By JOHN BUNDOCK
Staff Writer
Hillary Clinton, a woman with plenty of experienced was ran a presidential campaign where much of the media focused not on issues but her gender. (Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia)
Blame it on American electoral politics that people are already fretting over the next presidential candidate when the last election is not even a year in the past.
Some view the near-exclusive focus on Hillary Clinton as marginalizing other female candidates as a whole. “The conviction that Clinton is unique in her Presidential potential works against the project of actually getting a woman elected in more than one way,” Amy Davidson of The New Yorker said. “Declaring that Hillary is the only woman with a chance is a denial of the promise of any number of other, emerging women politicians.”
The problem with this assertion is that it lacks a basic understanding of contemporary, intra-party and interparty American politics. The focus on Clinton may well be over-wrought. Indeed, many a like has been put toward the “Ready for Hillary” Facebook page, with over a million so far. However, supporting Clinton and supporting the rise of other female candidates to public office is not mutually exclusive. Of course people will be fawning over Clinton with her brand-name.
“Let me preface this by saying… We’re still a long way out from candidates declaring themselves [for election],” said political science Professor Richard Fleisher regarding Clinton’s competition. “[It’s] possible that other female candidates emerge…[but] none have [the] name recognition, resources, or experience that Clinton has.”
“It depends on one’s timeframe. I don’t see one on the immediate horizon but again, things can change relatively quickly,” Fleisher said about the next potential African-American candidate.
Cory Booker remains unlikely (he is a flip-flopping lightweight more suited to mayoral politicking than to being leader of the free world), but Fleisher noted that roughly three years before his 2008 election, Barack Obama, then a senator from Illinois, was relatively unknown.
Right or wrong, Clinton has accumulated the experience and credentials within the Democratic Party machine, having been the first lady, the senator from New York and a secretary of state.
The dynastic political posturing of the Clintons has been rightfully criticized (from the late Christopher Hitchens to Alec MacGillis’s recent New Republic piece), but there has been an unfortunate conflation of this abusive establishment with the idea that the power must therefore be negative. Indeed, certain populist demagogues (particularly within the Occupy movement and the Tea Party) have misused these notions to peddle racism, anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories.
Many of the alternatives mentioned by Davidson have already sullied themselves with neo-collectivist garbage, populist demagoguery, or moral quietism at one point or another.
An old aphorism is that there are two things best not seen made: laws and sausages. Considering that most of the candidates listed have been elected as a part of this process, expecting perfection would be unrealistic. But that does not mean Republicans are somehow devoid of candidates either.
One contender with the experience and institutional support who could perhaps rival Clinton is Condoleezza Rice. Having served as Secretary of State under the Bush administration and holding to kind of Wilsonian internationalism with remarkably fewer instances of Clinton’s dynastic realpolitik, Rice may hold merit.
Rice’s candidacy could well turn the clock back on the monopolizing, bigoted know-nothingism of the Tea Party (as the late Christopher Hitchens described), provided demagogic Rand Paul and Ted Cruz recede in significance.
Some wonder why people even focus on the race or gender of the candidate in the first place. There is merit to this question, provided that race, class and gender be used to critique the largely elite white men who have held these positions of power, as opposed to fetishizing ethnicity or gender as a qualitative boost to candidates.
However, optics and pre-existing divisions remain a reality in politics.
Until recent history, women and minorities were largely excluded as serious choices for the Oval Office, stating. “It is a question because we’ve never had a female President and we’ve only had one African American President… so that reality will make it a question,” Fleisher said.
Regardless of the candidates that emerge in coming years, Americans must alleviate themselves of the populist extremism, identity politics and neo-isolationism that has played out in recent years. By giving an honest critique of candidates and looking at toward how they safeguard the freedom of people both at home and abroad.
Americans will hold candidates accountable and make them more inclined toward ethical policy that reasonable voters can support.
John Bundock, FCRH ’14, is a Middle East studies and IPE double-major from Pelham, N.H.
