No matter how inspiring I find Senator Obama, I still support Senator Clinton for the nomination. Why? Because of a few lessons I’ve learned from office politics. Kick up your heels if you recognize these scenarios.

Lesson 1: Real-Life Experience Matters More Than Job Title

You know the ins and outs of your department—how things really get done, what screws everything up, how to fix it and still make deadline and budget. But you’re a job title away from the promotion that just opened up, so nobody in HR wants to take you seriously. Instead, they hire a guy from outside the company because his job title sounds more like what they want. He promptly steamrolls in with “New, new, new!” ideas, but never asks you about the real life stuff that came before him—and promptly screws up everything and its brother. Now you have to work late every night for a month to fix his mistakes and he still makes more money than you do.

I think Sen. Clinton’s experience as First Lady is worth much more than her critics say it is. I worked on a politician’s staff for years and I swear, I’ve forgotten more about how to do his job well than most of his wanna-be opponents will ever know. Sen. Clinton’s proximity to the Oval Office during the most contentious years since, oh, Watergate, has to have given her an education in the presidency unlike any other candidate’s, even the VPs who later became presidents. I’ll bet you a spa day that she already knows more about being an effective president than any other candidates could hope to learn in the first year on the job. Don’t believe me?

Lesson 2: Screw-Ups Make You Better

A colleague once told me, “Never be afraid of making a mistake. You learn more from your mistakes than you do from your victories.”

I LOVES me my victories. I earned every one of them. But I learned more about doing a good job from the mistakes I made and the ones I witnessed. Digging my way out of my own holes taught me critical skills and resilience. Digging my way out of other people’s holes taught me how to spot messes before they happen and avert them (or at least get out of the way). Sen. Clinton’s been in the spotlight for so long that she has inevitable baggage, from her first foray into health care reform in the early 90s to controversial votes in the Senate. People with a little metaphorical dirt under their manicures know how to clean up messes. If you think we ain’t got the mother of all messes to clean up, have I got some $59 Manolos for ya.

Lesson 3: ginger rogers rule (still rules)

Finally, there’s the Ginger Rogers Rule. Ginger did everything that Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards in high heels. How many times have you seen in your own career that certain men were celebrated for being brash, aggressive bomb-throwers, but a woman of similar rank would be branded the B-word for not saying “please” in a memo?

Despite huge strides in the lives of working women, we still must walk a narrower path than men to be successful. We have to be assertive and go-getting, but we can’t step on any dainty little wing-tipped toes while we’re go-getting. We’re judged by impossible, conflicting standards and then beat up for not meeting them. Men on the same path have far greater leeway, plus they don’t have to worry about getting felt up by a drunken corporate V.P. at the holiday party or have their wardrobes critiqued like a dissertation.

Senator Clinton has been called every unprintable name in the book, accused of coups and murders and crimes against some mythic standard of Femininity ™ (which is especially restrictive in politics), but she’s still dancing backwards in high heels and holding her own with the boys who get bonuses for things that would get her a week’s unpaid leave and a letter in her personnel file. That’s tenacity. And it’s about time we had a president who has earned her stripes with the same tenacity, savvy, and smarts that we have to have every day to succeed.