Hillary Clinton is no stranger to politics. She’s been playing the game for decades now, as a campaigner, the wife of a governor, who then became a president. Then it was her turn. A little over 15 years after she was sworn in as a senator, Hillary is now the presumptive Democratic nominee for the United States presidential race, going up against Donald Trump. But why is this presidential race so significant for anyone
else? People in India and other parts of the world have seen female prime ministers and presidents for a while now. This actually puts America into the spotlight, the same country that claims to be liberal and free, has only now actually put a woman up on a presidential platform. This move is worth talking
about, simply because in shattering a glass ceiling, America
will set a different standard.
When Hillary Clinton first set her sights on the White House
in 2008, she was up against a lesser known Democratic opponent
called Barack Obama. We
all know how that fight went. Yet,
Obama was so taken up by Hillary
that he made her Secretary of State.
Back then, she refused to play the
gender card, while campaigning to
be the Democratic nominee. This
time around she used her gender
to her advantage. Donald Trump
made it a little easier, with his belligerent statements.
Hillary’s detractors though, wasted no time belittling her
stand on gender equality by claiming that she turned a blind
eye to her husband Bill’s philandering, even going to the extent
of bullying those who claimed harassment. None of this
has ever been proven though. Hillary withstood those attacks.
She made a few faux pas, as secretary of state during the 2011
Benghazi shootings, and more recently with her private email
server. But no one is infallible, and beyond reproach. Perhaps
this only proves that Hillary is getting there on her own steam.
If she was, as some claim, riding on the coat tails of her husband’s
standing as former president, such follies would have
never happened.
What is clear though, is that Hillary is probably the most
experienced candidate to ever grace the White House, if she
should win. She worked on campaigns for presidential candidates
in the late 60s and 70s. She stood by her husband during
his gubernatorial campaign, and then his presidential one.
She spent eight years in the White House with her husband,
no doubt gleaning every bit of information she could, learning
how to effect policy. It was then that she took over the cause to
rework the nation’s health care system, a plan that was shot
down by the Senate. When she became senator much later,
she stood alongside those who had worked to scupper her
plan. There she learned to build relationships.
All this will matter if she does become president, because
‘President Hillary Clinton’ will be a woman who, although not
a natural politician or one who has the charisma of presidents
past, will fight for gender rights. She will fly that flag high for
women everywhere. India may have had a prime minister in
the late 70s, when Hillary was working on the Jimmy Carter
campaign. But America’s woman president, if elected, will
be empowering to her gender, sensitizing leaders across the
world. Perhaps that might be a path that America can pave for
everyone else.
