Teflon-coated manolos are earned
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.
on April 5th, 2008 at 4:58 am
Your site is great!
As for job title — that meme is also elitist. In a mom and pop operation, everything may be in Pop’s name. But often while Pop is out front shaking hands, the real brain is Mom in the back room.
on April 5th, 2008 at 10:47 am
I love it here! Consider yourself linked at Blue Lyon! Woohoo!
on April 5th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
Thanks bluelyon - we’ve got to click our heels together 4 our gal!
on April 11th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Obama and Alice Palmer — Part I
Speaking of better qualified women getting passed over, here’s Obama’s entry into politics in 1996. Not just a little backstab, but a fatal stab to the heart — of the beloved elder stateswoman who had just got him ON the ballot.
A popular local activist in a ’safe seat’ in the Illinois state senate (Alice Palmer) gave him his start. A few weeks later when they ended up on the same ballot, party elders asked Obama to withdraw from that race, offering to find him another seat so their faction could have two seats instead of one.
Obama refused, and instead of running a fair contest with Palmer, he had her knocked off the ballot, along with all his other opponents, so he could run unopposed. After ‘winning’, soon he himself gave up the seat. So instead of two seats, his faction had none at all, Palmer’s career was ended, and Obama had made enemies and got a dishonorable episode on his record permanently.
All because he could not wait his turn and didn’t care who or what he damaged for his own ambition.
(Yes, Palmer made some mistakes too. But hers were innocent mistakes: optomism, carelessness — and trusting Barack Obama’s character.)
on April 11th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
i had only vaguely heard about this….not that i’m shocked, considering the media’s love affair with Obama……we need to push this further….but what a SLIMY move……it’s amazing he still has friends in that state! And now they’re tryin’ to push out another not-so-shiny-new gal…..
but we’ll fight them every step of the way!!!
on April 11th, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Commenting on my own here, and I’ll get back and explain the facts later….
The worst sort of bad judgement is when you KNOW about a possible future problem — but don’t take even the most obvious steps of looking into it and taking precautions.
Current big example’s are Wright and Rezko. Months ago Obama and Wright discussed Obama having to ‘distance’ himself from Wright if he got the nomination. But Obama didn’t even bother to have his staff check the video sermons his own church was selling! Now they’ve cleaned their website … but plain competence would have required doing it long ago.
Is that a male thing too? Let a crisis happen, you can always stomp in with your teflon armor and get credit for ’solving’ it?
(Wasn’t that mentioned in Deborah Tannen’s TALKING 9 TO 5? The woman who works late preventing a crisis doesn’t get noticed.)
on April 12th, 2008 at 12:03 am
princess,
here’s more detail on the Palmer story.
“Showing his bare knuckles
In first campaign, Obama revealed hard-edged, uncompromising side in eliminating party rivals”
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/politics/chi-0704030881apr04,0,6468332.story
He knocked ALL his opponents off the ballot, including the beloved ‘elder stateswoman’ who had befriended and recommended him, getting him onto the ballot in the first place, Alice Palmer.
In The New Republic:
“The Agitator” about Obama’s ‘community organizer’ days (”rub raw the sores of discontent”)
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=a74fca23-f6ac-4736-9c78-f4163d4f25c7&p=10 (This is page 10 of 10)
on August 11th, 2008 at 5:10 pm
[…] 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 […]