SPECIAL REPORT: A Different Kind Of Race National Journal goes behind the curtain of campaign 2008. Friday: Heir Unapparent · Tuesday: Seeing Blue · Wednesday: The Widest Gap · Thursday: Changing Horses In Midstream · Magazine subscribers can read the full issue online

By Alexis Simendinger, National Journal
© National Journal Group Inc.
Monday, Oct. 1, 2007

This, it appears, is the election that may really test America's "woman president" biases, which, for the record, most Americans tell pollsters they don't harbor. Hillary, a figure so famous that her first name is her preferred introduction, looks to be that test.

She is not running as a woman candidate, she has been telling audiences, but as the best choice across a crowded field of well, yes, men, to bring both "change" and seasoned know-how to the White House (escorted by an eight-year veteran of the job, a man she refers to simply as "my husband").

As the candidate explains it to audiences, being the first woman who might win the electoral sweepstakes to vow on a cold January day to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution is mostly beside the point. "I'm proud to be running to be the first woman president," she says, pausing because audiences like to clap for the history-making part. "But I'm not running because I'm a woman. I'm running because I think I'm the best qualified and experienced to hit the ground running and get the job done."

Hillary Rodham Clinton is the first female front-runner for either major party's presidential nomination. And she is the most viable woman candidate to run since Republican Elizabeth Dole in 2000 and Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, R-Maine, in 1964.

Women have found it easier to make history than real strides in their ascent toward the White House. Smith campaigned for six months before her name was placed in nomination at the 1964 Republican National Convention; she came in fifth behind Barry Goldwater, then refused to drop off the final ballot -- so that she could say a woman came in second.

In 1972, Rep. Shirley Chisholm of New York became the first African-American (and the first Democratic woman) to seek the presidency, declaring at the outset, "I do not have a chance of actually gaining that office in this election year." She ran a loose grassroots campaign, spent $300,000, and attracted sympathetic votes at the party's convention.

Republican Dole in 1999 was a White House candidate for a scant nine months after leaving the presidency of the American Red Cross to run. She raised $5.5 million, but money was a problem for her campaign. Dole placed third in the Iowa straw poll, behind George W. Bush and Steve Forbes; she quit the race before the Iowa caucuses. (Dole declined to be interviewed for this article.)

Former Ambassador Carol Moseley Braun was among nine Democratic presidential contenders when she announced her candidacy in 2003. Four months later, having raised only $628,000, she withdrew and endorsed Howard Dean.

Although there are months yet to go before the first primary, Clinton has begun to pitch her campaign into the general election, sprinkling the phrase "when I'm president" into passages about "my Defense secretary" and the orders she will issue to "begin to unwind our involvement in Iraq."

Clinton leads the Democratic field in national polling and has raised more money than any other 2008 contender, save for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill. Amid an older, white crowd at a Hillary event in Charlottesville, Va., last Sunday, a young woman asked the senator if Obama has enough experience to be her running mate. Clinton responded with the thinnest of smiles. "Assuming I can win the nomination, I will give serious thought to not only him but others," she said. "If I get there next spring, that's what I'm going to focus on."

For all of the news analyses and TV dramas about when (not whether) a woman will be chosen to be the nation's chief executive, voters in most states can hardly be blamed for the sameness of the quadrennial field. They are handed two or, occasionally, three survivors at the end of a long election season -- candidates who are the product of rural Iowa and idiosyncratic New Hampshire, of media hazing, constant polling, and blistering attack ads. Those victors, despite the advent of woman suffrage 87 years ago, have always been white males.

Clinton's success thus far will hasten the day that a woman breaks through, even if she is not the one, some women's advocates predict. "If Senator Clinton didn't make it, it would still pave the way, rather than lengthen the time until the next female candidate," says Marie Wilson, president of the nonpartisan White House Project, which aims to advance women's leadership in all sectors up to the presidency. "Her competency and how she's won people over in the last few months -- that will not be easily erased if she loses. She has familiarized people that there are women out there who can do it."

A Strong Woman
The Charlottesville audience was more curious than committed, yet was willing to pay $50 a person to see two best-selling authors -- Clinton and novelist John Grisham -- chat about everything from the Chicago Cubs to the future of telemedicine in a state that hasn't gone for a Democratic president since LBJ. The former first lady flew into town on September 23 (the same day she appeared on all five Sunday morning talk shows) to thank donors and flex her favorite campaign themes ("the era of cowboy diplomacy is over"). In lieu of a speech, she offered lengthy answers to Oprah-like questions posed by Grisham, who lives in Charlottesville and wanted to help her campaign.

"I'm a Democrat, and I'm pretty committed to Hillary," said Reginald Ryals, 58, a human-resources executive who attended the event. His friends, on the other hand, are none too crazy about Clinton, he said. "She's a strong woman, and I think there's still a lot of sexism in this country."

Ryals's wife, Brenda, is a professor and at 58 one year younger than Clinton -- just the sort of female voter the candidate hopes to bring into her column. Brenda confided that the couple's friends are "leaning towards Obama," whom they see as dynamic and new. "I really like Obama as well," she said, "but I'd also like to see us elect a woman president."

Clinton is courting women's votes for the simple reason that men are more likely to tell pollsters that they take issue with her politics and her personality. In the same way that women said that George H.W. Bush reminded them of their first husbands, the joke is that men say Hillary reminds them of their first wives.

Women are more likely than men to have a positive impression of Hillary: A New York Times/CBS News poll found in early July that women have a "favorable" opinion of her, 45 percent to 31 percent; only 36 percent of men say their opinion is "favorable," compared with 45 percent who say "unfavorable." Likewise, in the latest Gallup Poll, Clinton has the support of 48 percent of Democratic women but only 41 percent of Democratic men. Among Democratic women, she is running 25 points ahead of Obama; among Democratic men, her lead is narrower, 18 points.

Yet a significant percentage of women won't vote for any Democratic nominee, regardless of the gender of either party's standard-bearer. Clinton's team knows that in the 14 presidential elections since 1952, a majority of female voters backed the Republican nominee seven times. A majority of men voted for the Republican in 10 of those elections, according to Gallup and exit-poll data compiled by the American Enterprise Institute.

Clinton understands that she doesn't get a free pass from most women because of gender, but some of her ardent admirers sound frustrated just the same. "I think there's a place in heaven for women who support women," Christie Vilsack, wife of former Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack, said last week as she stumped for Clinton.

Are women especially tough on female candidates? The White House Project's Wilson says yes and adds that the heightened scrutiny is most acute in races where a "first woman" or "only woman" candidate is running. "Women who are the toughest are the women who are old enough to want the candidate to be perfect, because that woman candidate represents them. Voters make projections."

Some voters, though, view a female presidential candidate as a symbol of progress. Virginia and Robert Ferguson were among the handful of African-Americans who ventured to Charlottesville's old Paramount Theater to hear Clinton. Before the senator had a chance to utter a word, Virginia, a 70-year-old retired preschool teacher, volunteered, "I've decided I'm going to vote for Hillary, our next president, and our first woman president."

Husband Robert, a 69-year-old postal worker, chimed in: "She's intelligent, and I would like to see her bring the troops out of Iraq and get the economy rolling. I'm sure her husband can help her -- if she needs any help at all. A two-for-one deal." He grinned.

To the Fergusons, Hillary's election would signal something important about the country. "It would show we've made some strides," Robert said.

Asked about Democratic candidate John Edwards, Virginia Ferguson said she found his manner "demanding." Obama doesn't interest the couple. "I don't like him," Robert Ferguson said with a stern shake of his head. End of discussion.

As the Gallup Organization found in a March survey, "Blacks are no more likely than whites to say they would vote for a black candidates; women are no more likely than men to say they would vote for a female candidate; and older Americans are no more likely than those who are younger to say they would vote for a 72-year-old candidate," a reference to the age that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., will be on Election Day 2008.

A Female Style Of Leading?
In the center of the Virginia theater, retired meteorologist William Bonner, 74, explained that he isn't wedded to Clinton or Obama. He is well aware that as an older, white male, his demographic is proving the toughest for Clinton to attract. "I don't think I have many friends who say a woman's place is in the home, although some might think it," he said with a chuckle.

Bonner gives Clinton credit for an achievement she showcases out of her slim legislative record since her 2000 election: "She has been very willing to work with Republicans in the Senate," he noted, mentioning some of her colleagues who voted for Bill Clinton's impeachment.

Bonner's wife, Nancy, a 70-year-old retired career counselor who thinks "feminist" probably describes her, had been backing Bill Richardson until she saw the New Mexico governor flub some debate answers. Now she views Clinton as "the better candidate" and believes that a woman president would have a "different set of priorities." What would those be? "I don't think a woman president would take us into a war as quickly as a man would," she said. "How many wars have I lived through? The Second World War, Korea, Vietnam, and now Iraq. I don't want to see another war in my lifetime, or anyone's lifetime, frankly."

This last bit of gender stereotyping has been vigorously debated in the Bonner household, Nancy admitted. "I bring up Margaret Thatcher," William said.

And what about Clinton's 2002 vote to use force against Iraq? "It bothers me," Nancy said, frowning. "Frankly, she may well have voted for the war, and maybe she thought that was the prudent thing to do because she wanted to be elected president. But that is unprovable on my part."

University of Virginia students Ashley McCormack and John Freeman, both age 20, have grown up with the Iraq war and were young teenagers when the senator cast her war vote. They will get to choose a president for the first time next year, and they described themselves as torn between Clinton and perhaps Obama.

Younger voters are among the more enthusiastic Clinton supporters, according to polls, because their generation is more apt to identify with Clinton's aspirations and choices. Electing the first woman president is their strongest reason for backing Clinton, say 37 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds, according to a June Gallup survey. Just 12 percent of voters age 50 or older feel that way.

"I think it's really inspirational to have a woman candidate for president," McCormack said. "It's great to have Nancy Pelosi [as speaker] in the House now, and then if we could have a woman president -- even the fact that she's made it so far -- it's great for America."

Yet, she added, "I can't think of a quality [Clinton] has that she has strictly because she is female."

Her friend disagreed, suggesting that Clinton would lend executive leadership "more of a motherly instinct. She has that whole health care thing, and caring about the soldiers in Iraq." The history of the presidency, Freeman said, is crowded with men who were "headstrong and didn't care as much about human life."

His appreciation for Clinton's "experience" and "strong opinions" is not universally shared by his campus buddies, he added, some of whom say they could not support a woman for president, no matter who she is.

"They don't like her aura. They think she's got too much of an attitude," Freeman explained. "They've always just trusted men as a dominant figure. I think a lot of the men who don't like Hillary are threatened by that -- that she's a woman and she's going to be one of the most powerful people in the world, if she's elected president. And I think that scares a lot of people, including a lot of my male friends."

That may be, but voters across parties have identified other reasons to fault Clinton. She's been tagged as inauthentic and untrustworthy, too liberal, inflexible, self-righteous, inexperienced, and cold. Her supporters cry foul and argue that the GOP is working overtime to paint Clinton as a polarizing, socialist shrew.

Climbing Over Hurdles
For many voters -- maybe enough voters -- the antidote to doubts about Clinton's presidential bid might simply be time, says Clinton backer and former Rep. Patricia Schroeder, D-Colo., who considered and then rejected a run for the White House 20 years ago.

"The length of this campaign works tremendously to Hillary's favor because it started so early. You could almost track public opinion changing a bit," Schroeder told National Journal. "I don't think she could climb over all those hurdles had there been a tighter timeframe, but the more she's exposed, the more gravitas people recognize that she has. A lot of the issues right now play to Hillary's strengths: health care, the environment. She's had a long record on those issues, and she knows what she's talking about."

Another feature of the 2008 election that might help the sole female candidate appear less threatening is that she isn't the only candidate who is, well, different. Is a female front-runner more startling than McCain, who, as president, would be older than Ronald Reagan was when he took office? Or Rudy Giuliani, who interrupts stump speeches to take cellphone calls from wife No. 3 and who is unabashedly wooing "values voters"?

Is Bill Richardson, who is Hispanic, more mainstream than the youthful Obama, son of a white mother and a black father? Is former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney less acceptable as a Mormon than John Kennedy was as a Catholic in 1960?

Thrown into that stew, Hillary's XX chromosomes might seem like a snore. "I do think the fact that [being the woman candidate] is not a single outlier, as far as past experience is concerned, makes all of these candidates seem less threatening, less unusual, less unacceptable than they otherwise might have been," said political scientist Thomas Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

And Clinton's advocates remind voters that although the United States has lagged behind other democracies in choosing a female head of state, American women are inching their way into other political and executive posts. Sixteen women are in the Senate, 74 women are in the House, and nine are governors. Janet Reno was attorney general for eight years, and Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice have been the chief diplomatic voice for the United States.

"Look at Nancy Pelosi," Mann continued. "She, unlike the female presidential candidates of the past, actually contributed to producing a more welcoming, less hostile environment for a woman president, [because voters] understand that the job of the speaker is one of the most important positions in American public life."

No consensus exists, however, about what -- if anything -- a woman brings to governing that sets her apart by gender alone. "Your perspective is driven, in part, by your life experience, and I think women and men have some different life experiences," said Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona. "But do I make decisions as commander-in-chief of the National Guard differently because I'm a woman? No. Do I make decisions differently about how to balance the budget? No. Do I use my veto powers differently because I'm a woman? No. You have to govern."

Napolitano recalls her amusement early in her career when reporters asked whether she planned to run "as a woman" to become Arizona's first female attorney general. With her second term as governor up in 2010, she is now being mentioned as a formidable Senate candidate or vice presidential nominee. "I'm flattered," she says. She has not endorsed a presidential candidate.

Wilson said she isn't surprised that Napolitano acknowledges different life experiences but doesn't concede gender differences in governing. "It's the kiss of death to talk about being a woman who does it differently, because you risk being marginalized," Wilson said. In her view, Napolitano and Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, another Democrat, have used their "life experiences" as women to govern as patient pragmatists able to settle a prison crisis and craft an economic plan, to name two examples, after working across partisan divides and building trusted relationships that included other savvy women.

Pestered in Pink
All women in powerful positions contend with sexism in one form or another, most obviously the superficial variety that fixates on appearance or on gender-focused personality slurs that rhyme with "rich." Hillary Clinton, lampooned for everything from her sturdy ankles to her hairstyles, laments that fluff still comes with the territory. It even burbles up in otherwise well-meaning questions from men who admire her.

"Is it kind of fun being the only girl in the race?" Grisham asked on Sunday. Women around the room sucked in their breath with an audible "ooh" at the use of "girl" and at the intimation that running for president might, on good days, be like crashing a frat party. Clinton had just told the audience of her relief that the fixation on the personal appearance of women in politics was "fading to some extent."

The fixation certainly hasn't vanished, though. In July, The Washington Post delved deep into Hillary's "cleavage," supposedly in evidence under a black T-shirt she wore beneath a pink jacket on the Senate floor. Nearly every woman interviewed for this article, including first lady Laura Bush, either pointed to that coverage as out of bounds or reacted to it with irritation in Clinton's defense.

Three days after the Post story, John Edwards, forced to think fast on his feet during a CNN/You Tube debate and name "one thing" that he disliked about Clinton, found fault with another pink jacket that she was wearing that day over black slacks. Obama jumped in to laud her fashion choice. Clinton forced a chuckle and changed the subject.

Moseley Braun, who sought the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, said she felt Clinton's pain at Edwards's remark. And she recalled with vivid clarity a debate of her own in Boston in November 2003 that featured high, uncomfortable bar stools. Her campaign aides begged CNN to jettison the stools because Moseley Braun, determined to look presidential in hose, heels, and skirt, could not easily navigate on and off her perch to appear as casual and animated as her male rivals.

"I was the only one who had to be mindful of the knees having to stay together," she says. "For a woman sitting on a stool, it is acrobatics, and it's not good!"

Later, the 2004 Democratic candidates were asked to pose in a communal victory salute, arms raised for the cameras. Moseley Braun, who is 5 feet, 3 inches, found herself between giraffe-like John Kerry and elfish Dennis Kucinich. She briefly considered declining to raise her arms in the unflattering pose, she says. "I'm standing there thinking, 'How does this look? The woman is the only one standing there with uneven boobs!' The guys just didn't get it."

Moseley Braun, who was the only woman but one of two African-Americans in her party's 2004 field, says without rancor, "I knew that the [news] media were not taking me seriously, and the political class was not taking me seriously. It was very liberating in one sense, because I was able to speak my mind." Four years later, she is delighted to see Clinton and Obama at the head of the Democratic pack. "I think that's a sea change that we ought to celebrate."

GOP strategist Karl Rove has practically dared the Democrats to select Clinton, whom he has called a "fatally flawed" candidate. In the view of GOP pollster Tony Fabrizio, "It's not Hillary Clinton's gender that is baggage for her, as much as people's perceptions about her politics. Her negatives come from being Hillary Clinton."

Yet, Fabrizio said, "by the time November 2008 rolls around, Hillary Clinton will have been part of shaping what happens in this country for 16 years. It is remarkable, when you think about it," he continued, "that she is on an even playing field with Giuliani. She's still only a few points behind him. What does it say about the perception of her being able to fill those presidential shoes?"