Acorn

Issue date: 2/1/08 Section: Opinion

Media Credit: Jessica Glickman

There is no title, as of now, for Bill Clinton, should his wife be elected to the White House in 2008. There is no decision for how the pageantry of the inauguration would take place. As Jennifer Senior put in her article "Contemplating Clinton II" for the Oct. 8 issue of New York , "Would Bill Clinton hold the Bible for his wife? It'd be a lovely tableau, but fraught with symbolism…An unfortunate reminder she wouldn't be there without him? Hillary Clinton joked on "Oprah" that her Scottish friend teasingly suggested he be called the "First Laddie."

The gender politics of Clinton's presidential run are complex, to say the least. As every political pundit, Maureen Dowd-like journalist and sociology professor has this election on their hot topics list, the gender issues of Clinton's run is not exactly an elephant or donkey in the room. Gender in contemporary politics is not under-examined-but more of a tricky subject that has been pervasively problematic, but never as thoroughly discussed as now. Political animals aside, it has become the awkward turtle in the room.

The American political system is so fraught with patriarchy it's no wonder Clinton herself once described her ascension as breaking through the "marble ceiling" of U.S. political structure. In her speech to the Drew community this fall, Madeleine Albright commented that the patriarchy she experienced abroad did not even come close to the sexism she experienced with her White House colleagues. Until recently, the majority of state senate buildings did not have women's bathrooms on their main floors, forcing any female senators to use the visitor's bathroom in the lobby. Couple that with our pathetic male to female ratios in the House and Senate, and it boldly pronounces "You do not belong here."

And, with that, we have Hillary Rodham Clinton. The tuxedo-wearing, Wellesley hailing, turncoat feminist herself. As a political wife, she was a game-stopper. She was a first lady who also became iconoclast-but not in the way of Jackie Onassis. Where the latter brought a dainty socialite status to the White House, Clinton brandished severe haircuts and political passion. There had been 41 women in the White House before her, but unlike the Stepford first wives like Nancy Reagen and Barbara Bush, it felt like this time there was actually a woman-sort of-in the Oval Office, and not the proverbial kitchen.

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