Sexual Politics

Are we having a presidential election or a group therapy session?

Does the whole country need to get on the couch just because Hillary Clinton is running?

I feel the need for some serious shrink time myself after reading the new Mother Jones cover story on HRC: "Why she stokes our deepest fears and darkest hatreds."

I understand, of course, that White House contests are not just about nine-part plans to improve port security. They're about personality and character as well, and the country finding someone it feels comfortable with.

And I get the fact that Hillary brings a forklift's worth of baggage from the '90s into the race, and conjures up memories of Whitewater and Monica and all of that. Fair enough. No candidate can run from his or her biography, especially with the root-canal job that the media inflict on presidential contenders.

And it's hard not to miss that there's also the first-woman question, and the what-to-do-with-Bill question, and all the associated weirdness of a former president's wife trying to become president.

But it seems to me that this Mother Jones piece by Jack Hitt goes way beyond those debates. Put it this way: the story prominently features that quote from Sharon Stone saying of Senator Clinton that "a woman should be past her sexuality when she runs." And he notes that Clinton's hapless GOP opponent, John Spencer, had basically said she was ugly and accused her of having "millions of dollars" in plastic surgery.

Now either Hitt has had the gumption to commit to glossy paper what millions of Americans have been quietly buzzing about, or he has done a triple-gainer off the high board into fantasyland. Here are some excerpts:

"Most men . . . long before they get to her politics, they gossip about her comeliness, and the judgment is always harsh. Busting Hillary back down to mere dame, and a rejected one whose sexual allures fail, seems to be a necessary preamble to any discussion of her . . .

"Hillary is an avatar of an existential dread skulking in the hearts of every couple who've tried to put together a life since the feminist revolution. This anxiety explains why the darkest question a liberal feminist can ask is: Why didn't she leave the [SOB]? And it's why the coarsest question a conservative man can ask is: Who would do the [B-word]? . . . Hillary has come to embody a dark fear in the hearts of modern men: the wife who neglects the joys of the bedroom for her career . . .

"The flip side to Hillary's ambition evokes every career woman's greatest fear. How fragile is marriage? It can come apart as quickly as that girl delivering the pizza can snap her thong . . .

"It's why the kind of anger liberal women feel toward Hillary always circles back around to the issue of why she stayed in the marriage. Why didn't she take a stand against male grossness? . . .