she runs around the country trying to raise money and get votes. Personally, I would have no trouble voting for a woman who was single, or who was married, but had no children by chance or by choice. And if she did have a baby, I would figure that her nanny would do the nurturing. But I fear that a large segment of the electorate would disapprove. Therefore, strictly from the perspective of what is politically possible, it may be that a postmenopausal grandmother is the only type of woman who can get elected President.
However, while acknowledging this sad political reality, it is still best not to get into involved conversations about a woman’s hormones regarding her run for President, even if intended as support.