On Thursday night, I sat next to my mother and father and watched Hillary Clinton accept the Democratic nomination for President of the United States. The adults sitting next to me, well into their middle age, remarked upon Clinton's decades in the public eye, and her interchanging roles as First Lady, and then Senator, and finally, Secretary of State. I could tell, in that moment, that my parents possess an understanding of Hillary Clinton that I never will. Witnessing her ascension to candidacy for the highest office in the land, my parents shared in the glory of a moment of seemingly inevitable history. It isn't just Clinton's gender that marked this historic moment as notable, though. Uniquely, the Democratic Party managed, for once, to nominate a candidate that does not subscribe to the glamorous, self-serving political personality cult represented by nominees past.
For as long as I can remember, men in politics have occupied a fascinating niche in my observant life. Through various election cycles, I've watched men compete with one another to occupy seats at the Big Boy table, to gain access to the power-broking of Washington, to justify their masculinity against each other's. This year, the Republican Presidential debates featured a candidate embodying some of the most toxic masculinity I've ever seen in a public figure, implicitly mocking the size of Marco Rubio's penis and jeeringly referring to reporter Megyn Kelly's menstrual cycle. I could name countless other instances of Trump's blundering destruction, his mindlessly domineering and misogynistic behavior, but I wouldn't have to. Why? Because every American who doesn't live under a rock knows of Trump's off-putting media stunts that mock women in the employ of generating attention and acclaim. Although Trump's behavior is extreme, it only represents a cartoonish version of the Washington that is tainted by insecure masculinity, filled with men who thump their chests and assert momentary power over one another. During election cycles, the media laps up, with rapt interest, the enthusiastic and occasionally fanatic followings built by men who leverage the privilege of complexity afforded to them. Trump is an extremity of, not an exception from, this political rule.
Voters don't like Hillary Clinton. Voters don't feel comfortable with Hillary Clinton. Voters don't think they know who Hillary Clinton is. If I asked my mother and father, they would tell me who they think she is, based on their experience of the 1990s and their readings of political nonfiction books about the Clintons. However, they probably wouldn't tell me any particular way they feel about her, because throughout her many years in the public eye, she's never quite adapted to her role as the leader of a personality cult. While the most radical of voters make Hillary out to be a sociopath, or a cold hack who stands for nothing, or a calculating power broker, those voters rely on weak inference in the absence of a narrative put in front of them that simplistically defines what Clinton stands for. So, while millions of women and other gender minorities watch Hillary Clinton accept her party's nomination, they bear witness to the nomination of not only a woman, but a woman who rejects the gendered narrative of a solipsistic and worshipped Presidency.
