Hillary Clinton Through John Podhoretz's Eyes...

"...if there were ever an American woman politician who could pass for a tough guy, it's Hillary Clinton.
START with the purely cosmetic. The fact that she never quite figured out what to do with her hair or her clothes, the fact that she's not a raving beauty, and the fact that she has a manner that is almost pathologically unsexy all work in her favor - just as they worked against her as a traditional First Lady.
Those qualities have created an image of Hillary Clinton as unfeminine. This connects her to the successful female chief executives in other countries. Golda Meir was a hard-edged old broad, Indira Gandhi a dominatrix, Margaret Thatcher a battleaxe.
These sorts of characterizations may sound sexist - OK, they are sexist. But are they all that different from calling a male politician a "son of a bitch," a term many people assign admiringly to politicians they like? Being seen as a "son of a bitch" may have gotten Rudy Giuliani into some hot water during his mayoralty - but at the same time his nasty demeanor gave him some distinct negotiating advantages with his adversaries on behalf of the causes and policies he held dear.
So what does all this mean for Hillary? Simple. Male pols these days have to show they have a touch of the classically feminine about them - compassion, caring, nurturing - in order (it's thought) to appeal to women. Female pols need to show they can be manly. In this way, Hillary's lack of femininity is the first, maybe the only, real political advantage her feminist toughness affords her. And it helps explain why she must be taken seriously as a powerful threat to Republicans and conservatives.
She possesses a hard-to-describe style that may be the perfect blend for the first woman president.
Hillary possesses a very complex mien. She is almost always calm and composed, but radiates an icy hauteur. When she speaks, she delivers her words in a loud monotone that possesses none of the breathy flirtatiousness with which so many female public figures try to seduce their audiences - and her tone ensures that the words she speaks enter and leave the ear without sticking there even for a nanosecond. She conducts herself in a fashion that seems almost to rebuff and ward off an affectionate response from someone who is watching at a distance.
THESE don't seem like particularly at tractive qualities for a politician run ning in a national election. And they wouldn't be - if she were a man.
A man running for president has to have at least a twinkle in his eye - but for a woman to become president, I think she needs almost exactly the opposite. She needs to be flat. She needs to be cold. She needs to have a hard, almost unbreakable shell. She needs to seem unambiguously comfortable with wielding power, because she may have to go toe-to-toe with Kim Jong Il. She has to be a little scary, a little intimidating, a little off-putting so that she gives the impression that she can handle the crises and catastrophes that come a president's way.
For a woman to be president, she will have to demonstrate in her own person that she has transcended the qualities of traditional womanliness.
(I realize that sentence is guaranteed to bring the wrath of God down on my head. It is not acceptable, in many quarters, to explain why voters may have an instinctive hostile reaction to a female candidate. Yet most people will never confess their not-exactly-rational feeling on this to pollsters, or even to themselves. But people do interesting things in the privacy of the voting booth. And if they feel that a female presidential candidate is too much of a "woman," they will vote her down.)
THE qualities that make Hillary Clin ton a not especially likable, even a dislikable, public figure are pretty good ones for the first serious female candidate for president. For here's the bitter truth:
The first woman president must not seem over-emotional, or flighty, or guided by intuition rather than reason. She must not seem demure or delicate, nor can she seem brassy and sassy. She must not appear to be in a girlish quest of a strong man to help make things right. Above all, she must not seek to excuse any flaws in her conduct by suggesting that they are due to her being a woman - from the natural excuse, like a hormone rush jangling her emotions, to a political excuse, like an unjust society that won't give the XX chromosome an even break.
Just for vulgarity's sake, let me put it this way: She's got to be a bitch. And Hillary is a bitch. Her challenge will be to play up her anti-feminine qualities without being completely without charm and appeal."
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J-Pod does it to me almost every time. He touches on a hot topic, gets going great guns, then some wimpy, whoops-what-am-I-saying stutter-step takes over.

But not this time around. Calling RodHam a bitch is something I shy from unless it's a time when I'm super-pissed about something she or the walking disaster she calls a husband has done, but the real deal about her is ALWAYS glossed over.

She doesn't speak very well, very well at all. A lot of smaller statured people, particularly women, have this problem, and in politics it IS a problem. She talks slowly, sometimes haltingly, and always appears to be shouting, or straining to be heard. Her voice is this feeble little thing that is not going to serve her well come debate-time, and the transformation from ice-queen to bitch is what's going to seriously hurt her.

Add that to the fact that she's a note-checker, and how in the name of all hells is this woman going to come across as a tough and savvy leader?

Well, she isn't. She'd of course NEVER get a single Republican vote, seem weak to the fence-sitters who NEED someone strong, so it'll all boil down to getting out the Loons.

But this isn't some hometown office she's got her somewhat crossed eyes on. No matter what J-Pod thinks, unattractiveness in a woman does NOT automatically connotate masculinity. Some gals are just short, ugly, women, case closed. She'll be going up against some heavy hitters, none of which is likely to give Tom Cruise a run for his money, but strength in a man does not mean having a cutesy nose, so can you imagine her debating someone a head taller and blessed with a good speaking voice?

Commander in Chief? Of what, pray tell? The real world isn't Hollywood where any jackanapes can waltz into the Oval Office. The road to the nomination is excruciating, and another thing RodHam is in short supply of is patience. The going gets tough, and she transforms into a stone cold lawyer type, and a RICH and deserving of privlege stone cold lawyer type at that.

ANY halfway decent Republican nominee kicks her ass in a landslide, and that's assuming she can even weasel through the vetting process, which is another story entirely. This gal has taken one helluva crooked path through life and, sorry to all of her admirers, but she's most likely not even going to be her party's candidate, let alone the next President. And we thought Kerry was a flip-flopper? Puhleeze. RodHam is the champ at changing her position according to the prevailing wind.