Someone in an early post mentioned that what we saw of Hillary at the end of last night's debate was likely the serious, studious, and warm person she really is in person, and that so much of the bulldog rep she has acquired has been a response to whatever lessons she has learned in public life as a successful professional woman, politician, and political (publicly watched) wife of a philanderer. She has perhaps been forced or advised to play a more macculine role than would be natural for her or, perhaps, any professional womam. I just wanted to comment on that observation, because my experience has been that the older women I've worked with, those of Hillary's generation, have tended to adopt a more "masculine" stance on the job - a tough as nails persona perhaps adopted as a means of survival in the male-dominated and still chauvinistic work environment they entered as young women in the 70s. Whereas women my age (mid 30s) and younger who I've worked with don't seem to wear that armor. Having entered the workforce behind an entire generation of women who paved the way for them, they are not isolated as women in professional settings, have not been expected to be "one of the guys," and have been able to be more themselves (whether that means tough as nails or not). Just an observation. It has taken a post-civil rights era black man to emerge as America's first viable presidential candidate. Perhaps it will take a post-ERA era woman to emerge as the first woman president. It may have as much to do with the distance from ground zero of a culture war as it does with questions of gender or race per se. Most Americans who dislike Hillary have barked about "the bitch." They still hate strident feminism, and perhaps she is still too much a part of that movement to be a comfortable choice for less tolerant or more traditional Americans.

I'm voting for Obama, with reservations, because while I think he'll do well on the job, I believe he has the chance to be a transcendednt national and international figure. And because I fear that Hillary really is too divisive, for reasons that are not her fault, but which she unfortunately can't avoid. But I respect her tremendously and hope she will be a major force in whatever the Democrats do when they retake the White House.

Thanks for the reply. I don't think you can just vote for "right" and ignore political reality. I just don't think Clinton has the ability to rise above the rancor of the last 16 years. And part of what will give the Dems the White House in November is turnout. Many Republicans are staying home and will continue to....unless, I worry, Hillary is the opposition. They HATE her and Bill. It's not their fault (mostly), but they can't get out of their own way, and some of their missteps in this campaign reveal that. And even if she wins, partisan sniping is inevitable with her. Obama's grace period should be longer and deeper, and he has political skills that I don't know she does.

Anyway, I'm not sure she is the side of right. I find her vote to authorize the use of force indefensible. She claims she never expected Bush to use it as he did, when his people's intention to do just that had been published in journals for years. I saw it coming from my living room - she couldn't? Sorry. She made a political calculation, and she was wrong in every conceivable way, and she has refused to own up to it, as Edwards did. So despite her experience and command of policy, I'm not convinced it would translate to effective leadership.

I don't know what Gen X and Y mean by it. I mean it in the sense of a feminism that is inexorably linked with political struggle and cultural battles. I applaud the generation of women who refused to play nice when they were told they should. I admire them greatly. But many Americans didn't then and still don't now. I'm not saying that this should be a problem for her, I'm just saying that I think maybe it is, just as Jesse Jackson was too close to his culture war to be taken seriously by mainstream America. The fact that Hillary, as a first generation culture warrior (or at least as a representative of that generation in the minds of many Americans), has made it this far is a tribute to her personally, and probably also a commentary on the differences between the gender and racial battles of the 60s and 70s, and between gender and race as American psychodramas generally.