Washington Week: Student Voices (O)

COLUMN: Hillary Clinton's candidacy worth a second look
By Helen Bunting
The Battalion (Texas A&M)
06/27/2006

(U-WIRE) COLLEGE STATION, Texas — Hillary Clinton. The very name evokes strong reactions in almost anyone who hears it. Loved by liberals and maligned by conservatives, the New York senator is expected by many to run for the presidency in 2008. At the moment, she is concentrating on her reelection to the Senate and will not speak publicly about a possible presidential campaign. But the buzz has been building around her for a long time.

According to a June 18 Financial Times article, polls taken among Democrats reveal that she is the most likely candidate they would support in the presidential nomination of 2008. And yet some Democrats are unnerved by the prospect of Hillary as a nominee. Their reasons mainly center on how electable she may or may not be. They fear her conservative opponents will use her history against her in a mudslinging campaign: Her failed effort to effectively nationalize the health care system 12 years ago, her relentlessly scrutinized marriage to an unfaithful man, even her liberal — and some would say polarizing — ideals. Interestingly, some liberals actually fear that she is too moderate. Further, left-wing Democrats want someone who will stand up to the Republicans and Bush, not reach across the aisle in a spirit of bipartisanship as she has increasingly done. Some are also frustrated with her refusal to completely back down from her support of the War in Iraq. Since voting to give Bush the broad powers he needed to go to war, she has said that she disapproves of the way in which that power has been used, but she has not gone to the lengths of former Sen. John Edwards and renounced her vote.

That same caution is present in her current plans for the health care system. A June 10 article in The New York Times stated that she currently wants to focus on making sure all children in the U.S. have health care coverage under the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Eventually, she wants health coverage to be universal, but she knows that in the end it may not be consistent with what voters are willing to embrace.

One factor that unfortunately may work against Clinton is, quite simply, her sex. Although it makes no logical sense, certain segments of the male population would vote against her precisely because she is female - as would some women. This makes even less sense when considering the recent election of women to the presidency in two countries traditionally viewed by Americans as less friendly to women's rights: Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf in Liberia, and Michele Bachelet in Chile.

Johnson-Sirleaf is the first elected female president in all of Africa. The west has a tendency to look upon Africa as backward, strife-ridden and desperately poor. The fact that Liberia has elected a female president, before either major party in the U.S. has ever nominated one, should be a major wake-up call.

Chile, too, has a reputation for being slow to recognize women's equality. According to the June 2000 Innocenti Digest published by UNICEF, 52 percent of Chilean women have been physically abused by their partners at some point in their lives. Moreover, divorce did not become legal in Chile until 2004, and the social stigma against it is still extremely strong, due to the influence of the Roman Catholic Church. And yet earlier this year, the country elected Michele Bachelet, who bore one of her children out of wedlock and was tortured under the Pinochet regime.

If these two countries, with their history of violent coups and discriminatory attitudes toward women can elect female presidents, why then should anyone in the United States — "the leader of the free world" — vote against her on account of her sex?

It is true that Hillary Clinton carries baggage, thanks to her philandering husband and her failed attempts to radically change health coverage as it exists in this nation. It would be naive to think that many people have not already pre-judged her. But that should not stop her from running for president.

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