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“Hillary Clinton’s name is on everyone’s lips as we head into the 2016 presidential election. But as we know from the 2008 presidential campaign, and its outcome, Clinton evokes extreme and varied emotions among voters in a way no other candidate in recent memory has. But why?
“Love Her, Love Her Not: The Hillary Paradox delves into the nuances of our complicated feelings about one of the most powerful women ever in American politics. In this timely collection, editor Joanne Bamberger gathers a unique and diverse group of writers of all ages, walks of life, and political affiliations, while also providing the narrative framework through which to view the history that’s led us to this moment in time—the moment when voters must decide whether they can forgive Hillary Clinton for not being the perfect candidate or the perfect woman and finally elect our first woman president. Timely and fresh, Love Her, Love Her Not will provoke new conversations and push political and cultural dialogue in the US to a new level.”
From Joanne C. Bamberger’s essay, “I Don’t Need Hillary Clinton to be Perfect,” included in Love Her, Love Her Not and excerpted at The Broad Side:
“I confess that in 2008 I didn’t think we were a country that was ready for a woman president. Oh, how I wanted us to be! The 1970s feminist in me – the one who was schooled about uber-conservative Phyllis Schlafly’s political efforts to keep women in the home, the possibility of an Equal Rights Amendment, and the ‘women’s lib’ expectations that I would, of course, see a woman president in my lifetime – assumed that in the twenty-first century things finally were changing. In 2008, how could it not be time for the United States finally to join that club?
“While polls showed that America was statistically on board with the idea of a woman president eight years ago, the worry in my gut knew that women like Hillary often weren’t taken seriously in the world of old (and new) boys’ networks and that there were still too many gendered ideas about how women should be that held us all back, Hillary included, from what we could be. Sadly, my gut correctly predicted that the 2008 election cycle wasn’t going to be the Year of the Woman President in America; it took me longer to figure out why.
“Hillary fell short because she wasn’t perfect.”
