فصل 22

22

In my experience, the balancing act women in politics have to master is challenging at every level, but it gets worse the higher you rise. If we’re too tough, we’re unlikable. If we’re too soft, we’re not cut out for the big leagues. If we work too hard, we’re neglecting our families. If we put family first, we’re not serious about the work. If we have a career but no children, there’s something wrong with us, and vice versa. If we want to compete for a higher office, we’re too ambitious. Can’t we just be happy with what we have? Can’t we leave the higher rungs on the ladder for men?

Think how often you’ve heard these words used about women who lead: angry, strident, feisty, difficult, irritable, bossy, brassy, emotional, abrasive, high-maintenance, ambitious (a word that I think of as neutral, even admirable, but clearly isn’t for a lot of people).

The linguist George Lakoff both identified this problem and embodied it when he said about Senator Elizabeth Warren, “Elizabeth has a problem. She is shrill, and there is a prejudice against shrill women.” How about we stop criticizing how she speaks—which is just fine, by the way—and start paying attention to what she has to say about families and the economy?

We’re also called divisive, untrustworthy, unlikable, and inauthentic. Those words ring powerfully for me. As the campaign went on, polls showed that a significant number of Americans questioned my authenticity and trustworthiness. A lot of people said they just didn’t like me. I write that matter-of-factly, but believe me, it’s devastating.

Some of this is a direct result of my actions: I’ve made mistakes, been defensive about them, stubbornly resisted apologizing. But so have most men in politics. (In fact, one of them just became President with a strategy of “never apologize when you’re wrong, just attack harder.”)

I’ve been called divisive more times than I can count, and for the life of me, I can’t understand why. Politics is a divisive business, it’s true, and our country has gotten more polarized with every passing year. But what specifically did I do that was so unacceptable? Run for office? Lots of men do. Work on health care, one of the most contentious issues in America? Same. Cast votes as a Senator? So did my ninety-nine colleagues. When it comes to some of my most controversial actions—like my vote giving President Bush the authority to go to war in Iraq—I was far from alone. That doesn’t make it right, but it also doesn’t explain the venom targeted at me specifically. Why am I seen as such a divisive figure and, say, Joe Biden and John Kerry aren’t? They’ve run for President. They’ve served at high levels of government. They’ve cast votes of all kinds, including some they regret, just like me. What makes me such a lightning rod for fury?

I’m really asking. I’m at a loss.

I know some of the distrust people feel toward me is because they’ve watched as I’ve been sucked into partisan investigations over the years—Whitewater, Travelgate, emails—each one carried out at significant taxpayer expense, each amounting to exactly nothing, but all of them leaving a mark on my reputation nearly impossible to erase.

But I think there’s another explanation for the skepticism I’ve faced in public life. I think it’s partly because I’m a woman.

Hear me out.

Historically, women haven’t been the ones writing the laws or leading the armies and navies. We’re not the ones up there behind the podium, rallying crowds, uniting the country. It’s men who lead. It’s men who speak. It’s men who represent us to the world and even to ourselves.

That’s been the case for so long that it has infiltrated our deepest thoughts. I suspect that for many of us—more than we might think—it feels somehow off to picture a woman President sitting in the Oval Office or the Situation Room. It’s discordant to tune into a political rally and hear a woman’s voice booming (“screaming,” “screeching”) forth. Even the simple act of a woman standing up and speaking to a crowd is relatively new. Think about it: we know of only a handful of speeches by women before the latter half of the twentieth century, and those tend to be by women in extreme and desperate situations. Joan of Arc said a lot of interesting things before they burned her at the stake.

Meanwhile, when a woman lands a political punch—and not even a particularly hard one—it’s not read as the normal sparring that men do all the time in politics. It makes her a “nasty woman.” A lot of women have had that spat in their faces (and worse) for saying not that much at all. God forbid two women have a disagreement in public. Then it’s a catfight.

In short, it’s not customary to have women lead or even to engage in the rough-and-tumble of politics. It’s not normal—not yet. So when it happens, it often doesn’t feel quite right. That may sound vague, but it’s potent. People cast their votes based on feelings like that all the time.

I think this question of “rightness” is connected to another powerful but undefinable force in politics: authenticity. I’ve been asked over and over again by reporters and skeptical voters, “Who are you really?” It’s kind of a funny question when you think about it. I’m . . . Hillary. You’ve seen me in the papers and on your screens for more than twenty-five years. I’ll bet you know more about my private life than you do about some of your closest friends. You’ve read my emails, for heaven’s sake. What more do you need? What could I do to be “more real”? Dance on a table? Swear a blue streak? Break down sobbing? That’s not me. And if I had done any of those things, what would have happened? I’d have been ripped to pieces.

Again, I wonder what it is about me that mystifies people, when there are so many men in politics who are far less known, scrutinized, interviewed, photographed, and tested. Yet they’re asked so much less frequently to open up, reveal themselves, prove that they’re real.

Some of this has to do with my composure. People say I’m guarded, and they have a point. I think before I speak. I don’t just blurt out whatever comes to mind. It’s a combination of my natural inclination, plus my training as a lawyer, plus decades in the public eye where every word I say is scrutinized. But why is this a bad thing? Don’t we want our Senators and Secretaries of State—and especially our Presidents—to speak thoughtfully, to respect the impact of our words?

President Obama is just as controlled as I am, maybe even more so. He speaks with a great deal of care; takes his time, weighs his words. This is generally and correctly taken as evidence of his intellectual heft and rigor. He’s a serious person talking about serious things. So am I. And yet, for me, it’s often experienced as a negative.

Even some fair-minded people who want to like me feel that there’s something too controlled about how I speak. Often, it’s just about finding the right words. And impulsive doesn’t mean the same thing as truthful. Just look at Donald Trump.

Still, there’s no denying that my cautiousness has had the effect of making some people feel like they weren’t getting the unvarnished me, which in turn prompted the question “What is she hiding?” This frustrated me to no end, and I never figured out how to solve it. I’m not sure there was a solution.

It’s another variant on the impossible balancing act. If we’re too composed, we’re cold or fake. But if we say what we think without caution, we get slammed for it. Can you blame us for feeling like we can’t win, no matter what we do?

Consider another emotional act: crying. I can think of many male politicians who have teared up from time to time. Some have been mocked for it; Senator Ed Muskie’s political career was all but scuttled by his tears in the 1972 New Hampshire primary, even though it may have just been snow blowing in his eyes. But many men have been treated with compassion and even admiration for their displays of emotion. Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bob Dole, my husband, George W. Bush, Barack Obama—they’ve all welled up at moments of high sentiment. That makes sense because they are humans, and sometimes humans cry.

But when a woman cries, it can be viewed far less charitably. I remember what happened to Pat Schroeder, the talented and hilarious Congresswoman from Colorado who considered running for President in 1987. She ultimately decided against it, and when she held a press conference to announce that, she cried for about three seconds. Today, when you type “Pat Schroeder” into Google, the very first suggestion is “Pat Schroeder crying.” Twenty years later, she was still receiving hate mail because of it—mostly from women who felt like she let them down.

I had my own famed tearful moment, just before the New Hampshire primary in 2008. I didn’t even cry, not really. I was talking about how tough running for office can be (because it can be very tough), and my eyes glistened for a moment and my voice quavered for about one sentence. That was it. It became the biggest news story in America. It will, no doubt, merit a line in my obituary someday: “Her eyes once watered on camera.”

Interestingly, many would say that my tears turned out to be a good thing for me. Dozens if not hundreds of pundits have commented about how that moment “humanized” me. Maybe that’s true. If so, I’m both fine with that and a little beleaguered at the reminder that, yet again, I—a human—required “humanizing” at all.

Still, some sought to capitalize on my perceived vulnerability in the press and on the campaign trail. When he was asked about my tears, former Democratic Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, who was still in the presidential race at the time, jumped at the chance to call me weak. “I think what we need in a Commander in Chief is strength and resolve,” he said. “Presidential campaigns are a tough business, but being President of the United States is also a very tough business. And the President of the United States is faced with very, very difficult challenges every single day and difficult judgments every single day. What I know is that I’m prepared for that.” Shortly after, he dropped out.

In any case, this whole topic of “being real” can feel very silly. I wish we could just dismiss it and go about our business, whoever we are, without worrying about whether we are satisfying some indefinable standard of realness. As the Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie writes, “It’s not your job to be likable. It’s your job to be yourself.”

Yet the issues of authenticity and likability had an impact on the most consequential election of our lifetimes, and it will have an impact on future ones. So there’s something extremely serious going on here, too—especially since crude, abusive, fact-free rhetoric was characterized as authentic in 2016.

I’ve tried to adjust. After hearing repeatedly that some people didn’t like my voice, I enlisted the help of a linguistic expert. He said I needed to focus on my deep breathing and try to keep something happy and peaceful in mind when I went onstage. That way, when the crowd got energized and started shouting—as crowds at rallies tend to do—I could resist doing the normal thing, which is to shout back. Men get to shout back to their heart’s content but not women. Okay, I told this expert, I’m game to try. But out of curiosity, can you give me an example of a woman in public life who has pulled this off successfully—who has met the energy of a crowd while keeping her voice soft and low? He could not.

I’m not sure how to solve all this. My gender is my gender. My voice is my voice. To quote Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, the first woman to serve in the U.S. Cabinet, under FDR, “The accusation that I’m a woman is incontrovertible.” Other women will run for President, and they will be women, and they will have women’s voices. Maybe that will be less unusual by then. Maybe my campaign will have helped make it that way, and other women will have an easier time. I hope so.

Near the start of my campaign, I met with my friend Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, who has thought about these issues a great deal. She told me that if there was one thing she wanted everyone to know from her book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, it’s this: the data show that for men, likability and professional success are correlated. The more successful a man is, the more people like him. With women, it’s the exact opposite. The more professionally successful we are, the less people like us. Hearing it put that simply, with data behind it, felt like a lightbulb turning on. Here was proof of something so many women have felt intuitively throughout our lives.

Sheryl shared another insight: that women are seen favorably when they advocate for others, but unfavorably when they advocate for themselves. For example, there’s virtually no downside to asking for a raise if you’re a man. You’ll either get it or you won’t, but either way, you won’t be penalized for trying. A woman who does the same is more likely to pay a price. Even if she gets a salary bump, she’ll lose a measure of goodwill. The exception is when a woman asks for a raise on someone else’s behalf. Then she’s seen as generous and a team player. This, too, resonated with me. People like me when I’m in a supporting role: campaigning for my husband, serving as a member of President Obama’s Cabinet. It’s okay for me to be a fierce advocate in those capacities. But when I stand up and say, “Now I’d like a chance to lead,” everything changes.

You have a steep mountain to climb, Sheryl warned that day. “They will have no empathy for you.”