Margaret Thatcher, in her memoirs, gave fond remembrance to a debate from her early days in the House of Commons. The chamber fell into hilarity around the young MP when she flourished a vital sheet of statistics and declared, "Now I have the latest, red-hot figure." Without levity, Thatcher recalled the evaluation of her candidacy by Conservative selection committees, in those last years of distaff expectations. "Perhaps," she wrote, some of the men there believed a woman's place was away from Parliament, but "it was the women who came nearest to expressing it openly. Not for the first time the simplistic left-wing concept of 'sex discrimination' had got it all wrong."
If you have listened to the diagnoses of the several conditions said to animate former President Clinton, you may be familiar with the sentiment that Senator Hillary Clinton is afflicted with a form of virilism. There is nothing dainty or complaisant to her. She is witnessed as commanding and ambitious, whispered to be lordly and belittling.
If so, Mrs. Clinton disregards her doctors on this one. Seven years ago, campaigning for the seat of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, she was one of the most favorable implantations in the American political record. But competitor Rick Lazio executed a gambit, an affidavit to curtail unfashionable private contributions, with room for another signature, right there on the stage-left podium of his opponent. On tape, the first lady isn't startled by the salient but outraged, a mastermind waylaid by tactics. Clinton and her campaign protested Lazio's approach as the work of a heavy. Her massivity was still, after all, female.
Since the midweek chatter has been all about the last Democratic presidential debate. The New York senator was explaining herself on a matter — not quite defending a position as an outwork. Moderator Tim Russert, however, pushed her a little further back than anticipated, and Clinton improvised her way to a redoubt. The other candidates only partly acted on the trip-up, and, too, the question was somewhat off-topic. It may have vexed any of them. What Tuesday night conveyed was that Clinton is not invulnerable.
But, for the impeccable standard, just a scotch or two can vitiate. The Clinton campaign released a video montage titled "The Politics of Pile-On," a montage of opponents speaking Mrs. Clinton's name. Rallying at her alma mater, the senator said, "In so many ways, this all-women's college prepared me to compete in the all-boys' club of presidential politics." Parse that: comparable, but exceptional, but stronger, but delicate, deserving both equal and special consideration. A generation earlier, Margaret Thatcher already knew this opportunism from an adage, Britain's former prime minister embracing her countenance as both iron and a lady.