What if Hillary Had Won?

It’s been a year since the Obamas strode onto the Grant Park stage to claim the honor of becoming America’s 44th First Family. But what if the election had gone differently, and it had been the Clintons up there in matching reds? What if it had been Hillary assuring us that “America is a place where all things are possible”? How would the past year have been different under her rule? We asked DoubleXers who were against Hillary last fall to 'fess up to any regrets, and those who supported her to call out their best gloating points from 2009.

Emily Bazelon [2]: What if Hillary had won? What if, a year ago tomorrow a woman in a carefully chosen pantsuit (red for power or safer to go with blue?) had won the presidency in Barack Obama's stead? It surprises me how hard it feels to wrap my brain around that counterfactual. A year is short. And yet Obama's presidency is entrenched in a way that's hard for me to dislodge, and Hillary's persona has moved on from candidate to globe-trudging Secretary of State.

But to jump through the mental hoops: If Hillary were president, we'd have a whole different set of optics, as they say in pundit-land. We'd hear a woman's voice when the president addresses both houses of Congress or appears on TV or at a town hall somewhere in Indiana. And that would make women feel different in a way that's intangible but that also matters. Our sense of possibility would be larger, the sky would feel higher, the glass ceiling would have shattered instead of remaining whole despite its 18 million cracks. Maybe most exciting: Many of us would have started to take this new relationship between gender and power for granted. (Hillary would, no doubt, have spawned her own equivalent of the birthers who would have refused to accept her election as legitimate. What would they be doing—claiming that she dropped down from Venus?) And yes, that would make it easier to imagine women as CEOs and university presidents and leaders at the very top of every other field.

For me, those gains weren't enough reason to support Hillary's candidacy. We debated the tradeoff early and often on this blog. Sometimes when I talked to older women who felt mystified by the diffidence of women like me, I felt traitorous, like a feminist Red Riding Hood who'd lost her way. I wanted to give them the reassurance they were looking for without giving them my vote. They're over it, I think—the women's vote helped carry Obama. But imagining Hillary as president makes me remember why I couldn't dismiss their voices then. You could be a good feminist and vote against Hillary, but you had to be a more complicated feminist. You had to see that -ism as one of several parts of your identity, and not give it primacy. I'm all for complexity, but sometimes it's tiring. Also harder to explain.

One specific counter-prediction: If Hillary were president, we'd either have more troops on the way to Afghanistan by now or we wouldn't. She wouldn't have taken her time to ruminate the way Obama is doing, because the barbs about weakness and dithering would have sunk in deeper.

KJ DellAntonia [3]: Short answer: Amy Poehler, still on SNL.

Long answer: Sometime in early 2008, I got an e-mail from a friend asking me to support Obama. Up until then, I'd been an ardent Hilary supporter, and I mocked the idea of switching my allegiance (and my New Hampshire party-hosting abilities, which were what the friend wanted) to Obama. Among other things, I argued that the last thing we needed in the White House was idealism unaccompanied by serious experience. But Obama supporters came after me fast and furious (I'm a U. of Chicago law-school grad), and I was swayed.

But when you ask me what if Hilary had won, that's what I come back to. Yes, we'd have a woman in the White House. We'd also have eight years of indirect Oval Office experience. With my 20-20 hindsight, I can't help but ask: Would she have made the same mistakes? Too many cooks on health care. Don't ask, don't tell still on the books. No decisions on troops in Afghanistan, little progress on foreign policy, and no immediate accomplishment to define a year in office. Those may be signs of a thoughtful presidency with an eye on the long term, but they can also be seen as rookie errors, made by a man whose interest lies more in policy than politics.

My dislike for politics as usual was part of why I voted for President Obama. But watching him in action, I can't help but think that being president is, of all things, a job for a politician. All issues of race and gender aside, I sometimes wish we'd elected one.

Emily Yoffe [4]: Emily B., I totally agree with your insight that Hillary would have made a decision on troops in Afghanistan by now because she would have been very aware of avoiding getting labeled a dithering female. She also would have taken on health care, and it would be as mired in contention as Obama's plan is, but I think you would be hearing a lot of people saying, "Maybe we should have voted for Obama. We knew Hillary was abrasive and polarizing."

Have any of you heard people express—even those frustrated with Obama—a wish that it had been Hillary after all? I haven't. McCain was going to lose, and either we would have had a black president or a female one. We had to get one out of the way first, and I have no doubt that we will have a female president, and when we do, it will seem both as history-making and as natural as having a black one. What kept me from being a Hillary supporter then is the same thing that makes me happy not to be dealing with her presidency now: Bill. In his new book [5], Obama campaign manager David Plouffe says Obama ultimately cut Hillary from consideration for the vice presidency by saying, "If I picked her, my concern is that there would be more than two of us in the relationship." (This is a neat paraphrase of Diana's famous description of her marriage to Charles.) It is a massive irony that Hillary was in position to run for the presidency because of her marriage, but that her secret weapon, Bill, ended up being more of a hindrance to her getting to the White House. The woman who becomes our first female president surely will get there without a husband paving the way. And that will be better for her and all of us.

Dahlia Lithwick [6]: I can't do counterfactuals any more readily than you, Emily B., but I know one thing for certain: Had Hillary Clinton won the 2008 presidential election, we wouldn't be talking about Sarah Palin anymore. She just wouldn't be all that interesting. Oh, and women's magazines that currently devote inordinate amounts of resources to Michelle Obama's wardrobe would probably print more recipes. Also, Bill Clinton would be doing something spectacularly important and high-profile, someplace in Sweden or rural Nebraska.

I also agree that Hillary's popularity ratings—an October Gallup poll shows her rated higher than Obama—would have been in the tank had she won the election. I can't imagine the tea-baggers would have gone any easier on her, and I suspect they'd have been even more brutal. But then nobody would have ever suggested that Nancy Pelosi be put in her place, either.

We'd hear a lot less about presidential listening and a lot more about presidential speaking. (The word shrill would appear in newspapers 12 times per day.) But as KJ suggests, maybe we all are craving just a bit less presidential listening at this point anyhow.

Hanna Rosin [7]: I had a twinge of regret, when I was reading that White House as frat house [8] piece last week. It’s not that I think Obama needs to play co-ed basketball, God forbid, or have more people who look like me in his inner circle, as Dee Dee Meyers boringly suggested. Obama seems perfectly familiar and postfeminist just like me and all my friends. It’s just that there are laws of nature no amount of bean counting or feminist revival can change. And those include the fact that a pack of boys in the workplace will blithely interrupt their work day to play basketball, or watch soccer, and a pack of girls will routinely watch out for how each one is feeling every day, and that’s just how it is. I know that now, because for the first time I work at a women’s magazine. It’s neither good nor bad, although I like it better, and it would have been surprising and cool to see it play out in the White House.

It’s a small point I’m making. Obama is more “feminist” than Hillary in some important ways. His marriage, for one, is very much more of the admirable postfeminist kind than Hillary’s skewed and strained partnership. And he has an easy way around the women in his life that Hillary never manages in public. But it’s big enough that it leaves me wishing to see a female president one day.

As for the substance, it’s sort of a wash. I do, in retrospect, trust Hillary’s instinct more than Obama’s on Afghanistan and Iran. She has turned out to be refreshingly honest and authoritative in her international diplomacy, whereas Obama still seems to be trying it on. Surely she, too, would have come up with interesting ideas on health care and education, and she has more experience and success working Congress. But the right wing would have stayed in a froth of rage and conspiracy. And I disagree, Dahlia. I think Sarah Palin would have been raised up as the perfect anti-Hillary.

So here’s my question: Who will be the next female president? And what if it is Sarah Palin? Did I get my wish then?