This video “I Wanna Be” shows women’s steady but sure progress, and ends with Hillary Clinton’s speaking to other women and particularly young women:
“Always aim high, work hard, and care deeply about what you believe in. When you stumble, keep faith. When you’re knocked down, get right back up. And never listen to anyone who says you can’t or shouldn’t go on….. If we can blast 50 women into space, we will someday launch a woman into the White House….”
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Today, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee overwhelmingly approved the nomination of Hillary Clinton to be secretary of state.
It has been a long, sometimes very rough and very emotional journey for Senator Clinton. Many of us have followed her campaign or supported it from the beginning or even before. I myself flew in from Mexico to hear Bill Clinton speak in San Antonio, Texas when he was still governor of Arkansas. The weather had him socked in at Dallas so he didn’t make the flight down and didn’t speak, although I heard and met him many times later. The person who stepped in for him and did speak that afternoon was Hillary Clinton. And when she spoke, my friend and I looked at each other, our collective jaws dropping, and said, almost in unison: “She should be president.”
Well, she didn’t make it. This time. And maybe she won’t ever be president. But she has certainly set a shining example of grit, resolve and perseverance…. all of which women need in spades…. in addition to her extraordinary brain power and what Hemingway once called “grace under pressure.”
I, along with many others, believe she will be an outstanding secretary of state who will make us all proud, and put American back into a position of respect and collaboration abroad.
Clinton told the assembled lawmakers that the extraordinary times present an extraordinary opportunity.
“I think this could be one of the golden eras of the history of the Senate,” she said. “This could be a time when people will look back and say, you know, you never can count America out. Whenever the chips are down, we always rise to the occasion.”
And so, we’ve learned, does Hillary Clinton, soon to be Secretary of State Clinton.
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I’m a big believer in proclaiming “Women of the Year.” I believe in identifying positive role models to give us 
all something to aspire to.
It also helps to give us hope when some of our goals….such as electing a woman to the White House… seem, at times, to recede before us, like those refracted heat waves that appear to form shapes, then vanish in the desert, leaving us wondering where is our palm lined pool of shimmering water? Nothing but miles and miles of dry, hot desert when it comes to women’s presidential aspirations. But, better to light a candle than curse the darkness. The candles women have lit and carried in the past year, or a bit over in one case, include some of the following outstanding women:
The New York Daily News named their New Yorker of the Year saying: “Hillary Clinton proved a woman of resolve and class.”
We couldn’t agree more. And she did a lot more than that. She made it more feasible for a woman to run for President of the United States, and she upped the ante for contenders to 18 million votes. But Clinton’s skills as a campaigner, we predict, will be overshadowed by her skills as a serious decision maker and global negotiator. I, for one, am heartened and relieved that , at least, the second phone call which comes in at 3am will be to Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.
I don’t believe in “book-ending” Governor Sarah Palin with Clinton, but neither do I believe in ignoring her plucky candidacy. She was called on and she took up the challenge, energizing her party and becoming a celebrity in the process. Common wisdom has it that she made Tina Fey a bigger celebrity in the process as well with her Saturday Night caricatures of Palin. I don’t deny those caricatures were fun, of a type, but I will find them a lot funnier when we actually do have a woman in the White House.
I think we should give Queen Elizabeth of England some appreciation if, for nothing else, endurance. She fills that classic 
requirement: 50% of winning is “just showing up for the job”. Queen Elizabeth has shown up for over 50 years, if you only count the years since her coronation. ( She also, for example, presided over public events and, during the war, trained as a driver and mechanic, and drove a military truck making her the first, and so far only, female member of the Royal Family to actively serve in the armed forces.)
I met Benazir Bhutto in San Francisco in 2001, I believe. Although there was some controversy surrounding her I always admired her and found her speaking inspiring. “Bhutto was the first woman elected to lead a Muslim state,[5] having twice been Prime Minister of Pakistan (1988–1990; 1993–1996). She was Pakistan‘s first and to date only female prime minister. She went into self-imposed exile in Dubai in 1998.
Bhutto returned to Pakistan on 18 October 2007, and was assassinated on 27 December 2007, after departing a PPP rally in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi, two weeks before the scheduled Pakistani general election of 2008 where she was a leading opposition candidate. The following year she was named one of seven winners of the United Nations Prize in the Field of Human Rights.
I think Bhutto provides another example of a woman persisting in her beliefs and showing up in the face of personal danger. Although she died a few days before 2008, it is now time to mark the anniversary of her violent death. I salute her and say farewell.
I know there are many, many more women who should be saluted and honored in 2008.
I would nominate all the women who worked so hard for their candidates in 2008.
I would nominate all the mothers and daughters and wives who worked to maintain their families and those who lost loved ones in national service in conflicts abroad.
I would nominate all of us who have persevered, despite an unlevel playing field and personal challenges.
I suspect that might be all of us.
If you have women you think should be named women of the year, please do write and share with us who they are.
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It seems like a million years ago now, that I was a fervent Hillary Clinton supporter and volunteer. I campaigned for her, I raised money for her, I set up offices and went to other states to work for her. Was I disappointed she lost? Sure. There was a lot about the entire campaign that I was disappointed in, but I’ve had to let it go. We have a new president elect now whom I’m ready to support.
What I haven’t let go is my dream of seeing a woman in the White House someday. I don’t know if that will happen in my life time but I’m not going to stop trying.
I went with my family to see the movie “Milk” yesterday afternoon, the one in which Sean Penn gives a shining performance as gay rights activist Harvey Milk, who was ultimately assassinated. In it, someone said to Milk, as he prepared once more to run for political office as an openly gay man: “You know Harvey, you’ll never win this.” He responded “Not everything is about winning.”
And I agree. It’s the same point Albert Camus made in “The Myth of Sisyphus“, about a man being condemned to roll a rock up a hill only to have it roll back to the bottom again, and again. Camus found something very courageous and uplifting about the act of trying to roll the rock up the hill: the victory inherent in our every day struggle to achieve our goal, to roll the rock up the hill.
The greatly esteemed Lynette Long says:” Right now, many people believe that they will not see a woman elected president of this country in their lifetimes…..
One can hardly blame people for feeling this way. But, I think it is too early to conclude that we will not see a woman elected president in the next 24 years. So, if you think you have another quarter century in you, not only might you see a woman elected president, you can help make it happen. It won’t happen because it will be easy to accomplish. And it It won’t happen because of hope. It will happen because of hard work in the face of long odds.
It will happen because we challenge ourselves to make it happen’ to make it a national priority. We must recognize that electing a woman to the Presidency of the United States of America is a way of affirming the 51 per cent of the American population consisting of women, a way of affirming that Americans can understand human rights well enough to appreciate that women’s rights are human rights, a way of affirming the great American heritage in promoting the rights of all persons based on ever more inclusive ideas of who counts as a rights-bearing person.”
Well, I agree with all of that. Lynette also challenges us to join the White House project and to start our own groups, “Send A Woman To The White House.”
I believe, in addition to all that, we have to start from where we are with what we’ve got. We have to elect more women to school boards, city councils, as mayors, senators and governors, so we develop a broad based farm team to start. We have to identify the right women, believe in them and work for them.
And, equally important, we have to not allow the bias in ourselves, that puts a higher bar on women entering office than men.
I was at a party Saturday night when a long time woman friend and Obama supporter sat down next to me and started chatting about politics. I told her I was impressed with a lot of Obama’s appointments and certainly wished him well considering the dismal state of our country now, with a recession and two bloody wars ongoing. She told me how much courage she thought Obama had and what a magnanimous person he was for nominating Hillary as Secretary of State. I said, “Well, if he thought she was that capable, why, during the campaign, did he say she had just gone and had tea with diplomats”. Tea, in the event you are not aware of it, is a long time code word marginalizing women, accompanied, even in the time of our own Boston Tea party, by the implication that women were out having tea with each other, mixing with undesirables, stirring up mischief, and leaving filthy homes while men where in “men’s places” drinking a good stiff whiskey and doing great things for humanity. I offered the opinion that if he thought Hillary was capable, to say she just drank tea instead of accomplishing anything was both cynical and hypocritical. She said: “Well, you do what you have to in order to win.” I said, “If you have to be cynical and hypocritical to win, maybe you shouldn’t do it.”
She exited the conversation. I was reminded of a scene in The Godfather where Al Pacino, with great anguish, declares: “I try and try to get out and they just keep pulling me back in.”
It was an Al Pacino moment for me. But then, although I wanted to put the whole thing behind me….not the election…but the denigration of women which sprung from it…..or rather, was made more unbearably visible by it, I didn’t really want to get out of the battle. We are never going to get there without a battle. And I hope we are up for it. One more time. Just to get you going, and if you doubt the reality of where we are and how daunting the challenge, perhaps you’d like to read a few of the White House Project facts below
The White House Project points out the following Women Leader Facts & Quotes:
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A lot of women and women’s rights groups would like to see a woman picked for Hillary Clinton’s New York Senate Seat. After all, only 16 of 100 Senate members are women. Having one of them picked for Secretary of State would be ironic and bitter sweet if it caused our ranks and representation to go down even lower in Congress. So there is a great rallying cry among women’s groups to pick a woman for Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat.
But will it happen? And which woman?
There are some good ones out there.
Two names which have been floated are scrappy and talented upstate Albany-area Congresswoman Kirstin Gillibrand and Nydia Velazquez, described as “a twofer,” since she is a woman and a Hispanic. But they are less well known, so might best be described as “dark horses”.
Two national women’s groups have urged Democratic New York.Governor David Paterson to name Manhattan Rep. Carolyn Maloney. Time Magazine has called Maloney a “tenacious, resilient legislator.” The Village Voice characterized her as “a tiger in the House on every dollar due New York.” Maloney is both an advocate for women and strong on the economy which she has made her specialty.
Maloney is not only articulate and effective but women believe “she gets it.” In 2008, Maloney published a book on women’s issues entitled “Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated: Why Women’s Lives Aren’t Getting Any Easier — and How We Can Make Real Progress for Ourselves and Our Daughters“ In the book, Maloney argues that progress for women has stalled and offers recommendations for resuming their advance toward full equality.
But whoa!
There seem to be an evergrowing number of wanna be’s out there. Actress Fran Drescher, The Nanny, wants the appointment. Yes, really. And some find her very politically savvy and committed.
And Caroline Kennedy………iconic daughter of legendary Camelot star couple, JFK and Jackie, niece of 
former N.Y. Senator Bobby Kennedy, who held the same seat……gave the Guv a call and discussed the position, although no one is at liberty to repeat what was said.
But it did get all the politicos and their followers’ attention. A political acquaintance of mine, male, has invited me to a new Facebook group, sporting a photo of Caroline Kennedy with the caption splashed across it, “Entitlement we can believe in,”
“The woman has never run for office in her life. We have no idea how she’d fare on the campaign trail, or how well she could stand up to the electoral process. She simply picks up the phone and lets it be known that she just might be up for having one of the highest offices in the land handed to her because — well, because why? Because her uncle once held the seat? Because she’s a Kennedy? Because she took part as a child in the public’s romantic dreams of Camelot? I’m not quite sure…”
Senator Ted Kennedy, her uncle, is said to be feverishly working the phones for her, hoping to continue the family dynasty. ( See article below.) And many of us are very empathetic with the Kennedy’s magical, often inspiring but tragic past. But is that enough of a foundation to be appointed Senator?
Another with his hat in the ring: Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who served as the Clinton administration’s secretary of Housing and Urban Development and who, apparently seeks to carry on his own family’s political dynasty. ( There’s a bit of a family feud between ex-inlaws Kennedy and Cuomo, but that’s another story. I thought I’d give you a heads up because all the gory details are bound to hit the blogs, or, at least the tabloids).
According to Time magazine:”A Dec. 9 Marist poll found that 25% of New York residents think Paterson should pick Kennedy vs. 25% favoring Andrew Cuomo, with the rest either divided among other candidates or “unsure.”
Also, longtime city teachers union President Randi Weingarten recently contacted Gov. Paterson about the seat and the Governor said he would consider Weingarten as well. So he has a lot to think about.
But here’s the rub: whoever takes Clinton’s seat would have to face voters in 2010, to fill out Clinton’s term, and again in 2012, for re-election. That means, almost from the day he or she enters office he or she will have to start running…..and running and running…. and raising lots of very big bucks.
So, all things considered, it appears that money, the ability to raise it, monied connections and being linked into deep pockets and piles of money are going to weigh heavily on the scales of who is the best Senate selection for New York .
Who do we think will best meet that criteria?
Is the richest hopeful really the one most credentialed to hold office….. considering that one of the credentials appears to be money? Stay tuned.
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Hillary Clinton took on a bit of an iconic mantle with human rights and women rights activists when, as first lady, she delivered a dramatic speech on women’s rights at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995. Speaking truth to power, Clinton boldly criticized the host country and other nations for abuses of girls and women saying: “It is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights,” she said then.
President-elect Barack Obama’s nomination of Hillary Clinton as the next secretary of state has energized human rights and women’s rights activists, who expect the former first lady to bring a dramatic new focus to the plight of women around the globe. I am also hoping Clinton will continue her staunch support of women’s economic progress, as I believe she will.
Clinton, a champion of global micro-credit, has said: “Although the economic plight of a poor woman in Bangladesh who wants a loan to buy a second milk cow or sewing machine may seem worlds away from that of a technology entrepreneur in San Francisco, the bottom line is this: No matter where they live, women need help breaking down the barriers to capital.”
Women have a notoriously hard time borrowing money, and we’re often forced to rely on high-interest, short-term credit, if we can get loans at all.
During Bill Clinton’s administration I participated in a White House conference on improving Latin America’s economy by counseling with and supporting women in the creation of small businesses. What came of that was women who received a few hundred dollars to buy a sewing machine, then grew to have a factory that employed most of a village. Women in a remote mountain village who raised geese, were empowered, with the help of an Internet connection, to begin selling goose down pillows to the United States and goose liver pate to France.
I know the Clinton’s believe deeply in economic support for women and I’m energized by the prospect of Clinton bringing that perspective to her new position.
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Many have characterized Obama’s cabinet picks as “A Team of Rivals,” borrowing from historian Doris Kearns Goodwin’s description of Lincoln’s cabinet.
But, in fact, Julian Zelizer in CNN.Politics.com maintains Obama’s team is shaping up as a group of Clinton-era centrists and that Bill Clinton must be smiling.
“The most striking characteristic of the current lineup ( including Senator Clinton) is how the personalities reflect the centrist vision of the Democratic Party promoted by Bill Clinton and his colleagues at the Democratic Leadership Council in the 1990s.
Obama has called on experts who aggressively promoted globalization and deregulation on economic matters, pushed for welfare reform, and accepted the necessity of military force and a strong defense. There are exceptions, but overall thus far, it appears Obama will be advised from the center.
Some of Obama’s core supporters are surprised and upset with his choices while others say his choices are a logical reaction to the crises facing his administration.
A close look at Obama’s development since 2004 suggests centrism should have been expected. There is little evidence beyond his history as a community organizer to indicate Obama is left of center.
That’s part of the irony of the attacks made by Sen. John McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin against Obama for his association with 1960s radicals and statements about progressive taxation.
When Obama was introduced to the national scene at the 2004 Democratic Convention, his keynote speech focused on the need to overcome political polarization and long-standing divisions. In the most famous part of the speech, Obama said, “there’s not a liberal America and a conservative America — there’s the United States of America.”
This is far from the rallying cries of Sen. Ted Kennedy who has enthusiastically defended the liberal tradition of his party.
During his presidential campaign in 2008, Obama’s policy proposals were not at all radical. Indeed many of his key positions looked much more like those of Bill Clinton than Franklin Roosevelt or Lyndon Johnson.”
So Hillary Clinton may be a perfect match, after all.
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When young men shout out from the audience “Iron My Shirt”, Tee shirts identify female presidential candidates as the C word, and large, respected magazines run articles titled ” The “Bitch” and the “Ditz””, referring to Clinton and Palin, what can one expect but a lot of anger and resentment from women, expressed or not?
As noted, “The heightened perceptions of how women were treated this cycle just may drive more votes by women for women next time around.”
New poll reveals the depth of women’s anger in the aftermath of Hillary Clinton’s and Sarah Palin’s campaigns.
The Barrier That Didn’t Fall – The Daily Beast suggest American women overwhelmingly believe they are being treated unfairly in the press, in the workplace, in politics, and in the armed forces, according to a poll by The Daily Beast of 1,000 U.S. voters. The poll comes on the heels of the first-ever presidential election with two high profile women candidates who ran but did not win.
For a race that was supposed to have broken the glass ceiling, it may just have shown women how hard and resistant that barrier really is. The poll, conducted for The Daily Beast by Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates, clearly documents what most casual observers identified as relatively favorable press treatment for male candidates like Obama and Biden versus an “anything goes” approach against the women running for office. In fact, the poll—which covered topics ranging from coverage of women’s appearances to the parodies of candidates on Saturday Night Live—shows sweeping skepticism about how women are viewed culturally, politically and in the workplace. Though women did not vote in large enough numbers for Sarah Palin’s side to prevail, they remain convinced she was not treated fairly by the media, and judged her treatment far harsher than even what Hillary Clinton received.
The poll’s key findings include:
The race appears to have crystallized attitudes among women that they face discrimination in almost all areas of private and public life. Women over 50, the first generation to have a majority in the workforce, see far more discrimination in every area of life than younger women. And when it comes to the armed forces, the poll shows a similar pattern of older and higher income women reporting the highest levels of discrimination against them. About 72% of women that they were being treated unfairly in politics—a perception that Hillary Clinton’s appointment as secretary of state, the third woman in that position, would likely do little to assuage.
For the entire article, go to The Barrier That Didn’t Fall – The Daily Beast.
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Yesterday I was at a brunch with a number of women, most of whom, I think, were former Hillary Clinton supporters in the primary. The talk turned to what went wrong, and it seemed to me to be very much a primer for Business 101. Although the subject was politics it was also really about business, the business of getting selected as nominee of your party, then elected president. The theme of the discussion could have been “What Not To Do In Your Business or How You Should Have Revised Your Plan On the Fly As Mistakes Became Evident.“ Lessons from the Hillary Campaign, a short list; a complete list would stretch ad infinitum:
(Footnote- February 3, 2009. Well, I’m a big Hillary fan and devoted a lot of time and energy to try to get her elected. I think I was in a very disappointed mood when I wrote this. And Lynette Long may have been also, when she wrote her blog. Hillary did get pay back by going over to the Obama side and displaying loyalty. She was appointed Secretary of State, and, in these early days, it looks like she is going to make that a more energetic and principled department. We wish her… and us… the best.)
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Prepping Women for the White House – International Museum of Women.
What’s Your Point, Honey? Promotes Not One, But Many Women Leaders
Borgman (c) 2007 The Cincinnati Enquirer. Used by permission of Universal Press Syndicate
Nearly 100 years after universal suffrage, U.S. women have yet to hold the highest office in the land. Currently, they make up 18 percent of governors, 16 percent of senators and 16 percent of representatives. What’s being done to change these statistics? Filmmakers Amy Sewell and Susan Toffler confront this question head on in their upbeat feminist documentary, What’s Your Point, Honey? Through candid and formal interviews with pre-teens, prominent women leaders and everyone in between, the directors have created a film about and for young women who dream of doing great things.
AdvancingWomen.com is proud to support all young women…. and, in fact, all mature women as well, who dream of doing great things. We look forward to seeing one of them sworn in as President of the United States one day.
But as the film’s subtitle, “It’s not about one…” reminds us, it’s not just about getting one woman to the top position, but shifting the political climate so that, by the time these young girls are of eligible running age, it will “be so normal for women to run that we’ll never look back.”
To read more on the making of this film go to
Prepping Women for the White House – International Museum of Women.
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